How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for? • Hacker News Board

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#261

Post by Marsymars » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

globular-toast wrote: post #161

jbay808 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the "let's defect in a prisoner's dilemma" strategy that works great until others use it too.

It is not the prisoner's dilemma at all. If everyone gets big cars then everyone is equally as safe. They don't all die. For crying out loud, people, I know it's stupid, I know it's wrong, but it's the truth. It's an uncomfortable truth that your downvoting will not change.

> It is not the prisoner's dilemma at all. If everyone gets big cars then everyone is equally as safe.

All the pedestrians and cyclists they mow down are less safe though.

And everything becomes more polluted, which is presumably also not equally safe.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#262

Post by baxtr » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #80

baxtr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what happens if you compare driving to other activities, by stretching them out to the 3-4 trillion miles - but in time and then compare death rates. E.g. taking swimming 2hrs per day (maybe equivalent to the 2-3 hrs spent in cars daily). Higher or lower death rates?

Searching for keyword micromort may also help. It's the concept of deaths/unit time spent on something.

Interesting indeed! I’ve heard the same concept called “nano deaths”

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#263

Post by chongli » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #211

henryfjordan wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point isn't that what the water heater designer did was perfectly ethical, just that it's clearly distinct from what VW did.

It's distinct in technical detail, but not in the broken ethics rule against intent to deceive.

I think the ethics are still different. In the case of the water heater, they deceived the test to make their heater seem more efficient than it really was. However, the heater still does its job, it just costs a bit more to run (and emits some extra CO2).

What VW did was to take a clean-burning car and disable the pollution controls under normal driving conditions, for performance reasons. So while to the consumer it seems deceptive that VWs get better performance than they should, given how clean they’re supposed to be, in reality the cars are illegal and spewing toxins they were supposed to be removing from the exhaust. This makes the cars not only a pollution source but a health hazard to people living nearby.

To get on the same level of VW, the water heater would have to be doing something like emitting low levels of carbon monoxide into the home while having a feature that avoids doing that in the laboratory. In other words, reckless and willful disregard for human health and life.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#264

Post by frosted-flakes » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

AgloeDreams wrote: post #239

frosted-flakes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some cases, absolutely. Having to completely disassemble the door to repair a failing lock module is seriously annoying, as is making it impossible to remove the engine mount while the engine is in the car (seriously complicates timing belt changes on VW mk4 cars, because the belt loops around the engine mount). But on the GTI (2009 in my case), they did something rather ingenious: instead of welding the outer doo…

Speaking of timing.. .you got that Timing chain Tensioner replaced right? Mine blew on my 2009 Eos and lunched the motor.

Five years ago! The GTI was my late brother's (now my parents'), and he was on top of that kind of stuff. Of course, we got a recall notice last year for it, way too late. And since we did it ourselves, I don't see that VW would reimburse us for the work.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#265

Post by komali2 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:43 PM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #215

komali2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding motorcycles means I'm often playing the percentages game. When we turn we're sacrificing our finite amount of traction for either more speed or a more aggressive turn. If I lean off the bike, I get some traction back. So how much am I willing to sacrifice in the name of fun, while still leaving wiggle room for suddenly encountering a tar snake or something in the middle of my turn? Little things. Motorcyclists…

I don't ride, but I've always heard to also ride as if every car driver was out to kill you.

Even if unintentionally, yes. Because they can. When exiting a freeway, never let there be a car on your left - cars LOVE to cut across a lane and shoulder, barely missing the barrels, to save having to waste 5 or 10 minutes taking the wrong exit.

What you've said basically is to convince motorcyclists that they're 200% responsible for their own safety. Unlike cars, you just can't trust in the horde.

Which makes riding in places like Vietnam all the more interesting - the horde of 2 wheeled vehicles flows like water. The more you think about it, the more you fail to mesh with it. Better to flow with the rest of them. Very interesting place.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#266

Post by wolfgke » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

"I think it would be surprising if other car makers had a large suite of crash tests they ran that aren't being run by testing agencies, but it's theoretically possible that they do and just didn't include a passenger side small overlap test)."

The fact that Mercedes and BMW are in the category "poor without modifications; good with modifications" (i.e. with some modifications, the cars get from "bad" to "good") rather shows to me that these two car manufacturers do have such test facilities where they do such tests to be prepared for the situation when such test become included.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#267

Post by Marsymars » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

tpmx wrote: post #183

globular-toast wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the prisoner's dilemma at all. If everyone gets big cars then everyone is equally as safe. They don't all die. For crying out loud, people, I know it's stupid, I know it's wrong, but it's the truth. It's an uncomfortable truth that your downvoting will not change.

I think you're on to something. First: there's vehicle-to-barrier crashes (think trees, etc): Having a vehicle with a large well-designed crumple zone seems obviously good from a survivability POV. Second: there's vehicle-to-vehicle crashes: Is it really a zero-sum game? If a small car crashes head on with a large car, will the people in the small car suffer worse than if they crashed into another small car? To what…

> Is it really a zero-sum game? If a small car crashes head on with a large car, will the people in the small car suffer worse than if they crashed into another small car? To what degree?

Well it's zero sum in the linear sense as the relative total velocity change is the same, but crash survivability isn't linear. Rather, it decreases exponentially, since kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity - so a head-on crash between a semi and a compact car subjects the occupants of the compact car to nearly 4x the force that they'd be subjected to if they crashed into another compact car.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#268

Post by Marsymars » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #143

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #31

Does anyone know of a way to objectively compare safety ratings between different eras of cars? The standards for safety ratings change periodically, and great strides have been made in safety. I'm curious how much risk I'd remove by upgrading from a 2010 to a 2015 or 2018. Driver death data [1] mentioned below may be the best source, just curious if there are any others. Also, [2] is a really interesting crash test…

Also worth considering is that anything after 2018 likely has intelligent crash prevention features. In addition to modern cars being much safer in a crash, the benefits of avoiding collisions altogether have to be worth it. I’ve been driving a car with the pre collision warnings, lane departure warnings, etc since 2017 and it has saved me at least once. There’s a concern about moral hazard with the new technologies,…

> Also worth considering is that anything after 2018 likely has intelligent crash prevention features. In addition to modern cars being much safer in a crash, the benefits of avoiding collisions altogether have to be worth it.

I expect they're a net gain for the public, but that for an individual who's conscientious and never drives under the influence, tired, or distracted, that they're only marginally useful at best.

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#269

Post by BurningFrog » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 9:55 PM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #25

laegooose wrote: post #5

The whole car safety topic is very confusing. Car accidents is top1-top2 death reason in US for people in 20-40 age group [1]. Probably less in Europe but still one of the leading ones. I was thinking about how I can make myself safer. Which car brand/model is better? Which seat is better for passenger? How much riskier it is to drive during the night? In the rain? How dangerous is it to overtake on road with 1 lane…

Driving is already incredibly safe. Yes, it's the leading cause of death in those age categories, but there are 3-4 trillion miles driven each year in the USA. That comes out to 1 death every 100 million miles.

My rule is that the phrase "X is the Nth leading cause of death among group Y" is only used to make this seem a lot worse than it is.

Note that this says nothing about how many actually die from X. And what is the Nth leading cause, depends entirely on how you classify causes.

The leading cause of death could be 80% of deaths or 4%. But most people will read probably the phrase as "more than half of deaths".

Re: How well do cars do in crash tests they're not optimized for?

#270

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 10:00 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #233

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Transgender icon J Edgar Hoover Citation please. This is the first time I've ever heard him called that. There was some speculation he was gay but nothing conclusive AFAIK. In any case he's one of the last people anyone should pick as a positive representation of their group.

The cross dressing claims are pervasive but not very substantiated. So we can all believe what we want. I was just trying to be witty when telling a story. Not make any grand statement about anything.

[deleted]