Originally Posted By: asiancivicmaniac
Ever tried cutting across a four lane freeway in a large city during rush hour with everyone going 55-75 mph and not get hit by one single car?
I did and logically speaking I should have been t-boned on the driver's side in my Honda Civic and have been severely injured or in a better place. But I'm here typing. It's called faith, and nowhere did I say do something that is self-destructive so please don't put words in my mouth. We're talking about small and large cars.
Oh and some people do self destructive things and some of those some live until a ripe old age.
It is not really clear to me if by "It's called faith" you actually mean that you could do something completely dangerous - I am more concerned about the danger to others driving in the "four lane freeway in a large city during rush hour with everyone going 55-75 mph" - with impunity because of your religious belief structure. Do the other drivers have to share yor faith to remain safe? What if they are Presbyterians or Catholics or Buddhists or whoever your faith considers heretics?
Anyhow the whole big car/ small car debate is filled with partial truths. All things being equal, a bigger car will be safer than a small car. The physics of force and inertia and all. But all things are not equal. Design helps. Materials help. Safety features can help. More on that later.
But the conclusion that just because somebody else is driving a big unwieldy boat means that you have to drive something bigger is - of course - insane and leads to improbably stupid things. Like the Escalade.
And to pick up your lane slashing excursion... five years ago I was driving about 70 mph on one of the largest highways in my city. I was passed by a guy in a Smart car doing about 85. I recall thinking "the smart car can do 85?". After an interchange with the largest highway around, a flatbed truck tried to rapidly move across five lanes of traffic to exit at the next exit. He did not see me.
I was sideswiped in the rear quarter, spun around, then T-Boned by the same truck then spun across 3 lanes of traffic and stopped by a concrete median. As I rotated around I remember thinking "if no one in these three lanes hits me with too great a speed differential, I will be okay, but if anyone is coming fast enough to not avoid me I am dead". Maybe that is my version of faith.
Anyhow, as approached the median I was able to regain some minor control of steering such that i backed into the median almost straight backwards while braking, not that braking mattered much, I was just reacting.
Ten seconds after I came to a stop I had my laptop outt and started typing up details for insurance or police reports while they were fresh in mind. I was completely un-harmed.
My car was a late 1980s vintage and weighed about 2,900 pounds. I drive hatchback cars that are under 3000 pounds and under 102 inch or so wheelbase, not because I want to save money on gas but because they handle well. I don't drive enormous trucks, not because I think they are wasteful of gas, but because they feel like couches on wheels and handle about as well. And while I have no real requirement for a work truck - as many do - you would be amazed at how much you can fit into a small car, if it is that most hated of American forms - the hatchback!
So what allowed me to survive unscathed:
Precision German engineering built to take crashes at race speeds.
Very low center of gravity - car much wider and longer than it is tall. (remember everyone's physics lessons above).
Canadian market car from 1989 had no frontal airbag to break my nose, thow my hands off the wheel and obscure my vision, and would have done no good in ths type of crash.
Luck. There was no huge truck doing 70 mph in the lanes I spun across while I spun across them.
Charity. There was a commercial driver in a 24 or 28 foot box truck who saw this happen and pulled in behind me to block any traffic from hitting me where I came to rest.
My car's seats. OEMed for the manufacturer by Recaro. Tons of support and bolstering. I do think that side curtain airbags are a really great safety feature to prevent head on window impact, but I was astonished that despite my head being about 3 inches from the window in normal driving, i never came close to impacting.
Driving position. Legs in position to extend fully while retaining some flex. Arms extended but with a bit of flex. Two hands on the wheel. No elbow out the window, no wrist draped lazily over some steering wheel with GM mush power steering. No sitting two inches away from the wheel. Not tilted and telescoped within an inch of its life.
I was driving a Porsche 944. These things are built like you would not believe.
My first thought was If I was driving that "Smart" car that passed me about 30 seconds before I would be dead. It would have flipped and rolled. I have seen the frame of the Smart car and it is an impressive piece of engineering. But there are limits.
A Chrysler mini van would have flipped. A ford explorer would have flipped. A toyota RAV 4 would have flipped. You might have survived in those cars due to the margins imposed by mass, but they all would have flipped.
But I survived, completely unharmed in a much smaller car.
And something for those of you who actually give flying #@*& about anyone else on the road, the guy who hit me wasn't looking properly, in part because he has been conditioned by all the enormous vehicles on the road.
And my car? While it was written off as a road car, it has been rebuilt as a race car. Try doing that with your Smart Car or Civic or Crown Vic or Explorer or Escalade or whatever.
Ever tried cutting across a four lane freeway in a large city during rush hour with everyone going 55-75 mph and not get hit by one single car?
I did and logically speaking I should have been t-boned on the driver's side in my Honda Civic and have been severely injured or in a better place. But I'm here typing. It's called faith, and nowhere did I say do something that is self-destructive so please don't put words in my mouth. We're talking about small and large cars.
Oh and some people do self destructive things and some of those some live until a ripe old age.
It is not really clear to me if by "It's called faith" you actually mean that you could do something completely dangerous - I am more concerned about the danger to others driving in the "four lane freeway in a large city during rush hour with everyone going 55-75 mph" - with impunity because of your religious belief structure. Do the other drivers have to share yor faith to remain safe? What if they are Presbyterians or Catholics or Buddhists or whoever your faith considers heretics?
Anyhow the whole big car/ small car debate is filled with partial truths. All things being equal, a bigger car will be safer than a small car. The physics of force and inertia and all. But all things are not equal. Design helps. Materials help. Safety features can help. More on that later.
But the conclusion that just because somebody else is driving a big unwieldy boat means that you have to drive something bigger is - of course - insane and leads to improbably stupid things. Like the Escalade.
And to pick up your lane slashing excursion... five years ago I was driving about 70 mph on one of the largest highways in my city. I was passed by a guy in a Smart car doing about 85. I recall thinking "the smart car can do 85?". After an interchange with the largest highway around, a flatbed truck tried to rapidly move across five lanes of traffic to exit at the next exit. He did not see me.
I was sideswiped in the rear quarter, spun around, then T-Boned by the same truck then spun across 3 lanes of traffic and stopped by a concrete median. As I rotated around I remember thinking "if no one in these three lanes hits me with too great a speed differential, I will be okay, but if anyone is coming fast enough to not avoid me I am dead". Maybe that is my version of faith.
Anyhow, as approached the median I was able to regain some minor control of steering such that i backed into the median almost straight backwards while braking, not that braking mattered much, I was just reacting.
Ten seconds after I came to a stop I had my laptop outt and started typing up details for insurance or police reports while they were fresh in mind. I was completely un-harmed.
My car was a late 1980s vintage and weighed about 2,900 pounds. I drive hatchback cars that are under 3000 pounds and under 102 inch or so wheelbase, not because I want to save money on gas but because they handle well. I don't drive enormous trucks, not because I think they are wasteful of gas, but because they feel like couches on wheels and handle about as well. And while I have no real requirement for a work truck - as many do - you would be amazed at how much you can fit into a small car, if it is that most hated of American forms - the hatchback!
So what allowed me to survive unscathed:
Precision German engineering built to take crashes at race speeds.
Very low center of gravity - car much wider and longer than it is tall. (remember everyone's physics lessons above).
Canadian market car from 1989 had no frontal airbag to break my nose, thow my hands off the wheel and obscure my vision, and would have done no good in ths type of crash.
Luck. There was no huge truck doing 70 mph in the lanes I spun across while I spun across them.
Charity. There was a commercial driver in a 24 or 28 foot box truck who saw this happen and pulled in behind me to block any traffic from hitting me where I came to rest.
My car's seats. OEMed for the manufacturer by Recaro. Tons of support and bolstering. I do think that side curtain airbags are a really great safety feature to prevent head on window impact, but I was astonished that despite my head being about 3 inches from the window in normal driving, i never came close to impacting.
Driving position. Legs in position to extend fully while retaining some flex. Arms extended but with a bit of flex. Two hands on the wheel. No elbow out the window, no wrist draped lazily over some steering wheel with GM mush power steering. No sitting two inches away from the wheel. Not tilted and telescoped within an inch of its life.
I was driving a Porsche 944. These things are built like you would not believe.
My first thought was If I was driving that "Smart" car that passed me about 30 seconds before I would be dead. It would have flipped and rolled. I have seen the frame of the Smart car and it is an impressive piece of engineering. But there are limits.
A Chrysler mini van would have flipped. A ford explorer would have flipped. A toyota RAV 4 would have flipped. You might have survived in those cars due to the margins imposed by mass, but they all would have flipped.
But I survived, completely unharmed in a much smaller car.
And something for those of you who actually give flying #@*& about anyone else on the road, the guy who hit me wasn't looking properly, in part because he has been conditioned by all the enormous vehicles on the road.
And my car? While it was written off as a road car, it has been rebuilt as a race car. Try doing that with your Smart Car or Civic or Crown Vic or Explorer or Escalade or whatever.
