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Politics : The Citizens Manifesto -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (261)	6/21/2005 7:49:24 PM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 492

re: Small light cars are, everything else being equal, less safe, but you don't have to cut out the specific safety features. There are plenty of ways to cut weight other than eliminating bumpers, and adequate suspension, safety glass, side impact beams, ect. Tim, what are those "plenty of ways". I've been waiting for some positive proposals from you, you come up with anything yet? Pick your subject. John

To: TimF who wrote (261)	6/22/2005 12:43:18 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 492

"but you don't have to cut out the specific safety features." Sigh. As a general rule, don't comment about technologies about which you know little about. Several points. 1) Tempered glass isn't less safe than safety glass. It just was developed after the US regulations were in place. When broken, and it is tough to break tempered glass, it shatters into a bunch of pieces with rounded edges. Perfectly safe. 2) The bumpers aren't about safety. They were supposed to be about cost of repairs. The idea was a little bump shouldn't cost hundreds of dollars to repair. But several problems came up. One, the 5 mile an hour limit was strictly arbitrary. And two, when you exceeded the limit, the cost of the repair was a lot higher than it might be otherwise. Three, since the bumpers don't match on many cars, much less SUVs and trucks, their utility is limited. Besides, I don't think anything should be done to protect those who persist in parking by touch... 3) Of course, I said I favored side door guard beams. Nor did I assert those were the only ways to make cars smaller and lighter. I just named some things off the top of my head. FWIW, there are even ways to increase gas mileage without cutting weight. For example, the pollution standards probably need to be revisited. Pollution profiles are different than they were 35 years ago and some controls can probably be changed if not lifted. And that should improve mileage. And sorry, your statement about the European cars is both unwarranted and counterfactual. You obviously have had no experience with the cars being sold into much of Europe. While not exhaustive, I've had personal experience with several models and the opportunity to observe things like ground clearance on many other models. Now true, there are equivalent models of several sold into the US. But they aren't common and even then, at least some of the models ride higher on their suspensions than their European equivalents.