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Comment by foobarbecue | Hacker News Reader

Do you know if your 2002 has side-impact anti-intrusion bars in the doors?

I loved my 1999 Isuzu Amigo, and was sad when I was rear-ended in 2017 and had to get rid of it, but that fender bender probably saved my life.

I replaced the Amigo with a 2014 Outlander Sport and in 2019 I was t-boned at an intersection, with the other car driving directly into my driver's side door. I was amazed to find that I escaped without a scratch. I did some research and found that the Amigo had terrible side-impact safety ratings; if I was still driving the Amigo I probably would have been crushed.

In 2007 (effective 2009), the NHTSA mandated that all new vehicles have anti-intrusion bars in doors. That bar saved me.

I think there's a sweet-spot in the mid-2010s when vehicles were being built with efficiency, safety, and durability in mind and weren't yet being festooned with computerized junk.

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You're leaving out the punchline of your reply: those side-impact bars protect passengers better, but they also make the car windows higher, and reduce visibility. It's harder to see out the back of modern cars when you simply turn your body around and look behind you. That's why backup cameras are becoming mandatory in new cars.

Interesting. I didn't know that. Before the accident, I would have taken bigger windows over the side-impact bars if I'd been presented with the choice. And now I'm thankful to the regulators for taking away that freedom of choice. Odd.

A teaching moment. Sometimes the regulators actually do know what's best.

I am often frustrated at the poor visibility out of modern cars and I wonder how many crashes are caused by the poor visibility. It is the other side of the tradeoff that crash survivability data will not show- how many crashes would have been avoided altogether with better visibility.

Had a near miss today with a cyclist who was covered by the giant windshield pillars

I lived in Europe for a few years and was really struck by the focus on protecting pedestrians rather than drivers

Entire compact cars can be obscured by the a pillar in my 2018 vehicle. Textbook case of unintended consequences.

You are supposed to move your head around enough to see around the pillars

Honest question - Would you rather have had the knowledge of the pros and cons of different designs, or the lack of freedom of choice when regulators know what's best for you?

Pre-covid, I drove a low slung coupe. My roof was roughly equal in height to most people’s windowsill. I was fine with it.

Post covid, I drive a midsize suv, and am no longer comfortable riding my motorcycle.

What has changed? Simple - the other drivers. I now often witness an accident almost daily. I had a car wipe out in front of me last week. I constantly have drivers blindly merging into my lane.

I don’t know what the long term effects of covid are, but I’m pretty sure they include the removal of awareness that other drivers exist on the road, as well as basic human decency.

I used to joke that when I was driving on the west coast, I’d have to remove my turn signal as I’d have the car behind immediately speed up to cut me off.

Sadly, this has now become the reality here on the east coast also.

Do you think those are side effects of covid itself or more related to our pandemic response (lock downs, closing schools, WFH, vaccines, or something else)?

This was pre-pandemic response, but for a few years I drove a Toyota MR2 and had a couple motorcycles. I feel pretty damn lucky to never have seen what would have happened to me wrecking any of those vehicles.

How'd the MR2 drive? I've had one of those on my quirk to-buy list for awhile.

I loved that car, it was a second gen turbo with t-tops. It's effectively a street legal go-cart, actually very si.ilar to an early Lotus Elise if you've ever driven one.

I never had issues with it spinning around on my, though I was always very aware of how centered the weight balance was so it was clear when I was getting close to the edge.

I'd take a car like that over a true high performance vehicle any day. Taking a fast turn on public street at legal speeds was more engaging than doing 110 in a Corvette on a track in my opinion.

I had a Miata second gen 6-speed for a few years, and 110% agree on the fun level of street legal go-carts, over heavier but more powerful.

Thanks for the impression. I'll make sure to test drive one if the opportunity comes up.

RIP Miata/del Sol/Elise/MR2/S2000/CRX era

A person after my own heart! I ended up with an MR2 but very seriously considered every single car on that list

Had the same car.

Crashed it once, bought the exact same model cash the following week.

Oh those were the days. Miatas too cheap to meter.

I've always wanted to drive one of those. Sadly, it will probably never happen now.

My personal favorite was a beat-up manual C5 vette. Clutch drops at 6k all day long. Seat sliders were broken so it would wobble around rather alarmingly. Mufflers stolen by some hoodlums.

Incredibly fun.

When I was 15 my mom's boyfriend wanted to impress me. We went for a ride in his candy cane C5 one evening, hit 118mph on the interstate on ramp.

Really gave me an appreciation for that powertrain...my mom was less appreciative.

Come to think of it, that's probably part of why I loved the thrill of an MR2 when technically driving at legal speeds

I agree, small, low slung manual cars let you have fun without breaking too many laws. You can’t do that with modern cars anymore. I took a c7z for a test drive. Took it sideways going ~75mph, but the car was completely numb and unfeeling. I knew that it wasn’t the car for me, because I’d kill myself or someone else trying to eke a thrill out of it.

Who knows? There have definitely been plenty of studies showing that we're seeing more inflammation and I have definitely felt like people in general are getting "dumber". Likely a mix of several factors.

I'd rather have some of column A and some of column B, honestly.

Yep that's totally fair. I passed the question as an either/or but the real world answer is almost certainly in the middle somewhere

I like considering the extreme first, but mostly as a gutted check to see which ends of that spectrum I'd favor when finding the right balance

If the regulators really knew what's best, wouldn't they push to reduce the overall frame size of vehicles, rather than allowing monster SUVs to take over the highways all over these United States?

I just watched a video where they lined up about a dozen small children sitting in front of an SUV, and the driver could not see any of them through the windshield.

If visibility is a problem, then personal cars are too large. It seems like a simple fix. Or we could throw wads of technology at the wall and see what sticks?

If regulators knew what was best, I honestly think they would stop acting as though that can define what is best for hundreds of millions of people with a shortlist of laws.

Life is complicated. Our country is diverse in population, culture, environment, etc. What's good for some of not good for all.

The fact that there are multiple competing ideas of how to best design a car for safety is case in point. Larger frames and door reinforcement makes sense for intrusion protection, but the oposite makes sense to favor visibility. Which approach is considered so good as to make a legal requirement, and what options aren't included in that choice?

I'd be happy to see our government heavily fund unbiased research and public education. In this example, learn what different car designs do for safety and tell the public. Allows us to make our own decisions, empowered with a better understanding of what our options are.

Like these?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Cr...

For reference the 9000 entered the US market in the mid 80s

Yes. According to wikipedia, they were invented by GM in 1969, but it seems they didn't become a standard safety feature until the 2000s.

This was my take when people suggest older cars as an alternative. Safety has improved dramatically in the past 20-30 years, especially with side impacts where fatalities or serious injury can be common. It's one of the few reservations I have when driving my '91 BMW.

Yeah, this resonates. I don't need maximum comfort in my vehicle, and I don't think the electronic and technology features are necessary. But I do think about safety and I do have reservations when driving, depending on where I'm going and how I need to drive to get there. I do know that if I was t-boned I'd be toast, and I often think about buying a new car just for the upgrades with airbags, materials, construction, etc. But the joy of driving the car, the familiarity and feel of the car on the road in all weather, the intuition behind the wheel...I just really love it.

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