1950? Let's draw a more reasonable line - how about 1965?billvon said:In 1950 the cheapest car on the road was the VW Bug (30 hp) - $1280, or $12,290 in today's dollars.
Mostly problematic. All expensive.billvon said:And progressive airbags, vehicle stability systems, precrash systems and better crash standards (as indicated by improving survivability stats) would be a few others
I don't doubt it. 1980 cars built in the US were pretty miserable - they had lost the intrinsic power to the anti-pollution and mileage regs, and hadn't learned to build an engine they could wind up. And the imports were selling on gas mileage - four cylinder engines were more common. That made the imports cheaper to run than what you can buy today, and intrinsically cleaner, of course.billvon said:Average horsepower has gone up 112% (all cars and trucks) since 1980.
But if they want cleaner, cheaper, more efficient trucks, they can't get them. Which was the point.billvon said:People want bigger trucks and now they can get them.
They cost more, per mile. That erodes their purchase price advantage, if any. I used to run late 60s Buicks standard - they got cheap after 100k, and it was pretty easy to get 175k out of them. No such deals on the road now.billvon said:Cars and trucks last far longer today. Back in 1970, vehicles rarely made it past 100,000 miles - their odometers didn't even go above 99,999 miles. Nowadays cars over 100,000 miles are very common, and used cars with 150,000 miles on them get good prices.
And cost more per mile, in terms of median wagebillvon said:Right. So today you have cars that go farther on less gas, and that last longer
They have less, apples to apples - whether accidentally or not. Have a seat in a '69 LeSabre, look around.billvon said:They have MORE crush room (it is designed in, rather than being accidental with 1970's era cars.)
There have been safety improvements in car design, absolutely. But there have also been expensive developments that do not improve my safety or my typical passengers's safety in comparison with earlier built cars I have owned - even reduce it, in some circumstances.
Until you look at their stats. Then you see problems.billvon said:But per the NTSB they save a lot of lives.
The NTSB does not, for example, keep net statistics - they don't, say, track the people whom air bags or ABS brakes have seriously injured or killed, and subtract that number from the ones saved. They don't separate out the seat belt usage crashes from the non-belted crashes when evaluating air bags and ABS brakes and the rest. And so forth.
This kind of fooling around with safety and regulation statistics, in particular, is a central factor in the gun control public discussion. Since the entire issue is safety, the inherent bias in government stats to make their regulations and intrusions look good becomes a focus of suspicion and conflict and opposition.
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