2009 Chevy Malibu vs 1959 Bel Air Crash Test | Consumer Reports
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN uses it as shorthand for how compounding engineering improvements, crumple zones especially, made things safer, applied to analogies well beyond cars.
What it is
A Consumer Reports and IIHS crash test pitting a 2009 Chevy Malibu against a 1959 Bel Air. It shows how much better modern cars protect occupants.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2014 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends pugz · 2014-03 · on “Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year”
Modern car design saves lives. Cars in the 1950's had stiff, thick plates and it didn't do them much good. Have a look at the excellent 2009 vs 1959 car crash test video: [this video]
Cites tokenadult · 2014-03 · on “Why Cars Will Kill 30,000 Americans This Year”
The death rate per miles driven in the United States has fallen dramatically in my lifetime, and I can remember when the annual number of deaths was much higher.[1] That said, the article makes a very interesting claim about attitudes that we should all follow to the end of the article for further discussion here: "There’s an open secret in America: If you want to kill someone, do it with a car. As long as you’re sober, chances are you’ll never be charged with any crime, much less manslaughter." My wife bike-commutes year-round (yes, even in Minnesota), and as I mention this among Facebook friends, other friends who are also bike commuters point out that car drivers can basically kill bicycl
Cites ceejayoz · 2016-11 · on “GoPro shows its vulnerability after horrific Q3 earnings”
A 1957 Ford pickup is going to be an absolute deathtrap in an accident. I'm not sure that's a great example. Not quite that exact combo, but you get the idea: [this video]
Cites saulrh · 2017-06 · on “Coal plants emit more radioactive waste than nuclear plants (2007)”
Estimates of excess deaths due to nuclear, counting chernobyl , are the lowest of any energy technology. This isn't even counting the part where no new nuclear reactor could possibly be as unsafe as Chernobyl or Fukushima in the same way that no modern car could be as unsafe as as a car from the 1960s: [this video]
Cites oblio · 2017-10 · on “Uncle Bob and Silver Bullets”
Somebody should show Uncle Bob this: [this video] My point being: yes, if we'd be perfect drivers at all times and in all weather conditions there would be no more accidents. Luckily for us auto designers haven't adopted this perspective :)
Cites oblio · 2019-08 · on “Why is modern web development so complicated?”
And that's actually rational behavior. It's also a very simple and very materialistic explanation of why humankind evolves, bit by bit. It works the same way even for discovering new medicine or any kind of technology. The new thing must be at least a bit better than the old thing. Over time those improvements compound and you end up with this: [this video]
Cites oblio · 2020-07 · on “How popular media portrays the employability of older software developers”
I think it easy to lose sight of the big picture. Things are constantly improving, even if the road is winding. People just forget some of the horrors of the past. We used to have VB/VBA, now we have Javascript. We used to have Ada, now we have Rust. C++ has evolved. Even C has evolved, in a kind of meta way: C itself hasn't evolved much, but the ecosystem around it has evolved a lot. How common was something like Valgrind back in 1990? Whenever you forget how much we've moved forward, despite occasional setbacks, look at this: [this video] :-)
Cites yissp · 2021-11 · on “Unsafe at Any Speed”
This video of a crash test between a 2009 Chevy Malibu and 1959 Bel Air is a good illustration of the improvements that have been made in car safety [this video]