zlacker

"Regulation" also gave us things like a rapid reduction of deaths in cars (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...) and airliners (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#/media/File:Fa...), and it's hardly illegal to start a Google competitor.

"Competition" isn't a cure-all any more than "regulation" is. Google got big because they competed well with the alternatives at the time.

>>ceejay+(OP)
And yet, we're static in that most of our crash tests are done the same way they have for years. They haven't started testing cars crashing at 60+ miles per hour. So while these regulations are great, it's also competition that's caused us to get better safety in some ways.

Long story short, we need both, but we also need to figure out how to keep regulations moving forward instead of stagnating.

>>bargl+32
Is "survive a 60mph crash" really the best goal?

We've made cars quite safe in this regard; I suspect there's more wiggle room to drop deaths with crash avoidance at this point. Backup cameras (now mandated by regulation), pedestrian detection, automatic breaking, lane change warnings, etc.

>>bargl+32
>And yet, we're static in that most of our crash tests are done the same way they have for years

Exactly.

Modern cars are optimized for "the tests" occasionally to the point of absurdity. As in certain systems get de-tuned (so to speak) so they are completely and totally used up at whatever the max test speed is because that's what makes the car look best in the benchmarks.

If we modernized the tests high speed crashes would be more survivable and low speed crashes would be less costly.

It's not all government's fault though. Society has a very unhealthy relationship with risk. If you make a quip about how crumple zones shouldn't be tuned to activate in parking lot collisions you are instantly inundated with idiots that don't understand that a stiff neck in a 10mph hit could be what makes a 60mph hit survivable at all.

>>throwa+J3
> If you make a quip about how crumple zones shouldn't be tuned to activate in parking lot collisions you are instantly inundated with idiots that don't understand that a stiff neck in a 10mph hit could be what makes a 60mph hit survivable at all.

Or they're pedestrians who don't want to be cut in half in a parking lot. Car-on-car isn't the only thing in consideration here.

>>ceejay+n4
A crumple zone capable of affecting the deceleration of a 3000+lb car while complying with bumper strength requirements (though today's standards are much relaxed from those decades ago) isn't going to protect a sack of meat from a car. The bulbous front end plastics that take up a lot of space without much underlying structure, flimsty upper radiator core support and thin easily bent hoods are where the pedestrian safety comes from.

>>ceejay+C3
I was being brief, I completely agree this needs to be a data driven approach.

>>ceejay+n4
As you alluded to in the other comment, these would be safety factors not regarding the structure of the car (which should be focused on decelerating the car) but instead on mechanisms that alert the driver / automatically stop the car when it is going to hit a pedestrian.