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Light trucks were almost completely exempted from safety and smog regulations for a long, long time, because when the process was started in the late 1960s, pickups etc. were working vehicles used exclusively for, well, work, and comprised less than 5% of the market. It was considered burdensome to make working users conform to expensive safety and emission standards.
Which is exactly *why* pickups etc. exploded in popularity - they were cheaper and often had some of the best performance (HP) available from any maker. This persisted for decades.
And then they built minivans on the same platforms and to the same soggy safety standards, which is one of the dirty little secrets of that era - sure, pack the whole family and Fido into a vehicle that will crumple like a tin can in a 30mph accident. If you're familiar with the history of the niche, manufacturers crowing about high safety standards considerably lags the actual implementation of those features. That is, they didn't announce that the 1992 model was about ten times safer than earlier models... they waited until 1995 to announce that they had great ratings for three years. They didn't want any kind of alert to the market that they'd sold rolling death traps for several years.
And now trucks are still deficient in many ways, so they lack the more modern safety of most other vehicles and rely on size and a massive frame... which, yes, offers a degree of protection up to 30-40mph and in level collisions, but the lack of other standards means that any higher speed collisions, impacts above about two-three feet and in rollovers have greatly disproportionate injury and fatality rates.
All because pickups were only 5% of the market and used by working folks... not well over 50% and used for family transport. But, you know, freedom.
Lets look at the Insurance Institute figures. They are the ones that keep the facts of Cars vs Pickups vs SUVS using death rates per million miles of travel. This is the latest data with 2017 as the last year figures are complete, and by summer they will have them for 2018 compiled.
It proves Cars are more dangerous and more likely to cause a death in a wreck.
The more significant figure may be that car fatalities have declined by a whopping 50%, while pickup and SUV fatalities are unchanged across quite a a wide timeframe.
This is a discussion very similar to arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin... I failed a statistics course once. The final exam presented all the data on number of flights per year, number of passengers, number of crashes and number of fatalities. The question was, what are your chances of dying in a plane crash?.. I put: Simple 100%-- if the plane crashes, You're gunna die...
There's maximum. There's minimum, and there's optimum. In calculating the mechanics of a crash, heavier and stiffer is better up to the point where compressibility (absorbing kinetic energy) and expulsion of parts (taking away kinetic energy) is compromised. All vehicles can't be all things.
All crashes involve three phases: primary- when vehicle hits whatever; secondary, when occupants fly forward and hit the inside of their own vehicle; and tertiary- when your internal organs fly forward and hit the inside of your chest & abdominal wall and burst like water balloons-- That's what kills you.
Have a nice day
I think I see why you failed the statistics course.
AFAIK the vehicles with lowest death rates are large sedans, full size SUV's do well but pickups are quite high. There is lot of things to consider other than raw stats, Mustangs for example probably have higher fatality rates than a Prius but that doesn't mean the Prius is a safer car. The variable being discussed here is another thing that needs to be considered. In a head on collision the mass of the larger vehicle may offset rigidity when hitting a smaller vehicle. However if they are both driving into a wall it becomes a whole other ballgame.
Conclusion: Do not drive your pick up into a wall at high speed. I will do that. thanks.
Safety is not really about which vehicle you drive, safety is about how you drive. Spend the energy you would put into studying safety statistics into focusing on leaving your cell phone in your glove box and having someone else drive if you drink or are exhausted. Those two things will do far far more to making you safe than choice of vehicle ever will.
Whatever you drive, if you head on into anything at high speed, you are going to die. No car is going to protect you. Better to not have a head on collision with anything at high speeds.
Last edited by Coldjensens; 04-10-2019 at 09:00 AM..
Conclusion: Do not drive your pick up into a wall at high speed. I will do that. thanks.
Exactly!
If the driver has safety in mind, it is likely he/she/it will not have an accident. If you are driving in the Rocky Mountains, and a boulder the size of a Smart-For-Two falls off the mountain and lands on the roof of your car, all the built-in "safety" features are useless. If it lands 25 feet in front of you while you are going 70 MPH, the built-in "safety" features won't do you much good, either.
You can be driving a vehicle that wins high praise from the IIHS, and in the event of some accidents you just might end up dead.
Safety is not really about which vehicle you drive, safety is about how you drive.
I have about 1 million accident free miles under my belt, it's not all due to skill. Doesn't matter how good of driver you are, at some point you will be an accident because you can't control the other idiots on the road.
Quote:
leaving your cell phone in your glove box
I once had this girl on her cell phone blow through a red light, saw her coming so I didn't go on green. About 4 miles later I get to this 4 way stop and she blows through the stop sign to my left.
I was driving my single axle truck once and this was old International with massive bumper and grille. I'm coming down the hill to the light and it turns green, guy in cross traffic talking on his phone pulls right into my lane. There was no way I was going to be able to stop, he turned to look and his eyes got as big as saucers. Fortunately for him there was no opposing traffic and I was able to swerve around him, otherwise he was getting T-boned and probably going to spend a few days in the hospital if not dead.
Unavoidable accidents do occur from time to time, but they are very rare.
Safety does not even require you to be a "good" driver, just pay attention to what you are doing and not to the cute video of kittens your wife texted to you.
If you are looking at kitten videos at 70 MPH no car is going to protect you.
If you look at what they actually test for, it is very specific. Change anything, plat the impact more to one side or the other, change the speed by 5 mph, change the density and rigidity of the object being struck, change the drivers reaction time by a fraction of a second - and the test results will be completely different. While the testing and ratings provide some measure of comparison, they are not very meaningful in real world situations. The odds you are going to be in an unavoidable collision mimicking the exact conditions of the test are minuscule. You probably have better odd of winning the lottery.
the test results compare very specific circumstances and if a vehicle performs better under those specific circumstances, you are expected to assume it will perform better in all circumstances. However in reality, that does not turn out to be the case.
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