The headline is misleading. Yes, a new luxury car is safer than one from 15 years ago, but both are infinitely safer than a car from the 1970s where seatbelts didn't exist and the crumple zone for the steering wheel column was your chest.
mikestew · 1h ago
Your point stands, but collapsible steering columns and seat belts have been mandated in the U. S. since the late '60s.
At the same time, "luxury"? Even our 20 year old Scion has ABS and air bags. Okay, no lane keeping or collision avoidance, but I've got that on my (granted, top trim) Hyundai.
sheepscreek · 1h ago
That’s a great point - safety has been improving at an incredible pace over the years. The same argument could possibly be made when comparing a vehicle from 1960 with another from 1975. I wonder if some things got lost in translation.
tim333 · 1h ago
Seat belts were compulsory equipment in cars from about 1966.
mattmaroon · 2h ago
“ "Safety today is a luxury," writes Giugiaro. "Those who can afford a new car have a better chance of making it home alive."
Well, on the plus side, today’s luxury car features are tomorrow’s standard ones. I remember getting my first Lexus in 2006 and being wowed by the backup camera, they were new and only in luxury cars. Now every car has one.
It sounds deeply unfair that those with money are safer than those without, but if the benefits really do (for lack of a better phrase) trickle down we’re all better off in the long run.
schneems · 27m ago
Not all auto makers just up and decided backup camera are now a standard feature. Rather: it’s a regulation put in place by Congress. To assume that cars will continue getting the same level of steady safety updates also assumes that the regulatory environment of the next 20 years looks like the last 20 years. As opposed to a regulatory environment that looks like the last 20 months.
dzink · 1h ago
He’s a car designer who designed a lot of famous cars in the past and now he appreciates the focus on safety in modern cars. What I appreciate is that most of the original push for safety was done to market cars to Moms. Including seat belts and other features. Another fun fact is that the safer cars become, the faster they are driven, causing more risks outside of the car than in it. In Bulgaria the newly wealthy really expensive car owners and their children have caused tremendous suffering by wrecking their vehicles into other people at high speed and killing more and more. That included severing a bus this last week, killing a journalist several years ago, and many in between. The world is pulled by the brilliant and dragged by the stupidity of its most arrogant.
FridayoLeary · 36m ago
He's something of a legend, for example he designed the delorean, which had the great safety feature of being very slow.
jetrink · 2h ago
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.
byw · 1h ago
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.
mikestew · 54m ago
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.
ozim · 58m ago
There are oldest cars that have the same safety features 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.
byw · 1h ago
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.
dfxm12 · 2h ago
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.
schappim · 51m ago
In the past, high-end safety always worked its way down. ABS, airbags, and backup cameras all started out as luxuries and became standard. The real question is whether this new wave of sensor-driven safety will do the same, or if the economics of software and subscriptions will freeze the gap in place.
SilverElfin · 2h ago
I don’t know about this. Lots of luxury safety features are standard in budget cars today. Even if not standard, the dealers mostly stock vehicles with safety packages. Hyundais I see come with lane keeping and radar cruise and surround cameras and blind spot monitors and automatic braking and other stuff. These have made driving MUCH safer. For drivers and others.
throwawaylaptop · 1h ago
The point is, those features were available to people buying S classes 15 years ago. So not only were rich people safer for those 15 years, there's still a huge subset of people that even today drive old cheaper cars instead of buying the Hyundai that has it today.
There's probably a 30 year safety difference between rich and poor.
s1artibartfast · 34m ago
So what? Seems like a good thing safety is improving.
mikestew · 1h ago
He rolled his Defender off a cliff. Maybe he was trying to adjust the volume on the radio with the "luxury" touchscreen on his luxury car? (If I could find an easily-linked photo of that dashboard, I'd include it.)
tonyedgecombe · 1h ago
It’s a Land Rover, he is lucky it didn’t burst into flames.
Pedestrians walking around staring at their phones have made the streets less safe for pedestrians, as have drivers staring at their phones.
IMO that phenomenon completely confounds any attempt at assessing real-world vehicle-pedestrian safety against older statistics.
caycep · 1h ago
Such a deference of responsibility. The world and the community should absolutely prioritize pedestrians. The driver operating a 5000 lb dangerous weapon should 100% be the responsible for the consequences.
s1artibartfast · 29m ago
If I walk into someone's kitchen, stick my hand in a blender, and turn it on, should the owner be responsible?
Fault obviously can obviously go both ways. A large portion of pedestrians are drunk, jaywalking on highways and freeways.
lifestyleguru · 2h ago
What's even more dangerous for pedestrian is SUV driver staring at their phone.
CamperBob2 · 2h ago
Exactly. It also doesn't help that cars are harder to see out of these days.
nis0s · 1h ago
How? My car breaks automatically whenever there’s an obstacle behind it or in front of it.
Evidlo · 1h ago
> My car breaks automatically whenever there’s an obstacle behind it or in front of it.
I'm imagining the wheels pop off instantly and smoke comes out of the engine if anything gets near it.
nis0s · 41m ago
It’s called forward collision avoidance assist (a safety feature).
There’s another safety feature for reversing which stops your car in its place when there’s a car passing behind you, for example as you’re exiting a driveway.
Coupled with pre-collision throttle management, it provides exactly the experience I am describing—the car comes to a stop.
Granted, I don’t speed, so maybe that’s why it’s easier for these features to manage the car in these cases.
You’re right, more pedestrian deaths are occurring year over year, but I think that’s more due to lack of safety features.
The number of car sales seems to be going down, but pedestrian deaths are increasing. Seems to imply more cars are not the issue, but less safe cars are the issue.
This is why it always make me so mad about people who cry about how big vehicles are getting and why can’t we have the tiny thin dangerous vehicles from like 30 years ago instead.
Shut up. You’re just standing in the way of progress. Vehicles have to be bigger in order to be safer and more deformable, and they’re even safer for pedestrians. If they take up too much space on a road, build bigger roads. You cannot miniaturize automotive safety.
lifestyleguru · 18m ago
> Vehicles have to be bigger in order to be safer
I'm not a specialist but I'm pretty certain that's not why cars are getting bigger and bigger. "I'll pick this X5/Land Rover SUV so it deforms easier when I hit a pedestrian" thought no one ever.
BLKNSLVR · 16m ago
No sure if sarcasm...
throwaway22032 · 2h ago
Well, new things are generally more expensive than second hand and retrofitting older things is more expensive than doing nothing.
So, water is wet.
I would also argue that it isn’t necessarily true in the strictest way of thinking, because personally if I had infinite money and technicians to maintain things I’d have 70s-90s sports cars before everything got massive and wide and heavy. That’s way more expensive and luxurious than a new Model 3 or something.
lifestyleguru · 2h ago
"I'm a rich asshole and even when I almost kill myself that I'll remind you I'm rich and you are poor"
At the same time, "luxury"? Even our 20 year old Scion has ABS and air bags. Okay, no lane keeping or collision avoidance, but I've got that on my (granted, top trim) Hyundai.
Well, on the plus side, today’s luxury car features are tomorrow’s standard ones. I remember getting my first Lexus in 2006 and being wowed by the backup camera, they were new and only in luxury cars. Now every car has one.
It sounds deeply unfair that those with money are safer than those without, but if the benefits really do (for lack of a better phrase) trickle down we’re all better off in the long run.
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.
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.
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.
It was a $120 option, and most buyers opted out. A few years later they were made mandatory.
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.
[1] https://jlr.scene7.com/is/image/jlr/L663_23MY_014_US?wid=480...
[2] https://jlr.scene7.com/is/image/jlr/L663_23MY_025_US?wid=480...
this sounds like a cautionary tale of why octogenarians should have their license revoked.
However...first one works, but I get "access denied" for [1] and [2] (and I have no idea if you control that or not).
perhaps if the "modern" car wasn't such a shitshow the accident wouldn't have happened in the first place
https://www.corriere.it/cronache/25_luglio_11/vivian-spohr-a...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/lufthansa-ceo-wife-...
IMO that phenomenon completely confounds any attempt at assessing real-world vehicle-pedestrian safety against older statistics.
Fault obviously can obviously go both ways. A large portion of pedestrians are drunk, jaywalking on highways and freeways.
I'm imagining the wheels pop off instantly and smoke comes out of the engine if anything gets near it.
There’s another safety feature for reversing which stops your car in its place when there’s a car passing behind you, for example as you’re exiting a driveway.
Coupled with pre-collision throttle management, it provides exactly the experience I am describing—the car comes to a stop.
Granted, I don’t speed, so maybe that’s why it’s easier for these features to manage the car in these cases.
https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-forward...
Read more here https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/advice/vehicles-with-the...
"First off, the vitriol against large vehicles is misplaced. The larger the vehicle, the safer for its occupants".
https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?si=mNyPrDr1hUGF_AGy&t=56
"American roads are deadliest than ever for pedestrians, cyclists, and, most of all, motorcyclists".
https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?si=BGaDhmefTKCr8cAL&t=96
The number of car sales seems to be going down, but pedestrian deaths are increasing. Seems to imply more cars are not the issue, but less safe cars are the issue.
https://www.consumershield.com/articles/how-many-cars-us
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA
Shut up. You’re just standing in the way of progress. Vehicles have to be bigger in order to be safer and more deformable, and they’re even safer for pedestrians. If they take up too much space on a road, build bigger roads. You cannot miniaturize automotive safety.
I'm not a specialist but I'm pretty certain that's not why cars are getting bigger and bigger. "I'll pick this X5/Land Rover SUV so it deforms easier when I hit a pedestrian" thought no one ever.
So, water is wet.
I would also argue that it isn’t necessarily true in the strictest way of thinking, because personally if I had infinite money and technicians to maintain things I’d have 70s-90s sports cars before everything got massive and wide and heavy. That’s way more expensive and luxurious than a new Model 3 or something.