Posted on 01/08/2013 7:21:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As we emerge from the long holiday season chasing new resolutions, many of us find ourselves focusing on watching our waistlines and taking off some extra pounds. As more Americans are diagnosed as obese, this renewed attention to health and weight can only be seen as a good thing. But America is also struggling with another weight problem — and what you don’t know about it just might kill you.
During the first term of the Obama administration, much was made of the bailout of the automotive industry. Common belief to the contrary, the U.S. government came to the rescue of all three of the major U.S. auto companies. We all know that GM and Chrysler received billions in federal loans and were forced to go through bankruptcy, but we sometimes fail to recall that Ford received a $5.9 billion low-interest loan from the Department of Energy and has paid back less than $200 million at the time of this writing.
And here’s the part of the deal that got much less attention: the new mandate that all auto manufacturers achieve by 2025 a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE ) standard of 52 miles per gallon — twice the previous requirement of 26 miles per gallon.
At first blush, 52 mpg sounds like a laudable goal. What’s wrong with making more efficient cars? After all, they’ll be more affordable to drive, and simultaneously reduce the nation’s carbon emissions. Talk about a policy twofer!
The problem with the goal is simple: We can get only so far on the mileage front without affecting safety. Allow me, as someone who has spent a lifetime in and around the automotive industry, to explain why.
To get to where the government wants us to be, we start by employing all the engine technology possible to extract every last mile per gallon. This means using direct-injection combustion, variable valve timing, and sophisticated air management that includes more turbo-charging, as well as fine-tuning the engines with the use of sophisticated sensors and algorithms. The industry has done all of that, and today’s engines are impressively efficient.
We next turn to transmissions. These can help save fuel by allowing the engine to run at lower revolutions per minute (rpm). Think of being able to shift gears on a bicycle as you go up or down hills. This helps you get more from each pedal stroke. It is the same for vehicles. Today’s vehicles have progressed far from the original two-gear automatic transmissions; some offer as many as eight gears that automatically maintain engine rpm within a certain range. This has all been done, and the miles per gallon have improved accordingly.
However, all these efforts are not nearly enough to achieve the mandated 52 miles per gallon. So what else can be done? It’s what I call Jenny Craig engineering: reduce car weights, and reduce them massively.
It is a simple matter of physics: It takes less energy to propel a lighter object at a particular speed than a heavier object. You may wonder why so many vehicles suddenly stopped carrying a real spare tire years ago, or why there is so much plastic in vehicles today. Wonder no more: It was for weight reduction.
This is not a new trend; weight-reduction efforts have been ongoing since Jimmy Carter was in office. And they are not aimed just at larger vehicles. The Toyota Prius is slated to shed 500 pounds.
But less weight is a good thing, isn’t it? Well, not always. Why does professional boxing have weight categories that place athletes in competition with others the same size? Why is the NFL so concerned about the head injuries that seem to be happening with more and more frequency as players get bigger and faster?
Because size matters — and we all know it. Take this simple test. Imagine a head-on collision on a two-lane country road at a speed of 40 mph. One of the cars involved is a Cadillac Escalade and the other a Chevy Volt. Which would you want to be in? Which would you want your child in?
In a Cadillac minute, you would choose the Escalade. Because you don’t need to be an automotive engineer to know the big car will crush the small car. The driver in that little car will in all probability be severely injured, maybe killed. You, the driver in the Escalade, may walk away unharmed, or with only minor injuries.
Why? Once again, it’s physics. The force of something heavy and big crashing into something small and light leaves that something much, much smaller.
The same goes for that big heavy vehicle crashing into something stationary, like a wall or a tree. Or something pretty mobile — like a deer — crashing into the vehicle.
Bigger and heavier is simply better when it comes to car crashes, all other things being equal.
We do not have to speculate about the safety ramifications of being in a smaller vehicle; the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) ran a rather expensive series of tests in which it pitted a smaller vehicle against the next size larger vehicle from the same manufacturer. Specifically, they ran a Honda Fit into a Honda Accord, a Toyota Yaris into a Toyota Camry, and a Mercedes C Class into a Smart Fortwo (owned by Mercedes).
Care to guess at the results?
Do you think the smaller cars performed “a little worse”? That would be a gross understatement. In 40 mph offset-collision tests, the small cars were basically obliterated by their larger siblings. Here are the tests. Make sure to watch what happens to the crash dummy in the smaller vehicle.
See why size matters?
The sad truth is that there is only so much magic that you can perform on the safety front by installing air bags and using high-tech materials like carbon fiber and even seat belts that begin to cinch you tighter as they anticipate the crash. The sad truth is that these well-intentioned and well-designed cars can’t defy physics.
There are approximately 42,000 motoring fatalities each year in the United States. That is a large number, and it has remained stubbornly at that level. Why, with all the technological innovations that have occurred in so many key areas, such as electronic stability control, anti-lock brakes, and air bags, have we not reduced those numbers significantly? The major reason, I believe, is the smaller vehicles our government has been pushing in order to support the environmental agenda.
Back in the 1960s, Ralph Nader wrote the book Unsafe at Any Speed, exposing the deficiencies — and sometimes outright negligence — of automakers on the safety front. The book chronicled how the Big Three — GM, Ford, and Chrysler — sacrificed safety for the sake of comfort and style. A full chapter was dedicated to the Chevrolet Corvair, which was retired from production. Ralph Nader became a star.
It’s time for a new Nader to produce the sequel to that book. One that includes the definitive study that reveals the number of Americans who have died because of the push for lighter and more environmentally friendly cars.
With one full chapter that showcases how bigger cars fare against smaller cars in crash tests.
This time, it will be the government bureaucrats and ideologues on the left doing the explaining to an irate American public.
And the apologizing.
— Robert E. Norton is vice president for external affairs at the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and former assistant general counsel at Chrysler.
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There are too many peasants mucking up the Walden paradise the oligarchs deserves. Anything that reduces their number is a good thing, including herding them into containment facilities and gassing them.
Yeah, there is a reason that cars like that get tipped over. I don’t ever recall hearing about a 1972 Ford Grand Torino getting tipped over.
It is also a mind game. Go to any big city and see the size of parking spots. They have purposely narrowed and shortened them to make it hard to park a full size car or truck.
I have a truck and the other day we went somewhere in the wife’s Terrain (I call it a trucklette). I have never had anyone honk at me or display any road rage type behavior when I am in my truck. I guess they thought that since I was in a sissy wagon I was a sheman and I got honked at several times and people were cutting me off and driving overly aggressive. Whether she likes it or not the Mrs gets a bigger SUV next time around.
Try packing up the wife, a couple kids, a dog and some luggage and head out on vacation in a piece of crap like that.
It is simple. Obama and the other anti-American socialists want everyone living in government city housing and riding government subsidized buses and trains. Private vehicles will not be affordable to anyone but the government socialist party elites.
Each year the cars have a small reduction in weight, rather than massive cuts of 10-15%. This is being done to allow older-heavier vehicles to leave the roadways, and replace them with newer lighter ones. If we just cut the weight as much as possible, there would be grave safety implications for the new vehicles, hence the slow 2-5% yearly reductions in weight. Most vehicles are gone within 10-12 years so as the newer vehicles replace them, incrementally over time the lessened weight is less a safety factor; unless your new car is in an accident with a car from 15-20-30 years ago - and even your SUV today will not save you from a mid-sized car from the 70’s.
I certainly agree with Mr Norton that heavier cars are safer
so I bought a Ford F350 Super Duty and put a dump box on it which I have full of gravel because I want to make sure that I am riding a vehicle that has more mass than the guy I collide with. Feel a lot safer this way. Other cars usually get out of the way for me too.
While there is a place for a small, European-style car (it has its advantages in congested city centers like Manhattan, where there is limited parking and few highways), a small car like that is useless and dangerous in the vast majority of this country.
“We can get only so far on the mileage front without affecting safety.”
Exactly.
I did have a 1990 Geo Metro at one point.
It weighed in at a “hefty” 1,967 pounds or thereabouts.
It had as an engine a detuned Yokohama motorcycle racing engine, 3 cylinder one liter [or so. Technically it was .9 or less of a liter.]
Fun car except that it had manual steering.
You see, to squeek 45 miles to the gallon out of the thing they made LOTS of compromises.
The frame was ridiculously light, the engine small, no power steering as that added weight and reduced engine efficiency through parasitic drag on the engine, no ABS as that added weight and coplexity, and the environmental controls were primitive.
How light is too light?
Well, let’s say that the car got ‘stuck’ on ice and I could PUSH IT UP THE HILL past the ice by hand.
It did not have the weight to crawl up a small incline on ice.
A pickup truck could have buzzed up that hill at thirty no problem.
And if we’d been hit in that car, I would NOT be posting right now.
[It had a recall on the head, seems they were prone to cracking. Well, recall work done, they destroyed the engine. Thanks Chevy!]
No one would do that - it's not the intended purpose of that car. It's designed to be an urban commuting vehicle, not a primary car (or, only a primary car for urban dwellers who would otherwise not own a car). I actually know a few people who have cars like that ("smart" cars, fiats, etc.), and they use them almost exclusively for getting around parts of NYC - grocery shopping, to and from work, and so on.
No one would do that - it's not the intended purpose of that car. It's designed to be an urban commuting vehicle, not a primary car (or, only a primary car for urban dwellers who would otherwise not own a car). I actually know a few people who have cars like that ("smart" cars, fiats, etc.), and they use them almost exclusively for getting around parts of NYC - grocery shopping, to and from work, and so on.
I’m not that concerned about safety other than as a relative thing. Heck, I’m a motorcyclist. But when it comes to travel safety, I’m about accident avoidance, not accident survival. And I’ve avoided my fair share and then some.
And a lightweight car is easy to throw around, making accident avoidance a lot easier.
EPA INTERIOR VOLUME 118.8 cu.ft. CURB WEIGHT 3427 lbs. CARGO CAPACITY, ALL SEATS IN PLACE 16.0 cu.ft.
Some of the all wheel drive models are over 4000 pounds!
Do you realize how much damage you just did to that vehicle?!?!?!
I owned the Metro’s predecessor, a 1985 Chevrolet Sprint. It was even lighter (around 1600lb, I think), and would get 48mpg on the freeway. But it struggled with even the slightest grade, and the body was so flimsy that if you jacked up one corner to change a tire you couldn’t open the door on that side of the car.
But because it was so light, it was kinda fun to chuck around on a twisty road. That engine was really sensitive to oiling, though; I went through two of ‘em. One was done in by a clogged oil pump pickup, the other by a valve cover gasket leak. Both engines spun the #3 rod bearing as a result.
BTW, at 1,967lb your Metro comes in around 150 pounds under my ‘91 Miata. And the Miata probably has a stiffer body in spite of being a convertible.
Despite its low mass, the Miata only does about 30mpg on the freeway, maybe 32 if I’m really careful. I suspect it’s because of its low gearing; the engine turns 3500rpm at 65mph.
“I’m not that concerned about safety other than as a relative thing. Heck, I’m a motorcyclist. But when it comes to travel safety, I’m about accident avoidance, not accident survival. And I’ve avoided my fair share and then some.
And a lightweight car is easy to throw around, making accident avoidance a lot easier.”
I’m with you. I am of the opinion that as our cars have become better at protecting us in a crash, as a whole drivers have become less concerned about avoiding crashes.
Chevy jacked #2 cylinder on us when we had them ‘helpfully’ do the head recall work.
Should have left it alone, prior to their “recall work” #2 cylinder was fine and compression on all three were fine.
I do admit to getting the car up on two wheels one time.
Only about a foot off the ground, but it was a hoot.
Ran OVER a deer with it, the stupid thing laid down in the road.
Metro is NOT atracker and was never meant ot run over foot tall objects.
Transmission was shredded.
*sigh*
Replaced the transmission only to have Chevy do their screw jobber on the car about a year later.
The 1990 Metro was similar when jacked up, the opposite side doors didn’t like to oppen.
But you could get them open with some care and a little more force.
Had one tech that kept screwing up the rear wheel bearings.
They kept crushing them, and when they weren’t crushing them they were putting Geo Storm bearings and parts on the car.
Told the guy he was aching for a lawsuit.
He sat chewing on his cigarette and scratching his butt.
Chevy, the pride of nobody.
[Geo was actually Chevy for you guys in Rio reading along with us.]
Next vehicle I had was a VW Golf.
Hit a deer with it at 55MPH and all it did was shove the bumper and driver side headlight back a bit.
Current vehicle tops in at close to three thousand pounds.
2800 rpm at 70.
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