As @mms said, the car was actually fairly good, no more unsafe than any of the other cars of the era. If you begin to read Ralph Nader's "unsafe at any speed" you will discover his bias was actually against small, light cars like the corvair, which unfortunately bore the brunt of his assault; Nader preferred large, heavy american cars which he viewed as safer. In the 60's the general public was, and arguably still is unaware of how crash safety mechanics where change in speed over time elapsed helps determine survival ratings in crashes, rather than size and weight alone.
Yup bigger cars don't always = safer. Tell that to people who brought SUV's But I guess he did make car companies think though.
The main benefit of size and weight is in a multi-car crash, where you're basically turning the entire other car(s) into your crumple zone. In a single-vehicle crash, weight is only a benefit if you're heavy enough to break/dislodge whatever you hit before it slows you down too much. That was the main problem when the little bitty cars started hitting our shores; they'd get in accidents and get splattered across the hoods of the older, bigger models. (The most obscene example would have to be the 1964-66 Imperials, the cars so tough they got banned from demolition derbies. From what I've heard, they basically had pickup truck frames, and would crush other passenger cars as though they were insignificant insects. Apparently, the later unibody models are not to be messed with either).
I wouldn't mind putting one on my parents old 96 Civic sedan. In my eyes a Nurburgring sticker makes me think that the owner of the car is a petrolhead.
Yes but that's done purely for the purposes of testing all the components in a single run of the 28km long Green Hell. Manufacturers rarely expect their customers to actually take those cars in question to that track or any other track for that matter.
The advantage is as follows: If a Lotus Elise crashes into a road barrier at high speed the car has a very strong safety cell and a good crumple zone (since it was designed for track use), but if it crashes head on into an MPV that MPV is going to decelerate from 40mph to 20mph in [for example] 0.05 seconds. The Elise on the other hand is going to decelerate from 40mph to -20mph in 0.05 seconds. The crumple zones on both vehicles can work as effectively as possible for the space available, but if one car weighs twice as much as another the G forces inflicted on the smaller vehicle and its passengers are going to hurt. In order to negate this effect you would need a huge very soft crumple zone on the lighter vehicle. But this is not practical. One thing to take into account is that Euro NCAP setup their tests in order to simulate a car crashing into another one of similar size. So at the end of the day if you are going to drive a small sporty vehicle, get it in bright orange paint, learn how to make use of its nimbleness in order to improve chances of avoiding a crash and pay attention to the roads. On another topic, rally cars are cool:
I think self driving cars are a terrible idea. I think they are dangerous, and you should really have a human behind the wheel. because what if the car loses control? you probably wouldn't be able to control it in time. also, remember when hackers got a hold of all the new jeep Cherokees? well I do, and I think self driving cars would be a major target. and my last point, they are inventive cars... but I think the come off as lazy. because if you want to text while going somewhere, take a cab or a train.
I think humans driving cars are a terrible idea. I think they are dangerous, and you should really have a computer behind the wheel. because what if the human loses control? As for the following: Security is an issue. But I think as soon as auto makers get used to having to implement security systems that can't be easily circumvented things will improve greatly. Also there is nothing lazy about reallocating your time, rather than driving you could be working or relaxing. Of course that is up to the human to decide which is best for them at the time. Issues may crop up from time to time but I would expect to see a great reduction in the number of road related incidents and deaths. The #1 threat faced by self driving cars are humans driving cars. Humans often don't follow the rules, Humans do unpredictable things, Humans get drunk, Humans can fall asleep etc. Currently there are no publicly available self driving cars, only cars with driver assists. Tesla's autopilot for example is a driver assist much like radar guided cruise control.
Good luck fixing one of those rolling I pads when it breaks. Good luck getting parts too. I had to buy 5 lugnuts for a customers p85 when I was still a mechanic. The hoops I had to jump thru you wouldn't believe and that was for LUG NUTS. I can change my Cars engine comfortably alone in 6 hours for less than 400 bucks and be back at 40 to 50k miles under the hood. Let's see you source an engine from tesla.
That has more to do with Tesla than self driving cars. I imagine this is the same case for many pioneering vehicles of similar rarity from a manufacturer that didn't exist 10 years ago. Lets not forget this is early days.
If I can't fix it I won't drive it. Self driving cars will be mostly electric. I hope I'm dead before the future arives. Everyone there is a self important douche that needs to be driven by their own cars.
Well, you may get killed by a self driving car(or bus, or truck) before the future arrives. If you can't fix, modify, and drive your own car, how is that any different that taking the bus? Sometimes it seems like self driving cars are only made for those who don't care about cars. Those people who see a car as merely something to get from point A to point B, and nothing else. Those people who never want to actually drive their car, they never want to feel the satisfaction of shifting their car into 1st and pulling away from a stop light faster than the car next to them(in a safe and lawful manner of course), they never want to hear the rising RPM of their car's engine as they accelerate to highway speeds, they never want to feel the satisfaction of fixing their own car. These people simply wish to get into their autonomous computer on wheels and trust a program to carry them to work. Is this where Humanity has come to? We can't even be bothered to drive our own car because we have so many other 'precious' things to do with our time? Such as check Facebook and text each other. You know, people think I am crazy when I say this, but has anyone ever seen Terminator?
You should embrace your skynet overlords But in reality electric cars are really simple. Just check out the DIY electric cars people build (or electric RC cars). Just batteries, speed controller and a motor (with a chassis, steering and brakes etc). Performance upgrades are still possible too. Want to go faster? just add more batteries in series to get more voltage (or higher quality batteries), then if required upgrade speed controller and/or motors to suit. Want more range? Add batteries in parallel. However weight is still a factor ofc so you need to balance the amount of batteries against weight in order to get the best performance. Electric cars also have lots of Torque which can be neat for both towing and acceleration, combine this with the low centre of gravity and you have got yourself a fun vehicle. As for repairs, just cause you haven't put the time into learning how to repair them doesn't mean it can't be done. But you will likely see less mechanical engineers and more electrical engineers in vehicle repair if electric cars start to catch on in the mainstream. There is no reason why you couldn't have a petrol/diesel/LPG or hydrogen self driving car either. Electric =/= Self driving. Two very different technologies, the reason you often see them together though is because the companies making electric cars tend to have more competent software departments. As for taking the bus, a bus goes to preset locations, if where you want to go is not one of those locations then you are SOL. Taxi's are also very expensive per journey. Two different ways of looking at this though, people could own self driving cars that take them to their exact destination or look at what Uber is doing, they are trying to push self driving so they can transition over to it, no drivers = cheaper fares making taxi's an option for travel.
How about instead of full self driving cars lets have just autopilot systems in cars so if you want to drive manually you can,but then it means another system for the automotive technician to fix when it goes wrong but then cars are basically disposable now.
Sometimes those "optional" autopilot systems can derp up rather spectacularly. Read something in a magazine recently about some fancy new car, think it was a more expensive Kia, with some kind of collision-avoidance system. It randomly slammed on the brakes in the middle of the freeway for no apparent reason; fortunately there wasn't much traffic at the time. The only way I'd trust such a system is if switching to manual mode involved physically disconnecting anything with the ability to control the car, and could be done at a moment's notice.
