genejockey 

But no nitpicking when picnicking.

rsbob 

pun intended?

Bob Ross

In 1984 my best friend and post-college housemate -- who was a Corvair aficionado, having already owned/restrored two or three of them -- talked me into buying a 1962 Chevy Greenbrier that he found for $150. Since at the time I was the leader of a post-punk progressive rock band, owning a funky van seemed like it would actually have some practical applications, so I coughed up my money and let him do the restoration.
At least two parts of that "restoration" never got the attention they deserved: The right side cargo doors never quite latched securely, and the front bench seat kept slipping out of its moorings. This led to one of my most memorable driving experiences ever. Taking a left turn at ~35mph, the right side doors suddently both swing wide open. Trying to keep the van centered in the lane by steering with my left hand, I reach back with my right hand to try to grab the swinging open doors. Can't quite reach. So, still steering through this 90° turn, with my foot still on the gas, I stand up and lean farther over towards the open doors...at which point the front bench seat falls into the back of the van! Hilarity ensues.



Ha! I hadn't thought of them in probably 50 years! But when I was ~12 years old my friend Mark and his dad took me to see Joey Chitwood's Tournament Of Thrills at some local outdoor racetrack. They did indeed do some cool jumps and rolls and driving-on-two-wheels tricks...but I also distinctly remember on the way home Mark's dad said "Well, I'm not sure why it's called 'Thrills'."

Maelochs

Yeah, the Chitwood show had nothing on the demolition derby that followed. That same event also featured a "sledgehammer demo derby" where pairs of people with sledgehammers competed to do the most damage to junk cars in a timed event.

There was also racing.




No Corvairs.

big john

Trakhak

A tip I once read for Corvair drivers who had trouble with the light front end tending to lift disconcertingly at high driving speeds: a wing structure positioned correctly under the front of the car pushed the front end down with a force proportional to speed. I wonder whether that's what you see under the front of the car in the picture.

big john

Probably. Here is another one you can see a little better.

big john

I know a lot of race cars and even production cars have air dams on the front to reduce aerodynamic drag. I heard it said that 30% of the aero drag on a car is from the air going under the car. Top fuel dragsters use a front wing to help keep the front end down. They say the rear wing on a dragster exerts 3500 pounds on down force.

A forum member went to the wind tunnel in San Diego, I think, with his team and spent the day working on his TT position and gathered data about everything from shoe covers to building clay wedges on his brake calipers. Interesting stuff, air is.

PeteHski

Air dams on the front are primarily fitted to reduce front aerodynamic lift, rather than drag. For example early Porsche 911s had a lot of front lift (not good for high speed handling). Then they introduced a small front lip, which largely solved the issue. Pretty much all modern cars have some kind of lip at the front to manage lift. A flat, smooth underfloor is also important for drag reduction and you see a lot more attention to this hidden area on modern cars, especially EVs.

big john

Having been an EV tech for 10 years, I have removed and installed the underbody covering on a bunch of cars to access the batteries.

Calsun

Take a look at an old car in wrecking yards and one notices that the passenger side of the windshield often has a hole where someone's head went through. There are broken steering wheels that came apart inside the chest of the driver. The industry was focused 100% on profits until Nader came along and said that deaths and serious injuries were largely the result of bad design. A driver went through a red light and my wife's car was totalled but all she had were some facial burns from the airbag and was held in place by her 3-point seat belt, all of which were mandated by the federal government thanks to Ralph Nader. I bought a new truck to replace my 1989 Toyota which had an airbag for the driver but not for the passenger. I did not want to put a passenger at risk because I was too cheap to buy something safer.

For years the highway engineers blamed drivers and then studies showed that the majority of the time it was bad freeway design that was killing people. I grew up in the Los Angeles area where the first freeways were built and I saw first hand the stupidity of the highway engineers which still exists today. It is compounded by the amount of agression displayed by American drivers that far exceeds that of drivers in Asia, Europe, and Central and South America. I can tell that I am in the USA and how close to a major city by observing how people drive.

Lombard

Well said except that I would disagree that drivers in Europe are less aggressive drivers than here. Remember that there are no speed limits on parts of the Autobahn, just advisories which are not enforceable. When there is an accident, it can be a huge pile up.

big john

NHTSA’s 2021 Estimate of Traffic Deaths Shows 16-Year High

Lombard

This could be for a number of reasons including the fact that the Covid pandemic has made people more irritable, impatient, and hostile. All of these are bad recipe for traffic accidents.

big john

And it could be that no matter how safe you make a car, idiots, morons, and drunks will find a way to hurt themselves and others.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for safer cars but the biggest problem is, and has always been, the loose nut behind the wheel.

And this is heading toward A&S, so I think we should probably cool it.

genejockey 

Oh, my! That's pretty! And still looks purposeful.

Maelochs

We have had somewhere near 32,000--40,000 highway deaths each year since 1950, I think ..... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_...n_U.S._by_year

Fatalities per million miles traveled have dropped fairly steadily from 7.2. Safety laws were passe din 1968 I think (I read it above but don't care enough to check) to be implemented in stages over the next several years. By 1974, we had huge, heavy, ugly 5-mph bumpers. emasculated motors 9smog prevention, not safety) and on the whole a lot more attention paid to safety.

I don't think there was some evil conspiracy not to make safe cars prior to that .... there just wasn't a big push. When kids started getting cars more---after Korea, and around the start of Vietnam---and as the auto industry get really cranking after the Depression and WWII, cars became a lot more common --- look a billions of miles traveled between say, 1946 and 1966. After WWII Every home was supposed to have a car, and often the wife was gifted the old car when the husband got a new one. A growing economy, a growing population, the national highway system, road-access-only suburbs (where homeowners Couldn't walk to the local shops because housing developments were just for houses--shopping was centralized downtown with bedroom communities further out) made owning at least one car a necessity for anyone outside a city.

At that point Detroit was trying to sell more cars, and style was seen as the way to attract buyers. Nobody was talking about safety because people were just thrilled to be getting reliable automobiles.

Even with these supposed "unsafe at any speed" cars, deaths per million miles traveled dropped below 10 in 1946 and kept dropping steadily to 5.39 in 1964, when Ralph Nader joined the debate.

Side penetration beams, crumple zones, air bags .... not so sure these would not have been utilized anyway. Engineers are engineers. Look at auto racing, where (without Nader) drivers started demanding safer cars .... was this because of Ralph Nader? No it was because as speeds increased, fatalities increased, and drivers got sick and tired of seeing their friends die. And most of the safety (and other) advancements in automobiles in the '60s through the '80s or so first developed and proven in racing.

Nothing against Ralph Nader, but I am not sure he can claim responsibility for saving All those lives.

Also, if he had dropped out of the 2000 presidential race, we wouldn't have had Bush the Lesser.

But, whatever. History is what it is, and we see what we want to see. I have no clue. And while I have seen a lot of racing cars---many rear-engined---I have never seen a racing Corvair on track. I guess they all flipped or something ....

Lombard

And the fact that no matter how skilled and careful you are, people make mistakes. That's why they are called accidents and not on-purposes.

big john

Of course, but as a traffic cop said, the number one cause is H.U.A. or head up ass.

Lombard

If you hadn't said, I would've thought HUA stood for hang up a-hole.

big john

I've seen a bumper sticker like that. I rode up next to the lady at a light and told her I liked her bumper sticker and I startled her.

The traffic cop who said that was speaking at a traffic school my ex wife attended after some of her speeding tickets.

DangerousDanR

I have provided medical care on well over 100 motor vehicle crashes in a very rural setting, and 75% of ours were due to alcohol consumption by the operator of the vehicle. I suppose we should count these as the most HUA of all. Many were very aggressive and dangerous. By the way, never saw a single wreck where the toxicology report showed only cannabis.

Maybe 10% were just plain inattentive drivers, like the one who was staring at a waterfall and drove off the road. Another had coffee spill so they looked down to pick it up and pow! Motor cyclist who passed a car signaling for a left turn (the rest of the guys riding said that they saw the turn signal)and they got biffed. A couple of drivers who had been up all night (both playing video games), fell asleep and went off the road. That kind of crap. More HUA folks.

A few due more, maybe 10%, were caused by truly unforeseen slick surfaces, like a freezing rain shower that put an inch of ice on the highway on an above freezing day and over 20 cars in a pile and a DOT sand truck in the ditch. Or a black horse that jumped in front of a car at night.

Then there were a few weird ones, a couple of guys who went into cardiac arrest while driving! Diabetic passed out from low sugar. It does happen. But HUA was the majority by a long ways.

We had mountainous terrain and very poor cell service, so phones didn't figure into the total, but they belong in HUA as well.

As I am writing there is one thing that came to mind. We had a lot of Hispanic people living and working in our district. Under the Clinton administration the ICE folks started collecting people who were not legal residents of the US. The rate of DUI in the Hispanic population dropped like a stone in just a couple of years.

It became socially unacceptable in their community. Citizen, Green Card, what ever. It stopped, and not just among the folks facing deportation for a DUI. So if the punishment for DUI is severe enough, it will go down.

Lombard

Yup. 70-80% of auto fatalities are and have always involved alcohol.

As far as cannabis, I would trust someone on weed behind the wheel long before I would trust someone drunk. While alcohol loosens inhibitions and makes people more careless, someone on weed usually drives extremely carefully, albeit impared.

big john

I drove a tow truck in the L.A. area when I was young. Not an OPG but I did see some of the things people do with cars. If it was an alcohol related crash and the cops were there I wouldn't get the call but if there were no cops involved I might be the one to tow it.

Koyote

About 11 or 12 years ago, my wife and I were injured in a wreck...We were lucky to have survived. The person who hit us told an EMT that she was eating a cheeseburger, had dropped a mustard packet on the floor under the dashboard, and was looking for it when she plowed into us at about 45mph.

I hope it was a really great cheeseburger.