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Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

As horrible as this accident is, this is also a testament to modern automotive safety. If this had happened in the 70s or 80s, they all would've been done for. I've seen reports of recent model year cars surviving these kinds of accidents while leaving their drivers unscathed.

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My 8mo pregnant wife and 4yo daughter just walked away completely unscathed from a 40mph T-bone collision where the other driver blew a stop sign. Their car was hit so hard it spun around twice. The impact was directly into the driver side, where they were both sitting. By the time I got there barely 5 minutes later my daughter was sitting and joking with the police on scene.

Found out later the VW Atlas essentially has armor plating in the side, which spread the side impact out from the door into the frame. Didn’t know that when we bought it, but we sure bought another one quick.

It does not. VW products probably have the lowest safety of all the German products. BMW probably being the highest.

Watch the president of the NTHSA talk about how his M5 saved his life.

Porsche is the safest of all as it is statistically the least likely to get in an accident by a significant margin (even accounting for per mile driven)

… that being said VW is likely much safer than your average American cost-cutter econobox crossover made of plywood and newspaper.

I don’t know about all that, just that the Audi SUV that tried to kill my family looked like it had been hit by an asteroid, and our Atlas was visibly deformed but otherwise fully intact. The door that took the hit didn’t intrude into the passenger compartment at all. Maybe a BMW would have done better, but that was good enough for me.

On the other hand, the situation is not so great for those outside of a car due to recent cars' increased height and mass. If the person on the receiving end is a 10-year-old biking to school, there's now less of a chance they're going to make it.

My partner occasionally fawns over the idea of buying a vintage Jeep, "just to drive around town, not on the highways". Safety has always been my #1 point of pushback, and when we looked into what can happen even in a low speed accident without modern safety systems, that idea was put to rest pretty quickly.

Driving old cars, especially open top, can be a really fun, joyful activity! Risk manage it like any other high risk activity: plan ahead, pay attention, and be realistic about your ability.

Fair point. There’s a balance to be had!

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