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Comment by jetrink | Hacker News Reader

I understand the point he's making: New cars are much safer than old cars, and the average person is driving a car that is 12 years old, while new cars are bought primarily by the wealthy. However, that seems like a natural consequence of two things that are very good for everyone. First, cars are lasting much longer than they used to, which lowers the lifetime cost of ownership. Second, cars have gotten much safer in the last fifteen years. As long as these trends continue, the safety gap will exist, but I think everyone would still prefer cars keep getting safer and more reliable.

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First, cars are lasting much longer than they used to

I see cars on the road that are barely holding it together and probably wouldn't pass safety (or emissions) inspections if they were required to. The point is, there are other possibilities. First, safety features of older cars don't always work like new. Second, people might be driving old, unsafe, cars because it's all they can afford. Even in a recent trip to Italy, I was talking to someone complaining about this exact thing. This is not good.

I think it's a shame that we can't add new safety features into older cars.

I feel like there's very little engineering reasons why we can't, and it's mostly regulatory hurdles, that removes any economic incentives to do so.

I've recently read an article about what constitutes the right balance of regulations when it comes to aviation safety, and that while regulations have made modern planes extremely safe, overly stringent rules are also preventing planes from adopting modern safety features.

On the flip side, I bought an used 08 Sprinter van over the previous, more reliable generation, mainly for the side airbags. It turned out the one I bought didn't have them.

It was a $120 option, and most buyers opted out. A few years later they were made mandatory.

There are older cars that have the same safety features as new ones but those cars are still expensive. I don’t remember any super novel safety feature that came up in last 10 to 15 years. Especially ones that could be just added to any car. Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.

Besides that older cars are less safe because they are old not because they lack safety features.

That airbag 15 years old might or might not work. You have 300k kilometers driven there will be rust here and there.

Open Pilot essentially created an aftermarket advanced adaptive cruise control that works better than most brands outside of Tesla. They just can't sell it legally as a whole package, so you buy the hardware, but the software is open source.

The difficulty of modifying the body, is mostly a financial decision I think. The body is by-and-large optimized for assembly rather than repair and modifications - that's why body shops charge an arm and a leg.

> Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.

Yep, and I think that's the problem. Cars should be designed in a way that you can make this kind of safety upgrades. There's little technical reason why with a more modular body and platform, the manufacturer can't design a new crumple zone for retrofit, run finite element analysis, and crash test it.

They may need to rethink fundamentally how mass-market cars are made, like using more fasteners instead of welding in the body and frame, or using plastic instead of sheet metal when they are not necessary, like for the body panels.

That old malfunctioning airbags should be able to be replaced easily.

But then it would incentivize the customers to keep their old cars instead of buying new ones.

You either know a lot about designing cars or you know nothing about it.

My guess is you know nothing about it based on malfunctioning airbags that should be possible to be replaced easily.

Airbags are one action components so until they fire up you don’t have certainty. You might check electrical connections or replace them „just in case”. Yes airbags might not be good after 15 years and I don’t think anyone who is driving 15yo car has money or is willing to spend money on replacing them.

I feel like there's very little engineering reasons why we can't...

It's not an engineering problem. One could cut new holes in the front bumper of an old car, add forward-facing radar, tack on a display and a computer to drive it all, et voila! Now you have collision avoidance! Except even in volume, you've probably spent more than the car is worth (labor will be the killer, not hardware), or enough that the person whose economics dictate an older car can't afford the upgrade.

Lane keeping? I don't even want to think about what that retrofit would involve.

I understand your premise, but I think the missing part of the cost function here, especially when it comes to safety, is the price of a human life. The US government has actually quantified it, and I think when we account for that it’s probably worth it. Though where exactly that money would come from is a problem.

Similarly, we know certain preventative medical treatments are costly but save money for the system as a whole when universally applied, yet we still don’t do it.

>Except even in volume, you've probably spent more than the car is worth (labor will be the killer, not hardware), or enough that the person whose economics dictate an older car can't afford the upgrade.

I'm not sure why that needs to be the case. Open Pilot is essentially a working aftermarket kit, but they can't sell the whole kit legally, only the hardware.

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