2009 Chevy Malibu vs 1959 Bel Air Crash Test | Consumer Reports

Modern car design saves lives. Cars in the 1950's had stiff, thick plates and it didn't do them much good. Have a look at the excellent 2009 vs 1959 car crash test video: [VIDEO]

The death rate per miles driven in the United States has fallen dramatically in my lifetime, and I can remember when the annual number of deaths was much higher.[1] That said, the article makes a very interesting claim about attitudes that we should all follow to the end of the article for further discussion here: "There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sober, chances are you’ll never be charged with any crime, much less manslaughter." My wife bike-commutes year-round (yes, even in Minnesota), and as I mention this among Facebook friends, other friends who are also bike commuters point out that car drivers can basically kill bicyclists in the United States with no legal penalty at all. That's not a good social environment for getting more people out for exercise and energy conservation by substituting bicycling for driving cars. The history reported in this article is very interesting. There are a lot of contemporary photographs of changing American cities. The quotations from experts provide perspective on the visuals: "'If a kid is hit in a street in 2014, I think our first reaction would be to ask, "What parent is so neglectful that they let their child play in the street?,"' says Norton. "'In 1914, it was pretty much the opposite. It was more like, "What evil bastard would drive their speeding car where a kid might be playing?" That tells us how much our outlook on the public street has changed." Indeed. Are we

A 1957 Ford pickup is going to be an absolute deathtrap in an accident. I'm not sure that's a great example. Not quite that exact combo, but you get the idea: [VIDEO]

Estimates of excess deaths due to nuclear, counting chernobyl , are the lowest of any energy technology. This isn't even counting the part where no new nuclear reactor could possibly be as unsafe as Chernobyl or Fukushima in the same way that no modern car could be as unsafe as as a car from the 1960s: [VIDEO]

Somebody should show Uncle Bob this: [VIDEO] My point being: yes, if we'd be perfect drivers at all times and in all weather conditions there would be no more accidents. Luckily for us auto designers haven't adopted this perspective :)

And that's actually rational behavior. It's also a very simple and very materialistic explanation of why humankind evolves, bit by bit. It works the same way even for discovering new medicine or any kind of technology. The new thing must be at least a bit better than the old thing. Over time those improvements compound and you end up with this: [VIDEO]

I think it easy to lose sight of the big picture. Things are constantly improving, even if the road is winding. People just forget some of the horrors of the past. We used to have VB/VBA, now we have Javascript. We used to have Ada, now we have Rust. C++ has evolved. Even C has evolved, in a kind of meta way: C itself hasn't evolved much, but the ecosystem around it has evolved a lot. How common was something like Valgrind back in 1990? Whenever you forget how much we've moved forward, despite occasional setbacks, look at this: [VIDEO] :-)

This video of a crash test between a 2009 Chevy Malibu and 1959 Bel Air is a good illustration of the improvements that have been made in car safety [VIDEO]