By BILL HEINMILLER
Los Alamos
Alan McQuiston raised a very good question in his September 7 article, “Would You Survive A Car Crash From the 1970s vs Today?” There are three answers to that question: Yes, No and Barely. Each one is dependent on factors such as speed, direction and whether the rudimentary safety features in 1970s cars were used or not.
Back then, mostly they were not. And of course, it depends on just what constitutes ‘survival’ to a particular individual. Fortunately, there are very few cars from the 1970s or earlier on the road anymore. And today, nearly all of us fasten the seatbelt instinctively upon entering a car. But sadly, that was not always the case. Not by a long shot.
Car styles evolved from open carriages in the 00s and teens, to boxes in the 20s and 30s, to jelly beans in the 40s. And the 50s? Jet fighters! The advent of jet fighters during the Korean War influenced auto styles throughout the 1950s, with sleek, pointed fronts, tail fins, and taillights resembling jet engine exhausts. These gave the aura of agility and speed, for whatever agility and speed could be obtained from a 250 L6 with 3 on the column. LOL!
IMHO the pinnacle of jet fighter themed automobiles had to be the 1958 Pontiac Bonneville, especially the sky blue convertible. Pointed head trim, windshield as the cockpit canopy, front turn signals resembling air intakes, twin jet exhaust taillights, a dash that resembled a racing car cockpit and side trim that spelled supersonic flight!
Starting in the 1960s, production cars started to generally all look alike, and have ever since with the exception of occasional outliers like the Plymouth Prowler and the Volkswagen Thing.
Alan focused on cars of the 1970s. IMHO, the sleekest, baddest looking production car from the 70s had to be the 71-73 Buick Riveira Boattail. It was one of the few cars where promotional literature focused primarily on rear quarter views. Just looking at it conjures up images of a speedboat race! Would I love to cruise out on the highway in a 58 Bonneville convertible or 72 Boattail today? No! Even in the 1970s, automobiles had evolved little from the 1950s regarding safety and restraint systems, or the lack thereof.
While super cool looking, jet fighters from the 50s wouldn’t cut it today. I would only drive one in the Smiths parking lot. Young people may find this incredible, but even into the 1980s it was not uncommon for front seat passengers to exit the car through the windshield in a crash, and from there proceed on to the morgue. The driver usually wound up mangled around a deformed steering wheel and column. If the passenger did not exit through the windshield, they were launched against a hard steel dashboard and suffered serious injury, frequently fatal. Sometimes the driver was propelled up and over the steering wheel and through the windshield, too. Or their lower torso was propelled under the steering wheel and dragged their head and upper torso across the wheel and column down under with it. Bones break before steering columns and steel dashboards break, so it all tended to be quite messy. Many car crashes were scenes only a vampire could love.
Generally speaking, up until the 1960s cars had no passenger restraints at all. In the 1960s, lap belts appeared but almost no one used them. One had to fish for the ends under the seat and untwist them to connect. In the 1970s, combination lap-and-shoulder belts appeared but they did not retract nor have inertial locks, thus required manual tensioning for each driver. (This was at a time when there was typically one car per family rather than one car per driver in a family.) This made them inconvenient and hence largely unused. The first attempt to enforce seatbelt usage came in 1974 (and ended in 1975) with the seatbelt-ignition interlock. Cars would not start unless the door was opened, occupants seated, seatbelts fastened, and key inserted, all in the right sequence and within the allowed time limits for each step. A bag of groceries or case of soda needed a seatbelt because the system thought they were a passenger. The short life of this system shows how well it was received Seatbelt use was so dismal that passive systems were mandated. First generation semi-passive seatbelts appeared in the 1980s. Think Toyota. A trolly moved the shoulder restraint point on a track across the roof from the B pillar to the A pillar when the door was opened, then traveled back to the B pillar when the door was closed.
This still required the driver to manually latch the lap belt, which few bothered to do for aforementioned reasons. This led to “submarining” under the shoulder belt in a crash, which transferred the point of restraint from the shoulder to the neck. Crashes resulted in spinal neck injuries and sometimes decapitations. A “better” design put the lap and shoulder restraint points on the door instead of the car frame. Think Honda. Once buckled, the seatbelt never had to be unbuckled. When the door was opened, the belt would swing out with the door and with minor inconvenience passengers could step into the restraint system with the inner leg passing under the lap belt, then closing the door so the shoulder and lap restraint points aligned to their proper positions. One exited the car in the normal manner, with the seatbelt again swinging out with the door. The problem was if the door opened in a crash, which happed fairly often, the restraint opened with it and the driver went out the door. LOL!
Young people would laugh at these systems if they saw them. In fact, people of all ages laughed at them back then.
In the 1990s, airbags finally went mainstream, first only in the front and then more numerous throughout the interior. Today we have, as Alan so clearly wrote, integral self-tensioning, inertial-locking 3-point seatbelts with multiple airbags that work together to save lives and prevent serious injuries in a crash. Some seatbelts even auto tension for safety and then slightly de-tension for comfort. There are also other safety features protecting passengers, including side impact bars, roll protection, crumple zones, soft interiors and a host of electronic crash avoidance systems like lane drift warnings left turn warnings and auto braking. But given all this nice engineering and technology, one might wonder where does the rubber really meet the road?
Not that long ago I decided to test this integral restraint system out, curious to see if it really worked. While on the Interstate in heavy traffic, looking right for a gap to change lanes, I did not notice that all the traffic in front had come to a stop. I drove into a stopped vehicle at about 80mph without braking. It was what I call a wake-me-up event! I think the system passed the test.
I was in a Chevrolet Suburban, known for being big and strong. It was and still is built on a frame. The vehicle I hit was a pre-2011 Ford Explorer, also built on a frame (now of unibody construction). But it wasn’t bigness that mattered. The passive restraint systems and the safety design features built into the vehicle that Alan identified worked. It played out like this:
At impact, a sudden feeling of floating in space, of extreme euphoria lasting several seconds, something I had not experienced since college. LOL! I attribute this to either the gas used to inflate the airbag, or to my brain having to re-position itself after being rapidly compressed against the side of my skull.
An unusually long duration sound of crunching metal. This was no doubt the crumple zones doing their job just as Alan described. Both auto bodies and frames, where used, have crumple zones. Unfamiliar white nylon material in my lap and white talcum-like powder all over the interior.
A flashing light on the dash, alerting me the airbag system needed service. About 15 seconds after impact, I unlatched the seatbelt, opened the door, walked over to the occupants of the struck vehicle, helped them out and apologized for ruining their day. Both vehicles were about 1 foot shorter after the collision than before. The Suburban had no damage behind the firewall. The windshield was not cracked or scratched. We were taken to a hospital and soon released with no injuries. I suffered only mild soreness for a few days. So, to answer Alan’s question, would this have been the outcome had the same crash happened in the beautiful and beloved 58 Bonneville or 72 Boattail? No way! My children would have grown up fatherless, and I would have gotten only flowers on all my birthdays.
Aside from safety, there are other reasons to avoid an ancient car, no matter how striking or nostalgic it may be. Looks can deceive. Who wants to return to the days of carburetor fuel systems, mechanical ignition systems, rusted out bodies, 100k engine life, 3k oil life, summer and winter oils, squeaks everywhere, rusted out bodies, no air conditioning, vinyl seats, hand crank windows, rusted out bodies, bias ply tires, drum brakes, AM radio, leaded gasoline, no emissions control, no ABS, rusted out mufflers and rusted out bodies?? Not me! But I do miss the little triangular vent windows. LOL!
In summary, nostalgic cars lack so much in safety features they belong in a show, museum or junkyard, not on the road where lives are trusted to them. Because being in a crash is not under the sole control of any one driver.