For the passenger? Very safe.
For the pedestrians that get hit? Ha! They’re literally death machines. At this point, I’m surprised we’re not putting spikes on the front of the car Mad Max style to ensure the pedestrians’ death.
Ah yes, it’s safety that makes newer cars expensive you see. Not the wireless key-fobs, power seats, built in ipad to replace the perfectly fine knobs and buttons, autonomous driving features…
From what I’ve heard the lack of buttons is actually a cost saving measure, if you put in an infotainment system anyway
yeah i worked at a vehicle manufacturer a while ago as they were expanding into a new market with a budget model, and getting rid of all the non-critical buttons was very high priority for cost. not only do you save on materials directly, you can remodel the entire driving area which means you can redesign the safety features. less shit in the dashboard means less debris that needs to be crash-tested.
Yeah, good buttons are ridiculously expensive
Thank god EU is starting to get involved in the matter.
For now it is only that cars only get a 5 star safety rating when they include buttons for a few things form 2026.
I hope there will be laws that follow after.
Bitch, what?
Pay people more money.
I say YES!
GOLF CARTS FOR EVERYONE !!!
Cheap, light, small, no computer, natural airflow, what else?
I wonder if the donald has a specially designed golf cart with a gas powered engine. I can’t believe that he daily drives an ev
My siblings in sin, American cars and street scapes are dangerous for everyone.
American safety standards have led to an insane game of cat an mouse wherein I need my car to be bigger to keep me safe. But my bigger car is more dangerous to you. So you need a bigger car to protect yourself from my dangerously large car. But now I need a bigger car to protect me from your giant car.
And 30 years later everyone is driving around a 60 thousand dollar crumple zone so tall it can’t see pedestrians over the hood and needs a 6 liter engine just to move.
Same for child seats. Planning on having 3 kids under 10? Better plan on a truck or van with a 3rd row, because somehow, you can’t fit seats 3 small children in the back seat of a family sedan or crossover.
Is it really the safety standards? I thought it was a combination of all the stupid “truck” exceptions and our equally stupid culture where the iamverybadasses choose their 3-ton grocery and kindergarten shuttles out of fear because they want to “win” any collisions.
There’s no one thing. I’m sure everyone is trying to game regulations.
But, I’d wager a Honda Civic is not getting a truck exceptions. Yet a 2025 Honda Civic is 20% wider and 25% longer than a 1978. The weight has gone from 800 kilos to over 1400.
Crumple zones need space to crumple into. Side curtain airbags require bulkier pillars. Impact beams need space making bodies wider. Instead of a sheet metal box on a chassis we have a frame reinforcing the entire cabin. We need room for crushable hood braces and plastic engine shrouds for when we hit pedestrians. It’s all good stuff, but you have to buy an inch or two for this, an inch or two for that…
Eventually a 2025 Honda Civic is both longer and wider than a 1990 Toyota Hilux pickup.
This
I agree with you that this has happened, but it is far from the only reason that vehicles have increased in price. Now almost every vehicle comes with power windows, power locks, power mirrors, at least one if not multiple built in tv screens, wireless locks and keyless ignitions. Not to mention alot of manufacturers building in computer hardware/software to track user information and installing propietary parts/hardware/software designed to keep your local mechanic from doing repair work and forcing you to use dealership mechanics at 3-4 times the cost.
All of it is being done because it makes more money. Mark my words, if they repeal safety regulations, it will definitely reduce the safety of our vehicles, but it will have little to no effect impact on prices. I would wager my left nut that auto manufacturers are chomping at the bit to get this deregulation put through so they can reduce their cost of vehicles by increasing the danger of the consumer, but wont reduce the prices by a fraction of what they are “saving,” then will proceed to have record profits while using lobbyists to pay off our crooked politicians.
I noticed the current admin has contempt for anything that benefits the common man, and is looking for financial excuses to remove any “subsidy” type of regulation that could be protecting people from dying for the crime of being poor and/or having weak genes
The really sad thing is your bigger car isn’t even really safer for you. It’s just cheaper for the manufacturers (since they can classify it as a truck which has less strict safety and efficiency regulations) and a danger to others.
Cars can never be too safe. What I want is a car with no computers or telemetry whatsoever. I want a car that is private with how I use it. Like what they were pre 2000s. Just a hunk of metal to go from point A to point B.
As long as you don’t get a touring bike, most motorcycles don’t track you.
cars like that already exist. you can’t afford them.
Besides kit cars or deliberately older designed cars like a Morgan Stanley, what modern cars have no driver tracking? The only one I’m aware of is the Slate EV.
I have a 2012 Nissan Leaf in Australia. It uses the 2G network for all telemetry. Australia just turned off the 3G network.
I think its pretty safe to say the telemetry does not work anymore.
Those cars were absolutely more dangerous than the ones on the road now.
True self-driving cars would be the epitome of safety, because humans are the most common reason for failure in most systems.
Edit: people seem to think I’m endorsing the use of a telescreen… I mean infotainment system, in cars. That’s not what’s happening. Safety technology in cars and spyware in cars are two separate discussions. It’s a fact that vehicles today are safer than they were 20 years ago due in part to advancements in safety technology.
And a fully autonomous vehicle would need all of the sensors and processing to be local, so there’s really no need for the Internet to be involved at all.
I’d 100% trust a purpose built system that can do millions of sensor reading and calculations a second with a full 360° view more than I would a human who can get tired, intoxicated, distracted, or bored. The technology just isn’t there yet.
Do those safety features need extensive geolocation storing data and constantly listening to me and monitoring everything I do and keeping it on record?
No? Then remove the monitoring part. I also don’t care one bit for the infotainment crap.
I never said anything about extensive geolocation, storing data, or constantly listening. What are you on about? Most safety sensors aren’t connected to the infotainment system.
Putting advanced safety technology in a car and putting spyware in a car are two different conversations.
Maybe if American “cars” were actually car sized, they would need a lot less material to be made, and require a less powerful cheaper motor to move all that metal around.
You mean the group of people that are okay with schools being used for target practice thinks cars are too safe?! I am shocked.
If you want cheaper cars, that’s easy: drop the tariffs on Chinese cars and let them flood the market. Now you have cheap cars and your car makers are dead.
Or you can just announce that if the car average price has not dropped by N % by 202x, you will drop the tariff, and see that your local carmaker are perfectly capable of proposing cheaper vehicles.
And in parallel, given you figure people can no longer afford cars due to salary crunch by inflation, you can develop public transportation.
Oh well… except if the whole thing is just an excuse to deregulate for the benefits of your rich and powerful CEO pals and their shareholders…
I’m sure others in the thread are having a tough time embracing that they agree with Crus a little on this.
Stop shoving shot down our throats. That’s what I want to say to car companies.
ZERO computers!
I want MANUAL WINDOWS!
Manual locks.
ZERO SCREENS!!
I drive the last car mass produced with manual windows and manual locks.
It has 150k miles. Runs great.
There is zero tracking agents on it.
It’s just a car.
I was thinking about this the other day. I don’t need a car that goes over 40mph. I could get to work and get home. A literal Model T would do.
We need to look backwards for common sense.
What do you have against electric windows and locks?
When they were first introduced, they we optional and choosing them cost extra. Over the years they were integrated into all models and everyone had to suddenly pay extra. Zero choice.
To be fair, that’s exactly how economies of scale and market demand works. Given the preferences of most customers, it probably costs more to make it manual than electric today.
I just want cars to stop spying on me, just because I sit in the passenger seat does not mean I give permission to track and sell data about me
To be fair, you really shouldn’t be driving from the passenger seat
Tbh, it would be kind of nice if sensors weren’t put in easily damaged areas of cars. They’re part of why bumpers and tailgates are so much more expensive. I wonder if cars could have all the safety features using a couple little LIDAR and camera packages instead of chips on every piece of plastic.
My question is, why does the sensor cost so much? 🤔
Well you take a 30¢ sensor and put a GM part number on it and magically poof it costs $300.
Yep I’ve recently learned that a crushed bumper can total a car, there’s thousands of dollars of electronics in there somehow, it’s insane. I miss that car.
Clearly not the onion. My right wing father (not Republican because we are not American and he’s technically a monarquist) complains that cars are too expensive due to the mandatory security features. Features that he has on his fully equipped Porsche because he wants to be safe, obviously.
as someone from the country where porsche is native and where it owns their own political party… owning a porsche is one of the clearest signs one can send that they are a massive asshole lol
That’s true in other countries too. Or a bmw.
bmw is like every fourth car here. you can joke they come without turn signals but its just a run of the mill car brand for all kinds of people
only a certain kind of personality gets a porsche
That tracks in America too, but a better example here is pickup trucks.
Pay them enough bribe money and they will do just that (aka: lobbyist money), no joke. 😕
