This will hurt Chevrolet Bell Air owners.

[Whitehouse]

But also shows how much road safety improved in the last 50 years

In the 50 years since US insurers organized the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, car crashworthiness has improved. Demonstrating this was a crash test conducted on Sept. 9 between a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air and a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. In a real-world collision similar to this test, occupants of the new model would fare much better than in the vintage Chevy.
"It was night and day, the difference in occupant protection," says Institute president Adrian Lund. “What this test shows is that automakers don't build cars like they used to. They build them better."

.

By today's standards is simpy unbelievable that these cars were ever allowed on the road in this state of unsafety. It looks like the Chevy was made of cardboard!

[One Shot]

Old video. I too was shocked when I first seen it. Everyone thinks those old tanks were soo safe.

[mwilbert]

In recent decades, annual US auto deaths have fallen quite a bit while vehicle miles traveled have increased a lot, and I'm pretty sure it isn't that drivers are better. Safer cars are a big part of that.

This graph only goes back to 1975 or so:

[Hermod]

Old video. I too was shocked when I first seen it. Everyone thinks those old tanks were soo safe.

While cars are being built for safety, the interstate highways, other limited access roads, and divided highways had a lot to do with it as well.

[narnarnar]

This graph only goes back to 1975 or so:

Interesting graph. Tom Vanderbilt's book "Traffic: Why We Drive the way we do and what it says about US" gives 1964 or 1965 as the peak year of automotive deaths in the US. I guess that was the tipping point of what people would accept; Nader was stirring up things as well.

[missn]

But what a shame to crash that beautiful winged monstrosity to prove their point ...

[Rochelle St.]

At least they didnt wreck a nice Mopar like they always do on Mythbusters.

[Whitehouse]

At least they didnt wreck a nice Mopar like they always do on Mythbusters.

Thanks to the likes of Nader & Co. these tests are now mandatory. Why they never were implimented before, let's say in the early Sixties, is mindboggling. Car buyers were sold death machines without blinking the eyes. Take a look at Mercedes. Granted, this is a commercial but it really brings home the milestones that Mercedes set.




This footage is from General Motors themselves. And look at the deformed cars they left behind... Look at the nck movement of the crash test dummies. Instant death or at least a major whiplash.

[pkbroch]

I really don't see where this will hurt current 1959 Bel Air owners. All they do is drive them in perfect weather, up and down Gratiot and Woodward. Drag racing nights on Freedom road in Farmington are long gone.

[Mikeg]

Thanks to the likes of Nader & Co. these tests are now mandatory. Why they never were implimented before, let's say in the early Sixties, is mindboggling. Car buyers were sold death machines without blinking the eyes.........

This footage is from General Motors themselves. And look at the deformed cars they left behind... Look at the nck movement of the crash test dummies. Instant death or at least a major whiplash.

Why don't you educate yourself a little before posting the first thing that passes through your mind as your fingers touch the keyboard? That footage is from crash testing that was performed at UCLA's Institute for Transportation and Traffic Engineering ."UCLA-ITTE" is written all over the cars being tested, which are 10 year old Chrysler products for the most part, not General Motors vehicles. I suspect that the reason the film is labeled "General Motors" is because they funded the crash tests. If the UCLA-ITTE tests were actually performed in 1968, I suspect the reason they were crashing 10 year old cars was to gather baseline data to compare against their newer vehicle designs, which were already incorporating numerous safety features.

However, in your fevered mind, all you can see in the film is "General Motors", "1968" and "deformed cars", and you then type a screed condemning them, when in fact at the time the film was made, the vehicle occupant safety and crash performance of cars on the road was already much better.

I guess it's easy for a lay person to look back in hindsight at the state of the art in vehicle crash performance and occupant safety of 50 years ago as shown in those UCLA tests and jump to the conclusion that the automakers were deliberately building death traps. However, those designs also represented state of the art in the knowledge of human bio-mechanical response as it existed when those vehicles were designed in the mid 1950s..

In order to design safer vehicles with better occupant protection, it was first necessary to have reliable and repeatable data on how various-sized human bodies respond to severe decelerations and impacts. Very little was known about the relationship between injury levels and measurable parameters such as force, deceleration and deformation. The automakers benefited from military aircraft ejection research and also from university research such as that performed at UCLA and also Wayne State University here in Detroit.

Many early studies were performed with human cadavers and also live human volunteers. However, the major improvements in vehicle safety design came in the early 1970's once crash testing could be performed using specially-designed anthropomorphic dummies capable of providing usable force and impact data [[the only data that the crude dummies in the UCLA tests could provide were the visuals that were recorded on film - yes they looked bad, but without repeatable data from re-usable crash test dummies, it was difficult to design vehicle safety systems that could reduce injuries across a wide range of vehicle occupants and crash impact directions.

In the spring of 1971 as a young engineering student in GM's Fisher Body Product Research & Safety Department, I spent six weeks making 2-D kinetic tracings from the high-speed motion camera photography of instrumented crash test dummies undergoing sled-testing for the second-generation seat belt systems and first-generation air bag systems. At that same time the FB PR&S was developing the first motor compartment rail designs that would collapse in a predictable and controlled fashion during a frontal collision, thus absorbing tremendous amounts of energy before it could be transferred to the passengers. At the same time, that department was also working on the 2nd generation design of GM's child safety seat that was first introduced in 1968.

In addition to vehicle occupant protection research, General Motors also was a leader in highway design safety standards. The so-called "New Jersey" concrete safety barrier was designed by GM and tested at the GM Proving Grounds before being installed along highways in New Jersey in 1955, from which it got its name.

[rid0617]

I wonder how much age and stress on bolts come into play with the old Chevy? I'm a firm believer tests and surveys can come out the way the way the person requesting it requests.

I see too many new cars with smashed front ends that have rear ended an older car that has a scratch on the rear bumper. I still prefer real metal to plastic and fiberglass

[Ray1936]

I'll never forget my first new car. It was a 1958 Ford station wagon [[being a camper nut and all that). After the very first winter, the fenders above the headlights rusted out completely. Had a body shop completely rebuild the front part of those fenders that spring and tranded it in for a '59 Ford convertible. The door by the rear-view mirror rusted out immediately.

Fortunately, they build them a lot better now. But those "pre-planned obselencent" cars broke my heart a couple of times.

[narnarnar]

I wonder how much age and stress on bolts come into play with the old Chevy?

I wondered as well if the age of the '59, going through many cold winters & hot summers, metal fatigue, dried out seals, rust, etc, affected its integrity. I doubt that the 2009 Chevy would hold together as well in 2059 as it did in this 2009 footage. Certainly safety now is light years beyond '59 but a better test would have to involve a time machine for more of an apples to apples test.

Still, a really cool video that I've watched & re-watched several times!

[Mikeg]

.......Take a look at Mercedes. Granted, this is a commercial but it really brings home the milestones that Mercedes set.......

Oh yeah, let's "take a look at Mercedes".

Detroiters had a nine-year look at the geniuses who ran Mercedes and we were not impressed. We saw first-hand what Daimler's supposed "merger of equals" did to the once-profitable Chrysler Corporation. Three years into the "merger", 26,000 Chrysler employees no longer had a job. Daimler paid $36 billion to acquire Chrysler in 1998 and in 2007 they had to pay Cerberus $650 million to take Chrysler and associated liabilities off their hands. That's a milestone you don't see very often!

[One Shot]

I don't believe rust or age of metal played a roll in that test. The '59 looked fairly clean for it's age. It would have to be completely rotted to compromise any real strength. Those cars did not have crumple zones. Just solid sub assemblies like fenders doors and radiator supports that would shear off or intrude into the passenger compartment

[56packman]

Look at the cloud of rust-powder that comes from the car at impact--The structure of the body had to be comprimised due to rust.
GM has been crash testing cars since the 1920s, there are films taken at the Milford proving grounds of drivers standing on running boards, steering an out-rigged steering wheel that is connected to the car's steering wheel thru a bicycle chain-sproket system, and hand accelerator controls, they would dive off into a soft pile of something [[cotton?) just before the moment of impact.
Ford began crash testing in 1955, developing a beam inside the doors to absorb side impacts.
One important thing to remember: in 1959 there we a fraction of the number of cars on the roads we have today, and that lessened the opportunities for collisions. Once you were in a collision, different story, new vehicles with crumple zones, air bags and restraints offer much better odds.

[sturge]

I see too many new cars with smashed front ends that have rear ended an older car that has a scratch on the rear bumper. I still prefer real metal to plastic and fiberglass

That's because cars are made to absorb the impact now. The idea is to protect the passengers; not the car.

[One Shot]

Could have well been red southern dirt or just dust period. Still think that a perfect car would t have performed much, if any, better.

[Don K]

That's because cars are made to absorb the impact now. The idea is to protect the passengers; not the car.

Exactly. If I were to have a major crash [[which I've avoided for 41 years now), I'd much rather be in my '09 Mazda6 [[or any modern mid-sized car from any manufacturer) than my '66 Chevy Impala [[my first car), or my dad's '64 Mercury Monterey or '61 Ford Fairlane.