Vehicle Safety: 1959 Chevy crashes into 2009 Chevy

samclem

samclem

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The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety was 50 years old in 2009. As part of their commemoration of the event, they staged an offset crash test between a 1959 Chevy Bel Air and a 2009 Chevy Malibu. If you are a classic car fan, you might not want to watch this video of the crash demonstration. They have many different camera angles covering the crash, including camera in the vehicles..

Crash Video

Both cars were going 40 MPH. I was surprised that the cars weighed nearly the same: The Bel Air weighed 3620 lbs and the Malibu weighed 3514 lbs. The Bel Air was 211 inches long and the Malibu was 192 inches--almost 20 inches shorter.

Here are pictures of the driver's section of each vehicle's passenger compartment. They tell the whole story. Also, watch the roof, the steering column, and the glass of the Bel Air in the video.



In the crash test involving the two Chevrolets, the 2009 Malibu's occupant compartment remained intact (above left) while the one in the 1959 Bel Air (right) collapsed
Click to expand...
There's been a lot of progress in the last 50 years. I'll even go so far as to say that government intervention in this one particular narrow area may have been warranted and useful. Or, maybe the market would have produced the same result with enough public demand for improved safety.:)
 
samclem said:
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety was 50 years old in 2009. As part of their commemoration of the event, they staged an offset crash test between a 1959 Chevy Bel Air and a 2009 Chevy Malibu. If you are a classic car fan, you might not want to watch this video of the crash demonstration. They have many different camera angles covering the crash, including camera in the vehicles..

Crash Video

Both cars were going 40 MPH. I was surprised that the cars weighed nearly the same: The Bel Air weighed 3620 lbs and the Malibu weighed 3514 lbs. The Bel Air was 211 inches long and the Malibu was 192 inches--almost 20 inches shorter.

Here are pictures of the driver's section of each vehicle's passenger compartment. They tell the whole story. Also, watch the roof, the steering column, and the glass of the Bel Air in the video.



There's been a lot of progress in the last 50 years. I'll even go so far as to say that government intervention in this one particular narrow area may have been warranted and useful. Or, maybe the market would have produced the same result with enough public demand for improved safety.:)
Click to expand...

You really think there could have been some public demand for improved safety? And even so, it could have been enforced at a lower level than Fed?
 
Compelling video evidence- looks like it is time for another Congressional media circus. Chevrolet obviously needs to recall all these dangerous vehicles. Have they no shame? After all, they have probably known about this since at least 1965. Get their CEO up in front of a subcommittee!
 
Wow! They really "do not make them like they used to".

It's sobering to see one's classic car may simply serve as a crumpled zone for the newer cars. Out with the old. In with the new.

Note to myself: Need to drive the to-be-acquired 2CV in really really back roads of Europe. OMG! It does not have airbags either.
 
samclem said:
. I'll even go so far as to say that government intervention in this one particular narrow area may have been warranted and useful. Or, maybe the market would have produced the same result with enough public demand for improved safety.:)
Click to expand...

Khan said:
You really think there could have been some public demand for improved safety? And even so, it could have been enforced at a lower level than Fed?
Click to expand...
I think we would have gotten some safty improvements - it always surprises me that Americans wear bike helmets - but I don't think you would see anything approaching the changes regulation imposed. Haiti vs Chile shows the same thing about building codes for earthquakes.
 
The results are not at all surprising after all the wrecks I've seen. I remember when air bags first came out and being astonished at seeing people walk away from wrecks that "should" have been fatal.

That's why, when we were picking options for DW's car, at the time the only way to get the side-impact air bags was to also buy the package with leather seats. She didn't want the leather seats, thinking they'd be too hot in the summer. My response: "It's going to have leather seats. What color leather seats do you want?"

PS. She found she didn't mind the leather seats. Now she wants heated leather seats.
 
My '55 Bel Air would have done better/worse.

Worse because it was a 2-door HT (not a sedan like the '59 in the video), plus most of the front end (at least around the headlights) was Bondo.

Better of course, it did have one of those new-fangled "air bags". My GF (later to be my DW) :whistle: ...
 
RonBoyd said:
Yeah, I mentioned this last August when discussing the inadvisability of hanging on to a vehicle extra long for LBYM reasons.

http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f27/dr-thomas-stanleys-new-book-46424-2.html - Post #30.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I actually think about this issue from time to time when I'm driving my '91 Mazda 626. It has no air bags and it's way before the side impact standards came out. But it does get about 20% better gas mileage than my daily driver Mazda 626 with air bags/side impact protection. It costs practically nothing to license (or even insure). You pays yer money... :(
 
One of the things that stand out to me is all the dirt or rust that is in the old car... you can see it in a few shots... but at the 1:00 mark, look at the bottom of the front door when it hits and separates... LOTS of stuff coming out...

Something else I saw... the hood of the old car did not fold... it was just lifted up... in this crash it went above the other car, but I could see that in a different crash that it might be able to come INTO the window of the new car and hit the driver in the head...


Another interesting thing that I had read was the car manufacturers had to strengthen the occupancy cage after airbags were common... seems that it was 'weak'... that people would survive the crash, but have their legs broken or even amputated in the crash... they said previously it was not a problem as the occupants were dead... so who cared if they also have a broken leg or missing foot..

Yes.... the newer cars are a lot safer than the old... I hope the keep improving.
 
Texas Proud said:
Something else I saw... the hood of the old car did not fold... it was just lifted up... in this crash it went above the other car, but I could see that in a different crash that it might be able to come INTO the window of the new car and hit the driver in the head...
Click to expand...

Yes, the hood has received a lot of attention on modern cars for the reasons you state--they frequently would slice through the passenger compartment in the old days. Almost all modern cars have special hooks that engage the rear of the hood (and often the front, too) to keep it in place as the engine compartment collapses. In addition, they have specially weakened points in the bracing on the underside of the hood to provide locations for the hood to fold neatly, you can usually see these when you open the hood.
 
Koolau said:
Yeah, I actually think about this issue from time to time when I'm driving my '91 Mazda 626. It has no air bags and it's way before the side impact standards came out. But it does get about 20% better gas mileage than my daily driver Mazda 626 with air bags/side impact protection. It costs practically nothing to license (or even insure). You pays yer money... :(
Click to expand...
My impression of air bags is that they just accelerate/intensify the effects of putting your hands in front of your face before the collision... and help you break your nose even faster than you otherwise would have.

They also keep my passenger spouse from putting her feet up on the dash like she used to in the "good ol' days".

I know airbags save the lives of people who aren't wearing seatbelts. (Much to Darwin's disgust.) But is there a credible study verifying that airbags save the lives of people who are already wearing seatbelts in a car with a modern passenger compartment?
 
samclem said:
I'll even go so far as to say that government intervention in this one particular narrow area may have been warranted and useful. Or, maybe the market would have produced the same result with enough public demand for improved safety.:)
Click to expand...

It may be more controversial, but I think that cafe and emission regulations also helped drive the market in a good direction.

Emissions of modern cars is dramatically lower than the old smokers, but getting from there to here was expensive and troublesome. Remember how awful late 70s cars were? Low horsepower, rough running. Yuck. It just wasn't possible to go from carburetors to electronic fuel injection in one step, and I doubt that it would have ever happened unless forced by the government.

1971 President Richard Nixon signed the National Air Quality Control Act, which called for a 90 percent reduction in automobile emissions by 1975. The act also tightened air-pollution controls and fines in other industries.
From: Emission Control Milestones In Auto History

Other more recent improvements driven by the cafe standards include the new, efficient, 6 speed automatic transmissions with lockup torque converters.
 
When the IIHS video first came out, there was a lot of hashing and rehashing of it on the internet. No doubt that a modern car would protect it's driver better than most/all cars of 50 years ago.

But a 1959 Chevy had a big handicap. For model years 1958 through 1964, Chevy used a poor idea called the "X Frame". I lived in a Chevy neighborhood then, and for all the 55-56-and 57 Chevys, it's like Chevy was non-existent from 1958 through 1964. There was one '58 and one '59 Chevy. That's it. People changed to other cars instead.

One look under one of them, and you sure wouldn't want to get even tapped in the side. Without a true "proper" frame, front collision probably suffered too.

Google "X frame chevy". From xframechevy.com, here's a pic from the front end, this one's from a convertible, which has more reinforcing than a non-convert would have.

1959%20Convertible%20x%20frame%202.jpg
 
samclem said:
There's been a lot of progress in the last 50 years. I'll even go so far as to say that government intervention in this one particular narrow area may have been warranted and useful. Or, maybe the market would have produced the same result with enough public demand for improved safety.:)
Click to expand...

IndependentlyPoor said:
It may be more controversial, but I think that cafe and emission regulations also helped drive the market in a good direction.
Click to expand...

Thread's getting a bit stale, but I thought I should chime in since I'm normally pretty vocal about stupid govt interventions.

I agree that the govt got it 'right enough' when it comes to vehicle emissions and safety. I totally disagree with CAFE standards - there are far more efficient and effective ways to achieve.... ummm, what exactly were CAFE standards meant to achieve?

Emissions come under the "Tragedy of the Commons" scenario, so I do think regulation was required, or else things would have had to have gotten so bad for so many before a significant number would take any significant action. And one non-player can wipe out the good done by 1,000 others. I suppose the mob could stone them.

Not sure if there is a term like that to apply to the safety issue - I think the root cause is similar, one buyer does not have enough influence to create demand for what is good for all. Plus, safety isn't so transparent, and isn't a 'wow' factor on the sales floor. You can't really run numbers when people's lives are part of the equation, other than a comparative ($1M in costs for policy A saves 100 lives, but $1M in policy B saves 10 lives, so clearly we should choose A).

I'm sure things could have been done better, but I don't see that these programs are over-run with obvious, gross inefficiencies like so many govt programs, so I'm relatively satisfied (wow, that sure sets the bar low ;)).

I wonder if the govt had concentrated on transparency and awareness for safety, if the market would have demanded it and mfg would have responded, w/o specific regulations? I think a big % of Volvo sales were on the perception of safety. I dunno.

And in case anyone thinks I'm flip-flopping about govt intervention, let me be clear. I'm all in favor of govt intervention, when it is the best available method to achieve a commonly agreed upon goal, and when it does it with some reasonably efficient/effective process.

-ERD50
 
donheff said:
I think we would have gotten some safty improvements - it always surprises me that Americans wear bike helmets - but I don't think you would see anything approaching the changes regulation imposed. Haiti vs Chile shows the same thing about building codes for earthquakes.
Click to expand...

A bike helmet saved my life twice. I could tell by how deformed the helmet was after the accident.
If you don't wear one now, I suggest you start.
 
ERD50 said:
I totally disagree with CAFE standards - there are far more efficient and effective ways to achieve.... ummm, what exactly were CAFE standards meant to achieve?
-ERD50
Click to expand...
Wow! Great post!

CAFE standards were certainly a mixed bag. They forced downsizing, and so everybody started buying SUVs (which were considered light trucks and exempt). Oops.

Please elaborate on the more efficient and effective ways to achieve whatever CAFE was supposed to do. I am not being snarky here, and I am no big fan of CAFE. Twenty or thirty years later we have the advantage of seeing how things turned out, and discussing how things could have been done better seems worthwhile.
 
IndependentlyPoor said:
Please elaborate on the more efficient and effective ways to achieve whatever CAFE was supposed to do.
Click to expand...

I'd be glad to (probably should be a new thread, or a link to an old one), but first, you have to tell me what it was supposed to do. And I don't mean symptom-wise (like the self-described 'increase the average mpg of the defined fleet'), I mean root-cause level. What was the goal? The first step in solving any problem is defining the problem.

-ERD50
 
IndependentlyPoor said:
This is from the NHTSA site
CAFE | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA) | U.S. Department of Transportation
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) First enacted by Congress in 1975, the purpose of CAFE is to reduce energy consumption by increasing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks.

​
So how did it work? Was it a good government intervention or a dumb one? Some good and some bad? What have we learned from trying it?
Click to expand...


The purpose you quoted is what I thought it was... reduce energy usage...

If you only look at that.... then I would say it was a success... the average distance a car or truck can go on a gallon of gas is a lot more than before... everything else being equal...

And they have done it with the engines producing more power and less pollution...
 
IndependentlyPoor said:
This is from the NHTSA site
CAFE | National Highway Traffic Safety Administration(NHTSA) | U.S. Department of Transportation

Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) First enacted by Congress in 1975, the purpose of CAFE is to reduce energy consumption by increasing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks.

​
So how did it work? Was it a good government intervention or a dumb one? Some good and some bad? What have we learned from trying it?
Click to expand...

I've started a new thread on this, it is a bit off topic from safety...

http://www.early-retirement.org/for...rds-effective-efficient-49582.html#post922757



Texas Proud said:
The purpose you quoted is what I thought it was... reduce energy usage...

If you only look at that.... then I would say it was a success... the average distance a car or truck can go on a gallon of gas is a lot more than before... everything else being equal...

And they have done it with the engines producing more power and less pollution...
Click to expand...

I have a little higher standard for 'success' - to me 'successful' means that they obtained results using reasonably good methods (I'm not expecting perfection, or anything close to it). IOW, I was not 'successful' if I lowered my heating bill by spending $5,000 for a furnace with a few incremental % points of efficiency, if I could have achieved that same savings with $500 of insulation. But in each case I was 'successful' in lowering my heating bill.

-ERD50
 
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