They sure don’t make cars like they used to—but that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, car safety has been a matter of “trial and error” for car manufacturers. Cars are now the safest they have ever been. Over the past few years, improvements in car safety technology have saved thousands of lives.
Did you know that half of fatal car accidents among teen drivers are in cars that are at least 11 years old? While a starter car is a right of passage to many, it’s certainly not the safest option. However, the reasons might surprise you. Find out below the reasons why your car is unsafe.
Why your Old Car is Unsafe:
1. Inaccurate crash test ratings
Believe it or not, car crash test ratings only go so far. When crash tests are performed, the test vehicle is crashed into vehicles of similar size. This makes the crash test ratings accurate for collisions that involve two cars of similar sizes. However, when a small car collides with a vehicle that is significantly larger like a truck or SUV, the ratings don’t really matter. A vehicle with a larger mass will almost always fare better than a small vehicle.
2. No weight sensors
People come in all shapes, sizes, and weights, and our vehicles should account for that. In the past few years, cars have been developed with “smart” airbags designed to sense the driver’s weight. This allows the airbags to deploy at different speeds for each person. Cars are also now are more customizable to each person’s height. These new features especially help keep children and short drivers from experiencing severe neck injuries, and even death from airbags.
3. Outdated Car Safety Ratings
Over the past few years, vehicle safety standards have significantly increased. Keep in mind, all safety ratings for cars are dependent on the vehicle’s year. This means that a five-star rating in 2010 is not that same as a five-star safety rating in 2018.
4. Crash avoidance technology
Anti lock braking technology has only been standardized in U.S. cars since 2013. When you need to brake fast, anti lock brakes help keep you gain control of your car and help keep your car from skidding. Built on top of anti-lock brakes, electronic stability control (ESC) helps keep your vehicle from spinning out. These technologies have been around for over a decade, but they are not standardized in some older cars.
5. Hands free driving
With an unprecedented amount of distracted driving, bluetooth technology is almost essential to operating a vehicle nowadays. Text message notifications, calls, and GPS commands fill our minds with distractions that never used to exist in cars before. Our “on-the-go” lifestyles don’t seem to be going by the wayside, but bluetooth integrated vehicles can help ease distracted driving.
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