How safe is a classic?

[1300dolly]

I belive that in Germany they have mobile and fixed 'distance cameras' and in New Zealand it is common for a ticket to be issued for 'failing to stop short' if you run up the arse of the car in front.

A lot of crashes that i attend are single car on either motorway or main roads which most drivers would deem to be safe roads, the driver leaves the road fo no apparent reason and if asked how it happened they will say something like 'I dont know the car just suddenly started weaving' or 'the car just left the road'
In other words the driver was either on the phone, changing CD or just simply not 'driving', only one hand loosly holding steering wheel so the slightest twitch from the steering and its already to late to regain control.

[jeroensprint]

This is my safety device. The front has some extra safety zones added later by nature.

[JPB]

I love those things! I owned 144DLs, a very nice 142S and a 164E. Never had a 145 though.
I did have a 245 at one point, an early one with the enormous bumpers and a towbar that proved useful when some guy in a Cortina tried to park in the luggage compartment one wet night.
He was upset because he couldn't manage to get his car unhooked from the towbar. No problem, I told him, slotting the big old thing into D and moving forwards, the Cortina's radiator started to leak profusely when I removed my towbar from the hole that the impact had made in it.

But, put a Volvo 140/240/740/940 against a Smart ForTwo in a head-on and it would be the Smart's occupants who'd be more likely to be able to walk away. Those wee things are amazingly crashworthy and proof that a modern car can be light and strong.

[jeroensprint]

I will find this week a few pictures of a dolomite i bought from a friend 13 years ago. He had a serious accendent with it. Another man was overtaking and hit him. My friend survived but had a 2 year revalidation and has still some pains. There was no footwell anymore and the parcel shelf hit his knees and that was the most serious injury. And he wasn't also not so handsome anymore for a few months but that turned ok again. These pictures show that, you maybe don't wanna know, a Dolomite isn't that safe.

Jeroen Rothman

P.S. did you notice that this is an enviroment friendly Volvo? Look under the front bumper. I can charge it at home and do not have to use petrol.

[tinweevil]

Thing to remember about a smart fortwo is that they are way tougher than the occupants and since they have zero crumple zone 100% of impact energy is transmitted to the occupants. That can easily end up with dead meatbags with no visible damage to them at all.

Say for the sake of illustration a Volvo drives into a wall at 40, the crumple zones slow the passenger cell to 20 at which point the cell stops dead so the occupants hit their seat belts at 20mph. Ouch.
A smart hits the same wall at the same speed, there is no crumple zone so the passengers hit their seat belt at 40mph. That's going to cause enormous internal organ damage.

Hitting a softer object such as another car is more likely:

2 Volvos in a head on at 40 each. The crumple zones slow the passenger cells to 20 mph each at which point the cells stop dead and so the passengers hit their seat belts at 20mph.

A Volvo and a Smart in a head on at 40 each. Now there's only one crumple zone to absorb some energy and it has to absorb the energy of 1.5 cars at 40mph, the smart weighing half what the volvo does. So when the safety cells meet they will have slowed to about 26mph. Now the volvo has twice the kinetic energy of the smart so roughly speaking the smart will stop and then accelerate to 1/4 of its initial speed backwards. End result: volvo doing about 7mph and the smart doing 7mph backwards. The volvo occupants go from 26 to 7 mph so they hit their seat belts at about 19mph. The smart occupants go from 26mph to -7 mph so they hit their seat belts at about 33mph. The safety cell in the smart is probably the tougher of the two yet you are better off in the volvo. Crude and inaccurate in the numbers but not in the principle.

I don't think I'd want a 4-2 because any impact is just so fierce (plus Kens reliability problem reports). This is a shame because from a practical point of view one would be ideal for Mrs Weevil. I don't know about a smart roadster, I hope they have crumple zones and better mechanicals because I'd very much like to own a roadster coupe one day. Both need to get a fair bit cheaper before I need to worry too seriously though.

Our cars are all crumple zone so we'd give the oncoming volvo a nice soft landing. We, as occupants of a crumple zone wouldn't have to worry about what speed we hit our seat belts one little bit.

[DOLLY76]

In the words of John Cleese "It's only...whaffer thin" (In terms of Dolly Pillars)

[JPB]

In the words of John Cleese "It's only...whaffer thin" (In terms of Dolly Pillars)

That was Terry Jones....

[Jod Clark]

It WAS John Cleese who said 'its only waffer thin' as the french waiter serving Terry Jones' Mr Creosote.

[JPB]

You are, of course, correct, I hadn't thought beyond Mr Creosote. I shall go out into the garden and flog myself senseless with a rather rank haddock that was about to be removed to the bin.

[DOLLY76]

It's all good JPB

Given that old cars are not meant to be as asfe as moderns, i'd still have my dolly over a newer car anyway. I'd rather hear metal squeaking then plastic clapping all over the place, oh and A Pillars being the size of an elephant's apendage really only adds blind spots IMHO.

It's a pitty roll cages are (apparently) illegal in on road vehicles in Australia, a roll cage will save your life better than a 5 star crash rating Mr. Plod!

[Lewis]

Only if you're wearing a helmet and have a harness on, though, otherwise the roll cage will kill you when you smash your skull to pieces on it.

Roll cages should only be used in conjunction with the other appropriate safety devices, which is what makes them relatively unsuitable for road use.

[zombeh]

Having hit (and written off) a modern car in my dolly I'd say it all comes down to how they collide, in a half overlap frontal crash like the ones in those videos a dolly is going to come off very badly (strangely enough modern cars are designed to pass the crash tests they're put through) if you only have a very small overlap though the sturdy steel bumper bolted to a nice strong bit of box will not move out of the way and tears through plastic cars quite effectively.

If you have to crash a dolly try and hit whatever it is slowly and with as little as possible of the strongest bit of the car. A side impact in a dolly would probably be about as bad as in my tvr.

[Triumph1300]

At risk of being controversial, classics are like modern cars . They're as safe as the driver.

Modern cars are not as good at involving the driver in what's happening, due to the advances made over the years. My company Jaguar does not get "interesting" until well into 3 figures of speed (on a test track obviously), my brothers BMW is the same.

On the other hand, the Triumphs involve you from the word go, and the fun starts from 30 mph up!

Also, distractions - my company Mondeo last year had not one, but 2 LCD screens to distract the driver. I realised how bad this was when I nearly totalled the thing whilst looking at MP3 track titles scrolling up the screen in the centre of the instruments. Unfortunately, I was on the M1 at the time. I disabled a number of features, for the simple reason that they were a distraction.

Oh yeah, and if I see another driver with I-pod ear pieces in whilst driving!

I must be getting old!

[DOLLY76]

No, your not getting old I completely agree! for little under the cost of an ipod you can buy a cd player to hook it into from Pioneer code: DEH P3000IB.

Some people are just either too tight or too stupid to do the right thing by other road users it seems. Of all the cars I've seen crashed, a '72 Caddilac is bar the worst, a front impact at 40mph will not only kill anyone within the vehicle, but the chassis rails will dislodge from the base of the body and fly off out the bottom...... I'm not a big fan of yank tanks. Yank muscle on the other hand is nice.... but you need to swap out drums for disks and so on.......

Add to that, they still use leaf springs, I believe the british gave up of those in the 1800s Seriously, you brits make amazing cars! I used to have a Mondeo, the one with the full bumper, the lights that looked angry at you and the ovular grille. I could not pick a fault in that car and I am in the process of buying another, perhaps an estate model

[Chris Field]

My son James was unfortunate enough to total his daily driver Pug last week when some eejit in a 3 series coming in the opposite direction turned right.... straight across his path. Nothing James could do about it other than 'adopt the brace position!' It was a National Speed Limit road and speed before hitting the brakes was around 50. The result...



He hit the BMW amidships (wrote that off too) & walked away with airbag / seat belt bruises and a few minor cuts.

What would the result have been if he'd been driving his 'proper car' :



Not sure I like to dwell on the thought for too long (and neither does he)