Head-On Crash Test of 2009 and 1959 Cars (video) | Hacker News Reader

Head-On Crash Test of 2009 and 1959 Cars (video)

video.consumerreports.org

88 pointsmhb73 comments

Maybe this will finally dispel the myth about older cars being safer in these sorts of collisions because they were built like "tanks".

This doesn't change the fact that I still want a 1969 Chevelle SS. :-)

Also, I love the window title "Default Viral Title Player"

Yep, for more info:

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/26/pics-aplenty-iihs-reveals...

The after pictures clearly show why the 1959 car kills you, while the 2009 let's you live.

PS: "The dummy's head struck the steering wheel rim and hub and then the roof and unpadded metal instrument panel to the left of the steering wheel.... The windshield was completely dislodged from the car and the driver door opened during the crash, both presenting a risk of ejection. In addition, the front bench seat was torn away from the floor on the driver side."

Ouch.... an instant death according to the IIHS. And the '09 Malibu? "A high acceleration was recorded on the left foot, indicating that foot injuries would be possible.

http://www.autoblog.com/2009/09/17/video-iihs-celebrates-50t...

Youtube: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Insurance Institute For Highway Safety." :(

Umm someone needs to explain that you're supposed to let the viral video spread where it will, not send take down notices when it does start to spread.

It would be interesting to see a video of two 1959 cars crashing compared to a video of two 2009 cars crashing. It's nice to have a tank, but if everyone has tanks, maybe I'm not better off.

Still doesn't change the fact that the newer cars absorb the impact before the cockpit. That, and airbags/seatbelts, make the biggest difference. Two newer cars would most likely be unusable after a crash but keep the passengers alive, while two older cars would crash "uniformly".

You're still better off in a tank if you hit a telephone pole or a tree, for instance.

But tank chains are no good for the pavement.

Sure they are, that's why they have rubber pads on the treads.

Do you mean a tank, literally, as in an M1 Abrams? ...otherwise, did you see the video? Crumple zones, passenger cabin intact, airbags, seat belt, etc?

Huh? I took conanite to mean newer cars are "tanks," only in the sense they survive crashes better than old cars. He was saying that it might not be a relative advantage if the other car hitting you is equally impervious. Irresistible force, etc. etc.

My only point was that you are much better off in a modern car striking a telephone pole than you would be in a 1959 car, even if it is true that you are somehow worse off when two modern cars strike each other (although I doubt that also). Nothing about literal tanks intended whatsoever.

Your comment seems to take the exact opposite meaning from what I intended to say, so I must have expressed myself poorly.

I see what you mean now, but there are several threads in this discussion that use "tank" to refer to old cars (i.e. made-out-of-steel rust buckets.)

Here is a compilation of crash tests from sixties. The cars fail catastrophically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siT-SIfOnQw

Some of these are unbelievably bad. I can't even imagine a reasoning why these cars shipped.

Probably for the same reason that seatbelts had delayed adoption by motor companies. Money. Also, I don't think that they knew how to make cars that had different crumple zones.

Yes, money. :(

I guess perhaps I'm mystified why they did the tests in the first place if they weren't going to do anything about them.

For the same reason people are surprised by these videos (I thought they were built like tanks!), presumably people thought "I want to make it safe, I'll build it like a tank".

Maybe there was a general feeling of "if building it like a tank doesn't work, maybe cars just can't be made safe in the event of a crash?"

We are talking a car from 1959 in the original link - before computer modelling, before low tolerance robotic manufacturing and assembly, before fast response electronics for airbags and seatbelt pretensioners, before the data from crash tests could be collected in an automated fashion. We're talking before stereo sound here. The past is a foreign country, we can't judge it by our standards applied to hindsight.

(Apologies if 1959 is within your memory - for me it may as well be the dark ages ;)

Also, cars were meant to carry you from A to B. They shipped because they could do that and make a profit. Survival in the event of an accident is sort of a side benefit.

I think it's unfair to compare cars from 50 years ago against cars today without comparing the behavior of the drivers. Although the cars themselves may be safer, more people may be on the roads and may be driving more recklessly which would lead to a higher number of accidents as well as having the damage be equal.

I remember reading something about a study being done that showed people that cars drove much more dangerously around bikers with helmets than bikers without; if you feel that other cars are safer you may drive more dangerously.

Edit: Here's the study: http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2006/9/11/overtaking110906.html

This is a very valid point and raised very well. It does not deserve these downmods.

Don't forget that in the 1950's it was socially acceptable to tank up on a few highballs, take one for the road, and get on your merry way.

There has been so much more safety education in the last 30 years. It's bound to have rubbed off a bit.

why? this feels like a red herring fallacy.

we're talking about the technology and quality of the cars across time as it relates to safety.

you pull in people as drivers and it fundamentally changes what we're talking about. more examples:

"I think it's unfair to compare cars from 50 years ago against cars today without comparing the state of modern traffic laws and speed limits"

"I think it's unfair to compare cars from 50 years ago against cars today without comparing the quality and ubiquity of roads, highways and interstates"

etc.

My general point was that although cars are safer than before, we still need to look at the system they are a part of which affects safety. I don't want people to make the conclusion that it's safer driving now than before - that may or may not be the case.

Well... it is:

http://www.roadandtravel.com/safetyandsecurity/highwayfatali...

Note that nationwide statistics are not available that far back, but consider this report from Washington State:

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/planning/wtp/datalibrary/Safety/MVFa...

But that hasn't necessarily come from car safety although I'm sure that's a large contributor.

It can also be attributed to better education, more cracking down on drunk drivers, etc.

I think it's unfair to compare cars from 50 years ago against cars today without comparing the behavior of the drivers, improvement of safety education, improved laws, better police enforcement, etc..

see what i did there? ;)

I believe it's a fair question. Assume for discussion that there is a higher rate of auto injuries per year today than 50 years ago. Ok, is that due to the cars being less safe, the drivers being less safe, or something else? This video isolates one possible cause (the cars), tests it, and determines that they are safer today than 50 years ago. Clearly, if today's cars are safer, the cause of the injuries must lie elsewhere (drivers, roads, some external factor, etc).

I love this comment. It gets to the heart of a scientific inquiry. Many experiments are just like this. You try to control for as many variables as you can, then you test variations on the remaining variables. Observing the effects you can start to see how the two are correlated, which would be impossible to isolate from real-world data.

Of course, the post is not necessarily applicable to the real world because the original assumption may be incorrect.

Ideally you would be able to carry out such an experiment but as troystribling mentions it's possible that an increase in the safety of cars may lead people to drive more dangerously. It's hard to isolate this correlation.

An experiment may be to show that holding everything else constant, a car from 2009 would lead to 50% fewer serious accidents. If we look at the data and notice that there were only 25% fewer accidents, we would then conclude that it may have come from the factors mentioned.

This is the 'Peltzman Effect' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltzman_effect

"The Peltzman effect arises when people adjust their behavior to a regulation in ways that counteract the intended effect of the regulation. So, for example, when the government passes a seatbelt law, some drivers may respond by driving less safely"

How about we look at actual data?

http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-fatal57+.htm http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

Total highway fatalities (in the US) have gone down since their peak in the 70s. This despite the fact that the population of the US has grown tremendously and the total vehicle-miles driven has grown even more so. The number of fatalities per vehicle mile has dropped by nearly a factor of 5 since 50 years ago (and has fallen 20% in the last decade alone).

If people are driving more dangerously, the data surely doesn't show it.

I'd like to see some comparisons of active safety (the ability to avoid crashes and retain control in adverse conditions). I suspect the improvements in handling and braking in the average car since 1959 aren't nearly so dramatic. Aside from the SUV craze, the average front-wheel-drive[0] family sedan built today feels like it wants to fall off the road every time it encounters a corner.

I have to wonder why the average car buyer doesn't seem to notice or care. I suspect most adults have, at some point in their lives driven a car with decent handling and braking.

[0] Front-wheel-drive alone is not to blame for this; I've driven FWD cars that did not feel like that.

You think ABS, traction control, and power steering and brakes haven't made things better than '59?

I said "not nearly no dramatic", not that things aren't better now.

A quick search suggests that the 1959 Bel Air had power brakes and that power steering was at least optional. I'm not sure power steering is standard on all low-end cars at this point. It wasn't a few years ago.

ABS and traction control are effective in some situations for mitigating the effects of driver error, but often get in the way of the corrections a skill driver is attempting to make. Additionally, they don't actually create any more traction, so they don't actually raise the limits of what the car can handle. Sure, the average car is better off with them, but getting the weight balance, suspension tuning and brake balance right matters more. A limited-slip differential is another big improvement that's been well-known for a long time, but is still rare on popular cars.

My '94 Nissan Sentra had standard power steering. I'd be surprised to hear about a popular car made within the last 10 years that didn't have both ABS and power steering standard.

I distinctly recall driving a late '90s Saturn that didn't have power steering. According to the owner, who bought it new, it came that way and wasn't broken. As far as I can tell, power steering and brakes were relatively common 50 years ago though not as ubiquitous as they are now.

Saturns must really suck if Nissan's entry-level car had standard power steering almost 10 years before they did.

Don't agree. I don't know if you have actually driven any of the boats of the 60-80s but they handle very very badly even if they are rwd. I am talking about large old fashioned american cars, like ford crown victorias chevy caprices, etc. They have very bad steering response shake like crazy on the slightest turn tires squeel with slightest provocation etc. Those cars were built to drive in a straight line.

I think any modern fwd sedan will do better. For example I used to drive a 90s crown victoria and then switched to a later model ford contour. The contour handled sooo much better even if it was fwd.

I have driven some of those old boats, and they do handle very poorly, but not really worse than a lot of truck-based SUVs today. Looking outside of the US where large boats never caught on, the improvement in active safety appears even smaller.

I came to the opposite conclusion regarding '90s Crown Victorias vs. Contours, however every Crown Victoria I've driven was a sport or police model with stiffer suspension than normal. Comparing to my grandmother's Buick Roadmaster, I'll agree with you.

Again, I'm not saying modern cars aren't better. I'm saying the difference in active safety is not as big as the difference in passive safety, and I'm wondering why that is. Today's best handling cars are much better than the best cars of decades ago, but the average isn't nearly so improved.

What isn't clear to me is, do safer cars translate into fewer traffic injuries and deaths?

I recall reading an economics paper that indicated that safer cars encouraged more reckless driving and the two competing factors canceled each other out; as cars got safer, the number of accidents increased until the number of deaths and injuries returned to their prior levels.

I wonder if we all still drove 1959 cars would we be using cell phones while driving?

Not directly, no. Since 1959 cars are going faster, there is more of them, and the bar for driving one is lower because of ubiquity and social expectation. So it's about the same.

Just more cars, and more people driving them, so we see more crashes. I'd say the percentages don't matter as much because of how many more cars and roads there are. Even if they'd be marginally lower -- you still get many, many more crashes and injuries.

There is an interesting table at http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourCar...

"Highway safety then and now"

Registered vehicles: 1959 - 71.5 million 2008 - 255 million

Miles driven: 1959 - 700 billion 2008 - 2.9 trillion

Fatalities: 1959 - 37,910 2008 - 37,261

A 75% reduction in fatalities per million-miles-driven in 50 years. That's very good to see.

Thank you for bringing in the numbers.

I wonder how much improvement there has been between more recent models of cars. I doubt that there are many people driving the 1959 Chevy Bel Air on today's highways, but there are probably plenty of people driving cars that were built in 1999. I'd be interested to see how much of a difference in safety there is between similar car models from '99 and '09.

I think the major passive safety features of this decade are better crumple zones and side-impact airbags. IIRC Euro NCAP made their crash tests much tougher recently to adapt to the improved safety across the board.

Actually, I suspect the bigger effect is driver and passenger airbags becoming standard.

I think that happened in the 90s. :)

I like the rust cloud from the 59. Makes you wonder what kind of shape the car was in before they prettied it up to crash.

I drive 2 old aircooled volkswagens in the summer and am just about ready to give up the hobby because of this. I don't like the extra amount of risk the hobby puts on my life.

According to the senior VP of the crash institute, the cloud was dirt from the 50 year old car, not rust.

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/more-details-abou...

The choice of camera angles seems biased. Most of the shots showed the driver's side of the old car where the impact is and only the passenger side of the new car.

I'm not disputing their overall conclusion, but it'd be fairer to start with overhead angles and show equal time on both sides.

They show the same camera angles for both, and an overhead shot of the impact. Both cars impact on the same (driver's) side. The most important two shots in this are the interior shots, and the left-hand door. On the Bel Air, you can see the passenger compartment get crushed -- the steering wheel crushes the occupant against the seat, the door is more-or-less ripped off, and the roof crumples inwards.

On the modern car, it does what it's designed to do -- the steering wheel stays put, and the passenger compartment forms a solid cage around the occupants.

one of the comments links on another site about this crash test links to this page:

http://www.carcraft.com/junkyardcrawl/ccrp_0910_x_framed_che...

There's a bit of a hint why this particular model came of so bad.

more info on the car:

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/ask-the-best-and-brightest-...

You'd think that after 40 years of automobile safety innovation we could do better than this. In reality there shouldn't even be a scratch on the Malibu let alone even a remote possibility of injury to the passengers.

You ever take a physics class? There are extreme forces involved in a collision like this. The acceleration numbers alone are astounding. I'd say this is pretty darn good for 40 years of safety innovation driven by consumers who would rather pay for 1000 HP engines than safety belts.

Conservation of energy hasn't changed in 40 years. The force of the impact has to go somewhere, and consumers don't want to pay for a Titanium car. The driver looked like he was in pretty good condition.

Maybe in 40 more years...

If the car didn't have a scratch (ie. the energy wasn't dissipated by the crumple zones), a lot more of the impact would be felt by the passengers.

What's the point of having a car without a scratch of the driver is turned to jelly...

This is true even with roll cages in race cars. You'd think you want the strongest metal available, but that's not right. They actually use a softer steel so the cage deforms a on impact.

The guy who welded mine said the shock from an impact to a titanium cage would effectively shatter your body. He was far from a doctor, but it made sense.

You're better off if the front end of the car dramatically collapses during an accident. It may destroy the car, but the more force absorbed by the crumpling, the less is delivered to the passenger.

Proper protection in a car crash means two things: you must be safe from being crushed directly, and deceleration must be slow enough to keep you from internal organs injuries and injures to your neck. The first is taken care by firm safety cage of the car, and the controlled crumpling/deformation of the front of the car slows down the crash taking care of the second case. More time = less deceleration = less stress on your body.

Sturdy cage only is not enough—you would not want to be dropped from sixth floor in metal safe, would you? The safe itself may survive the impact "without a scratch", but that would not help you much…

When two cars are going 40mph there is an immense amount of kinetic energy. That kinetic energy has to go somewhere in order for those cars to stop. It can go into the frame of the car, it can go into the passengers, and it will into heat and noise. But it has to go somewhere. Until they build cars out of space Nerf they found on a passing comet we can choose to have the car crumble and absorb the impact or have the passengers absorb it.

I think what codyhilton was trying to say (correct me here) is that the 'no scratch on the car + no remote possibility of injury' claim is about accident prevention, not dealing with the actual impact. As the five or so replies show, safety innovation is seen in terms of 'what to do when you hit something or something hits you.' But wouldn't true innovation also look at how avoid getting into that tight spot in the first place?

Some car manufacturers clearly have been working on this. Better lights (showing dangers ahead), improved handling and braking (to avoid hitting stuff), and more innovative things like radar-based warning sounds if the car things you're about to change lanes and hit someone (the one in the BMW 5 series still has some issues, but it's not bad), or automated braking systems like the ones Mercedes-Benz and Volvo are promoting.

Those systems are still in their infancy. But safety innovation is definitely going in the direction of accident prevention. We have done a lot to protect the fragile human body inside the metal cage by cleverly absorbing impacts through deformation zones, airbags, etc. The next big step will be figuring out how to avoid needing to rely on them. One suggestion has been that the regulatory battle will be the hardest challenge: once you take some level of control out of a driver's hands, litigation issues and complicated fault assignment rear their ugly head. And of course, many drivers will dislike the idea of being babied by a 'nanny car' and refuse to give up any level of control over their vehicles, not unlike (tortured analogy ahead) low-level programmers who insist in coding to the bare metal.

Imagine you built a wooden box just big enough to hold an egg. Drop it on the floor from 5-6 feet; the box will likely be fine, but the egg won't.

This is the sort of attitude that kills people. Years ago I saw on a Seattle news station an "investigative" story about how easy some cars to damage.

As part of their "investigation" they took a bunch of SUVs and backed them into poles (something they claim was easy to do by accident). They then asserted that the big dents in the bumpers were a sign of shoddy engineering and cheap products. Even being a young middle school whipper snapper I knew bullshit when I saw it.

This sort of thing saves your life.

Most of those investigations deal with the fact that many 8 and 5 mile an hour bumpers (meaning they shouldn't break under lower impacts) end up shattering at maybe 2mph and cost thousands of dollars to fix -- implying that the manufactuers are engineering them that way on purpose to sell replacement bumpers or that they are no effectively engineering the bumpers to meet the specifications.

Up next, a 1950s computer vs an iPhone, a TV from 1950 vs a modern day TV, what else can we compare? Everything! Technology has progressed, how about that!

Besides the omg look at the crash shock factor, what does this tell us? The only thing I get out of it, is to be reminded that we should rely on the insurance industry's crash tests, not the government's. The insurance industry is much tougher on cars.

It's a common belief that old "solid" cars are safer than their light, flimsy modern counterparts. This test dispels that belief fairly dramatically.

Some readers on Jalopnik's site said that the cars actually weigh very similarly. So "lighter" is only perceived.

Well, that would explain the disappointing improvement in average fuel economy.

Is it really that common?

Mostly among the 40 and up crowd, I think. I'm not sure I know anyone younger than me who believed that (I'm 36).

I'm 28 and my primary inclination was to think that newer vehicles crumple while older cars do not, leading to more internal injuries for passengers of older vehicles and more vehicle damage of newer vehicles. However it appears that the older vehicles lose on both fronts.

I don't know and can't provide anything but anecdotal evidence, but I do get the sense that "they don't make 'em like they used to" (== those old cars were solid) is the prevailing belief when I talk to people my dad's age (50+).

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