Last September, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) celebrated their 50th Anniversary with such a bang that we think this “news” is worth revisiting.At an event celebrating the contributions of auto insurers to the progress of improvements in highway safety, a crash test was conducted with a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. The crash event helped demonstrate how car crashworthiness has evolved since 1959.
Robert P. Hartwig, PhD, the President of the Insurance Information Institute, gave the keynote speech at this event. In his speech, he provided interesting statistics to help explain the progress of highway safety over the past 50 years. Dr. Hartwig said “there were 6 percent fewer highway deaths in 2008 than in 1960 despite the fact that last year [2008] there were nearly three times as many licensed drivers, four times as many cars and ten times as many miles driven than in 1960.” Read more about the event.
To see how much better the 2009
Yes, and unfortunately, it also needs to be revisited for a very stupid reason - if you read blogs and message boards surrounding this test, there are way too many dumb people out there who think the test was 'rigged' or 'faked', that the car was 'rusty', had 'no engine', God-knows-what-else conspiracy theory. The test did not turn out the way they thought it should, so it could not possibly be real. And these ignorant people will still insist that the old cars are somehow safer. Just take a look at comments on various message boards.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should go back to wooden teeth and drilling holes in our heads instead of taking aspirin, too.
ReplyDelete