small car worries?

[tomauto]

Sad but true fact, people dont mind death when it happens slowly, and not publicized.

[Matt Timion]

Originally Posted by Randy

The IIHS has stats on what vehicles tend to kill their drivers (in Status Report 40-3). It's not as simple as bigger=safer. Smaller cars often are safer in real life, probably because drivers are the most important safety feature of any car.

After I got rear-ended in my Accord, I really wanted a Crown Vic something huge like that (I've never felt comfortable in trucks/SUVs, even my F250). But it went away in a few weeks and I was back to liking small cars.

People probably care too little about traffic deaths. It's been five years since the retina-searing horror of almost 3000 dead, but nobody much cares about the daily traffic reports adding up to 200000+ dead since then. We could do a lot to stop it, too... but it's not a big priority. The best way to avoid it is to drive less, and if you do drive carefully... single-vehicle crashes are still the biggest killer.

I've made this exact point to people before and they didn't believe me.

I had a co-worker once tell me that she believed that more people die every year because of plane crashes in America than car accidents in America.

[tomauto]

People just get numb to facts, until it happens directly to them. It happend to my classmates mother, since then, that section of interstate has seen massive changes...now it has a median fence where there previously wasn't one and a driver came careening from the oppposite traveling lane striking them.

[cfg83]

Part of my commute is the 710 south freeway in the morning. I am being passed and surrounded by Semis on the way to the port at Long Beach. If I had a CRX I think I would feel OK, but I don't think I would feel safe in an Insight because I think I would need that little bit more "umph" under the pedal.

I will always prefer small cars, but I remember something I saw one day. An SUV had hit a Nissan 240SX. It had gone over the front drivers wheel and crushed it's way into the driver's side. The cops had covered the victim with a sheet. It was obvious that the SUV's tall bumper was the reason that the person was killed.

I'm sticking with small cars, but my safety is 90% in my hands, and the rest is out of my control.

CarloSW2