[mrmossyone]

Originally Posted by CrawfordGene

Hampstead, I know it's unlikely I'm going to change your mind about free markets. I do see that you aren't worried about a depression. The last one had 25% unemployment, assets wiped out, extreme poverty, well, you know the rest. I'm not willing to risk that. I know you may reply that govt intervention made the Great Depression worse and you know I'll reply that's only the belief of only a minority of economists and we can repeat ourselves again and again. But, I'm still not willing to take the chance.

On to safety. Mrmossy', I think all those statistics are interesting and I'm glad you didn't post more. We agree all things being equal, more mass means more destruction. But, I don't think all things are equal and hopefully there can be safe small vehicles designed. Some are pretty safe now. I guess we'll buy as much mass as we want to if we can afford the fuel. I suggest looking for my father's '56 Lincoln Premiere—it was massive and seemed to be able to go through brick walls, but it kept falling apart because it was built badly. He didn't learn and bought two Thunderbirds in the mid-'60's—they were pretty, but badly made too. Then he went back to GM. He had a Buick around '67 that had a suspension that rocked like a boat on a flat road and made me carsick to drive, something I tried to avoid. He seemed to think all those bad cars were normal. Meanwhile I was buying foreign and spending less on repairs and having more fun driving. Well, that '66 Triumph and the '68 or '69 MGB had little QC, but they were fun, but maybe they were my mistakes. Despite my past life with small cars, I remain uncrushed, though now that I've learned pickups are so unsafe, my time may be up soon.

Gene

One major reason cars with more mass are safer is that they generally have much larger crush zones to dissipate energy release. There is new technology coming on line to help increase the size of crush zones without increasing mass which would be safer in an accident with a car of same or less mass and even help in a wreck with a vehicle with more mass. There is no doubt that everyone would be safer if there were only small cars with very little litlle mass and large crush zones( which is not currently the case with small cars), but your playing with the big boys out there on the road and will continue to do so in the forseeable future. Small cars can be made to be much safer in auto accidents, the technology is there but be prepared to pay a whole lot more for the car.