Roof crush on SUV's has been a huge topic this year, with advocates saying that lives could be saved if only roofs were strenthen on SUV's. Because as of now they are just crushing people to death. /sarcasm off
Take the roof-crush standard. Safety advocates successfully forced the National Highway Traffic Safety Admin. to double the standard. Enormous technical efforts and scientific studies were thrown at this issue, which will end up making vehicles heavier and costlier.
There goes your gas mileage improvements. People just don't understand that safety devices add weight to vehicles, weight makes gas mileage go down. To make vehicles lighter you have to reduce safety devices on vehicles.
But hey, people don't have to worry about that, that is something the vehicle manufacturers have to worry about.
So roof crush will go up, but what are the statistics behind getting the government to mandate stronger roof crush mandates?
Safety advocates argue that rollovers account for only 3% of accidents, but nearly 25% of fatalities, about 10,000 a year.
Yep, only 3% of accidents involve rollovers. Funny, listening to the news you would think every accident has a huge change of rolling over.
But does roof crush really cause all of those 10,000 fatilities?
Yet, when you dive into the details, you find the vast majority of those killed in rollovers were ejected from the vehicle because they were not wearing a seatbelt.
They were not wearing seatbelts.
Why is it that people still don't understand that very basic premises? Seatbelts do save lives, if you wear them.
So now that the auto manufacturers have to increase roof crush how many lives each year will that increase in vehicle weight and decrease in gas mileage save?
NHTSA’s own analysis shows the new roof-crush standard might, maybe, possibly, hopefully save 476 lives a year.
476 lives, just .05% of lives that are lost each year to roof crush.
I wonder, out of those 10,000 lives, how many would be saved if people just buckled up instead?
Posted by Quality Weenie at February 26, 2008 09:02 AM | TrackBackWasn't that roof crush business the reason they stopped makin' convertibles years 'n years ago?
Posted by: Harrison at February 26, 2008 09:15 AMNot that I know of, because almost every auto manufacturer still has convertables for sale.
Posted by: Quality Weenie at February 26, 2008 09:49 AMWhen will they learn that you just can't regulate the stupidity out of some people? No matter how hard you try dumb people will still find away to kill themselves.
Posted by: Navy CPO at February 27, 2008 02:09 PMThere is no logic when it comes to people. They want everything... crush proof, kill proof, fully safe roomy vehicles, that get 100mpg and go 95+mph.
It MUST be easy right? It's just the "evil" car companies who keep us from having the ultimate safe large fast non-polluting car.
Of course if we were smart I know we could exploit this stupidity to make ourselves rich. There should be some idiotic thing we could sell these morons. Heh.
Posted by: Teresa at February 27, 2008 03:40 PMRoof-crush is stupid. If it were real, convertables would have been done years ago.
It's another lefty boogeyman.
OT I drove into work today behind a '68 SS Camaro. The license plate said 68/496. I knew there was a 396. Did not know about a 496. Is this a derivative of the 502 RAT motor?
Beautifull Camaro anyway. Red with white stripes.
Also a convertable.
The dual exhaust was music.