If you weren’t fucking murdered from the whiplash of not having any crumple zones absorbing the impact. Then you would surely die of your insurance going absolutely through the roof for driving a fucking car from the '70s and getting into an accident
The car would win but the occupants would suffer more. Your new car is designed to crumple around you to help save you.
It’s not certain that the car will win: https://youtu.be/C_r5UJrxcck
Although I wonder about that since I also saw the results of classic crash tests (in a museum and web site) with 60s Mercedes and Peugeot where the cars were more stiff than nowadays.
Maybe that Cadillac is a special case or these cars have their weak points where they break apart in non classical test settings.
When I was a kid our car had only lap belts, and even those were optional. In the early ‘70s they had the attitude of building street tanks and that mass = safety. Doesn’t matter that the humans inside got tossed around like a hackey sack or to get an aortic dissection when hitting the steering wheel. It wasn’t until the last year of the ‘60’s that a collapsible steering column started being more common. By the late ‘70s they were starting to engineer for actual safety of the occupant. It wasn’t great at all by today’s standards, things like airbags didn’t really show up until the ‘80s, much less all the side curtain ones that are more common today.
Anyway, a modern vehicle is way better safety-wise, the debate would have to be about the speed of collision and the mass of the old car. Even though modern cars are safer, g-forces can be severe and no telling how the old car would crumple.
Heh no.
Cars in the 1970s were made from coffee tins and cardboard.
48 minutes? I totally have time for that while scrolling.
Everyone is concentrating on the crumple zones and safety at the crash. Remember that modern cars have features that make it easier to avoid the crash in the first place. Antilock brakes. Traction control. Lane assist/warning. Better headlamps, adaptive headlamps. Better suspension and handling. All things to avoid crashes.
All good reasons to avoid the 70’s car.
If I got in a collision with a car from the 70s with a car today
Everyone is concentrating on that because that’s what the actual question is about. OP didn’t ask to avoid the collision.
“If so why don’t people buy more 70’s cars?”. IMHO, this is actually the whole point of the OP’s question.
The 70s car might beat the modern car. For the people inside the vehicles, the story is quite different.
Which do you want as a crumple zone: the car or you?
In this economy? Idk man
In the US medical costs would bankrupt you if you don’t have insurance.
Even having insurance is no guarantee.
Yeah but you can survive being half crumpled and your half crumpled car will probably still get you to your 9 to 5… Pretty good outcome!
Damn…
The thing you got to understand is that the energy of the crash has to go somewhere. The same energy will apply to both cars, the modern car will absorb a lot of it by deforming, the old car won’t absorb any in that way because it’s a hard piece of metal. And you have to wonder, what is more important to you, the car chassis or the people inside? You might as well ask “why do we put packing peanuts if nails are a lot tougher” or “why do we ship eggs in weird cardboard boxes if a metal square would be more resilient”
The cylinder must remain unharmed
Here is a fictional scenario, you hit a tree at 30 miles and hour your 2026 Volvo is totaled.
Your dad hits a tree at 30 miles an hour in his 1970 chevy, you replace the windshield and hose it out and you can drive that chevy.
Yeah, but the people in the Volvo get to walk away.
I think that’s implied by “hose it out”: Your dad’s gone, all you can do is wash out the blood.
…
…
…
Oooooh, now I get it.
Walking away is a lot harder than being hosed away
Dad would be proud to see his beloved Chevy live on.
“fictional”. Op is ded
If you’re in an old car with no crumple zones, my intuition says it’s better to hit a modern car because then you also benefit from the other car’s crumple zones. Colliding with another rigid car would basically be like hitting a brick wall. I think the effect on the driver ends up the same in both cases.
If it’s two old cars with rigid bodies colliding, it’s exactly like hitting a brick wall. Even if the car itself is unharmed, the driver isn’t. It’s how quickly you stop that makes the impact dangerous, and in a car like that you stop almost instantly.
On the other hand, when two modern cars collide, there’s 2x the crumple zones, so the impact is the lowest there.
The car from the 70’s survives accidents better because more of it is rigid, but this makes it more dangerous as more of the force of the accident is transferred to the driver.
Modern crumple zones are placed intentionally so that while the car will crumple, the driver will not.
If I have to pick only one, I’m going to go with modern crumple zones
But man, I do wish we had some kind of magical smart metal that could be as rigid as an old car for low speed collisions, but still crumple for more serious impacts.
Because when you drive an old shitbox like I do, pretty much any damage is enough to total it, and having to get a new car really sucks when the accident was minor enough that no one was going to get hurt anyway.
Reverse Newtonian metal sheet. I think that’s doable in my lifetime.
Get EV. Make it do the skateboard design idea where the chassis/drive train is a skateboard under the cabin/cargo body. Delete the bolts that join the halves, replace with bungee cords. Done.
I had a toy car at some point that had plunger bumpers that reversed motor direction on impact.
Your car would receive a lot more damage, but the driver in the older car would be much more hurt than you.
Also, modern vehicles are far more reliable and efficient
If two 70s cars collided, all the energy is transferred to your body since the solid construction of the car wouldn’t dissipate much of it.
The car would win. The driver would lose.
Yes, the 70’s car would “win out”. Its driver, on the other hand would fare much worse than you.
Ideally, people wouldn’t treat possibly fatal transit collisions as a sports game. And also ideally, most people would see the uselessness of looking at which car is less damaged. Realistically, I know neither of those are universal, but I do hope they are common.
Yup. Any impacted component that survives means that the force was transferred to the driver instead.
Modern cars look worse after a collision for a reason: If it collapses/crumples, it means that it absorbed some of the forces applied to it rather than transferring it on.
The amount of energy absorbed by the cars is the same for both drivers. (What makes that car existence a risk to both parties.)
The problem of the old car is that it transmits the extra force to the people inside in some of the worst possible ways.
It’s not the speed that kills you. It’s the rapid deceleration.
