Brian
Everyone has a tendency to glorify the past and assume that everything sucks now.
It’s human nature. But when it comes to car design, older doesn’t mean better.
Some Tumblr users learned this the hard way after posting photos of classic automobiles that had been in wrecks and concluding that they were better made than today’s vehicles.
But an ensuing discussion, as compiled by the r/MurderedByWords subreddit, revealed that this line of thinking is 100% wrong.
It all started with this post.
Pretty impressive, right? That old car is a tank, apparently taking a broadside hit from a newer vehicle and shrugging it off like it was the Hulk.
Other users piled on, complaining about the current state of cars, capitalism, you name it.
But what they’re forgetting is that modern cars crumple for a reason: to protect the people inside. It’s not because they’re shoddily made — they’re doing what they’re designed to do.
User @becausedragonage showed up in the thread to give them a lesson in science.
They went on to give a real-life example.
User @tsrabbits, who said they were an estimator for a major insurance company, chimed in to support modern car design.
And they had some photos to share, which were sobering — to say the least.
It just goes to show that looks aren’t always what they seem. Were older cars “tanks?” In a way, yes, but they were also incredibly dangerous and it’s a good thing that car design has evolved.
And the numbers don’t lie. According to the National Safety Council, the motor-vehicle death rate peaked in 1937 with 30.8 deaths per 100,000 population. The current rate is 12.9 per 100,000, which is a massive improvement of 58 percent.
We’ll give the last word to @becausedragonage:
h/t: Daily Dot