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Small Car Crashes! (1972)
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- čas přidán 16. 08. 2024
- Wow! What a spectacular little film from my archive about smashing together servo controlled remotely piloted cars with onboard video (very high tech!) into head on collisions with astounding discoveries - among them that the seat belts of the time routinely snapped in half, sending dummy passengers through windshields, and splattered in the face with battery acid from the other car! Watch the smaller cars literally disappear into the engine compartments of the larger vehicles! See seat belt hardware simply shatter... watch as head rests become missiles... OH The Humanity! Really shows the contrast to today's vehicles which have only been made possible by these very kinds of collision tests. As always I transferred this reel with my own Telecine. Enjoy!
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#pinto #ford #chevy
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As an ambulance attendant starting in 1965, then a paramedic until the late 70's. I also began working in the ER right out of HS, eventually having a career spanning 43 years ending as an ER/Trauma center director of nursing in 2013. I can tell you this with certainty that motor vehicle injuries have been drastically reduced with all the safety features now incorporated in modern cars. People back in 70's were still driving cars from the 50's thru the 60's. The cuts, bones fractures, and deaths were horrible just from the interior collisions of the occupants. There was no real padding, no collapsible steering columns, hard sharp control knobs on the dash boards, lacking restraint systems, adequate safety glass, crumble zones, etc. In modern cars it is not unusual to see people come out of a high-speed head-on collision survive with only minor injuries, where if the same were to occur with 60's-70's cars would have resulted in death or life changing injuries.
Progressing towards larger vehicles create a massive dilemma you see where I'm going with this
The information you have provided from your experience as a nurse has been really interesting. Thank you so much.
Thank you for your service.
We lived in NJ right near the NY State Border. Drinking age was 18 in NY, so everyone would go up to the bars there. Lost lots of people in accidents. Once guy in particular had a head on and his chest was crushed by the non collapsing steering column.
@@jondrew55 I grew up in Old Bridge NJ, in '68 before moving to Michigan we'd sneak over ot Staten Island. Glad I moved, lost many friends due to alcohol related accidents.
I remember my parents wanted a second car in 1972 and bought my mom a Pinto Wagon. I also remember my sister taking me to McDonalds for my 10th birthday in 1977 when we left there was a large dump truck parked on the street blocking her view of oncoming traffic and she was very careful creeping out trying to see around the dump truck when she thought it was clear she pulled out and struck a mid 1970's Olds 98 in the right front. The Pinto collapsed so badly we had to slip the key out the window to a passerby and have them unlock the rear hatch so we could get out as neither front door would open. It was very low speed and I remember my dad being really upset at how bad the car folded up. Of course it was totaled but my dad bought my mom a full size used Chevrolet Impala as a replacement.
Glad everyone was okay 👍👍
I drive a Chevrolet Silverado - Yes , this is only one reason why ! I like pick up trucks !
Pinto didn’t catch fire ?
Give it a rest.@@bobwilson758
I owned a 1972 Pinto Hatchback (original owner), the driver door would misalign if I jacked it up to change a tire. I narrowly avoided a head -on collision with a wayward Vega of all cars on the Riverside FWY in the 70's with my two sisters with me. I wore out the SOHC 4cyl and put a Ford V-8 in it. Lol.
Back in 1980, My father bought a 1965 Ford Falcon. All steel dashboard, front lap belts we never used. Never came with rear seat belts. He drove the family 100 miles each way to the Poconos every Summer weekend, and more, for 5 years in it.
I guess we were lucky to never have an accident...
I own the car today. It was stored for 40 years in a garage. Still in great shape. Currently restoring this beauty😁
Sounds like a nice ride! I heard people long ago used to scrap cars young since they weren't worth much. I'm not sure how true that is, but if it's true I wonder if the 1965 Ford was already becoming rare in 1980.
I hope you enjoy the car. We had a 64 and I actually learned to drive in it in the late seventies. Got my license in 1980. Wish I still had it
With modern All Weather tires and modern gas shocks it should handle and ride quite decently.
My grandpa took me to a wrecker yard in the mid-90s at a time when a lot of people still didn't wear seatbelts. I'll never forget all the blood. There were cars from about 3 different decades.
Back in the sixties if a car lasted to a hundred thousand miles it was a big deal my 2020 Toyota has over two hundred thousand miles and still runs great the only thing I had to replace was breaks
Jay Leno often talks about the big 1950's American cars with their huge steel dashboards that you would slam into in a crash. He says they would just hose you off the dashboard and sell the car to the next guy.
Yeah big all metal dashboards, no seatbelts and a gentleman's bar where the glove compartment should be like the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham had. All the makings for a disaster on the road.
@@Wildstar40 Jay Leno jokes about those big metal dashboards and no seat belts. He says, "If you get in an accident, they just hose what's left of you off the dashboard and sell the car to the next guy."
It's Satire, Leno is a comedian
It's comedic license..
They never heard of crumple zones in that era
As a modern day EMT. I can say ive been shocked at what ive seen ppl walk away from in modern cars.
All you have to do is watch the many high speed police pursuits on YT. Car goes flying and rolling many times and the preps still jump out and run.
In keeping with its reputation, the Pinto is seen dribbling gasoline after the crash.
and that was front a frontal crash
Except its reputation was wrong. It was no worse then any other small car of the time.
@@erikk1820 in the tests it was the only car to leak fuel, so obviously it is the biggest piece of shit!
A 1971 Pinto was my first car in 1978; I'd just turned 19. Engine and transmission were almost bulletproof and performed flawlessly. But the rest of the car was obviously light and cheaply built. I doubt that it weighed 2000 lbs. The fuel tank and filler pipe had been fixed so that it wouldn't ignite in a rear-end collision. So that was a plus. My dad drove a 1974 Vega as a second car, mainly for in-town commutes. It was worse than the Pinto. Looking back, I'm very thankful that neither of us were ever involved in an accident.
The best safety feature of the Vega is that it would rust to bits in your driveway in just a few months, thus preventing you from ever getting into an accident in the first place!
Not the lack of weight the problem : even the Japanese built Mitsubishi Colt survived better and today a Smart is built with a non-deformable safety cage. However, it lacks an absorption zone and it is the occupants spleen which will explode.
Ja Pinto und Vega soll wohl Katastrophe gewesen sein, leute wollen ja billig und so haben, Sie nur Scheiße gekriegt und nur rückrufe(Vega) cheville soll wohl besser gewesen sein, gremlin war damals das billigste Auto, aber dafür war auch nichts drin außer grosser motor
@@Sashazurja habe ich gelesen die Verarbeitung war wohl Katastrophe, die Motoren mist
@@majorkong1678 The funny part was the Pinto at that time had a german made engine in it.
"A Strong Presumption of Severe Injury" is a title looking for a death metal album.
Maybe that's where Damage Plan got their inspiration.
I was driving a Rambler American on a four lane highway in Nyack, New York. The road curved uphill and to the left. Lot's of traffic and and suddenly a car is coming directly at us at about 50 mph. My 21 year old brain was fast enough to veer to the right and narrowly avoid a head-on collision. My uncle in the front seat, after a moment of silence, said, "You just saved our lives."
did he say something ? did he have to change his pants?? whhat?
I learned to drive on one.
We had a Rambler, it was yellow.
@@louisedenson5512 I learned to drive in a Rambler American.
Fantastic footage. I'm 64 and can recall going with my dad to the junkyard now and again looking for parts for one his many clunkers. I recall seeing many wrecks with that telltale bulge or hole in the windshield where someone's head impacted - no seatbelts of course.
My dad went looking for parts cars back in the 80s when he got his first so he could fix the rust, add more features, etc. He found one like his sitting on a front lawn, with the front end pushed in as if it has hit a tree or a pole. The windshield above the steering wheel had been pushed out. When he knocked on the door, the owner answered, and his face was covered in bandages.
He did sell my dad that car though.
Oh, no doubt. I recall combing the salvage yards in the 70s & 80s. It was brutal if you were paying attention. Steering wheels pushed up towards the driver and bent where they hit someone's chest.
When I was in college, a lot of us would go to salvage yards to get spare parts for old cars that dealers no longer carried. There were certain cars that we wouldn’t touch, for fear of disturbing the ghost…
I had a 77 pinto and later on I got a 1970 Galaxie I felt a lot safer in the galaxy but I love that little 4-speed Pinto
Understood!..There is something about little car's that make them much more fun to drive than a big car or truck!
Back in '93 when I first got my license, I learned to drive in a '77 DeVille, you can't get much bigger a car than that. LOL
Holy crap! Fantastic film. Thanks for transferring and sharing it. Some thoughts:
1. AMC Gremlin: Icon of safety 😂
2. My first car was a Pinto wagon. I feel very lucky to have survived!
3. I’ve changed my mind about rebuilding an MG Midget as a retirement project. 😂
4. I’m stunned by the seatbelts tearing and buckles failing.
5. I wonder how instrumental this film was in getting manufacturers to raise their game?
I had a 73 Charger that had those very same seat belts that blew apart in this film - Geez! If I ever had... oh, best not to even think about it.
Only about 10% of people wore seat belts back then, because they believed it was safer to be "thrown clear of a crash". But the end result was usually the coroner having to scrape your goo off of the pavement rather than off of the steering wheel that impaled you in your rigid-frame land yacht. And small cars had the advantage of being nimble enough to avoid an obstacle, rather than a big boat with unassisted drum brakes and slippery bias-ply tires having no choice but to plow right into it.
Let's not blame the MG Midget you know damn well you're not walking away from a crash, I I figured that out when I decided to pick it up and flip it over on its side to work on it🤣 And I'm far from built like superman
@@vwestlife I am going to have to disagree with you a bit.. Yes, most people didn’t wear their seatbelts back then. And true, a smaller car is more likely to be able to avoid a obstruction due to it..well being smaller and having less mass. However, in the era of these tests 1970-1973, those econo cars were just that.. Built down to a price. Often having non power small diameter 4 wheel drum brakes. They used the same bias-ply tires, and often had no anti-sway bars at all.. So they weren’t necessarily the most agile vehicles on the road.. And clearly from the outcome of these tests (though heavily biased towards the larger cars) back then, the larger vehicle is the one I would have preferred to be in.. And I bet you would have too.. Fortunately, due to tests like this, car manufacturers can make cars of all sizes designed to crumble and absorb the energy with the goal of keeping the passenger compartment intact, combined with airbags most accidents are survivable (unless someone is driving so recklessly nothing could save them)..
@@Tom-th1oy Mercedes-Benz and Volvo had been making cars with three-point seat belts, crumple zones, and disc brakes since the 1950s. It just took a long time for everyone else to catch up.
The Volvo 240 series came out, a couple years later, after this film, and in tandem with, subsequently becoming the federal safety standard, pretty much rectified the disparity, in crash survivability.
One reason why I moved to Volvo was simply because of their passenger safety and accident survivability. I wouldn't go back to anything less.
@@whitesapphire5865 I still have a 91’ 240 sedan. In excellent condition, in spite of an estimated half a million miles. Only thing is, I gotta ship off the steering rack and pinion to be rebuilt, because that part replacement is no longer, easily, or readily, obtainable. Other than that, it’s a relatively pristine condition machine, and once that part is rectified, it’ll pass inspection, and be more than roadworthy, once more. I freaking love that car. Any models, 95, or forward, I’d never consider buying again. They, might be no less safe, but their longevity and serviceability, doesn’t hold a candle to the older models. Anything remotely comparable, newer than 95, I’d have to go with Subaru. I’ve a 98’ Legacy Outback, at nearly a quarter million miles, and the local dealership, doesn’t hesitate to service it, for a reasonable cost, and have even replaced a few things, such as seat-belts, because they were still under lifetime warranty.
Getting a drivers license in 1983, my only accident so far was i a 1982 Volvo 244, where I hit another car head on in about 50 km/h, due to them not seeing me while they made a left turn. No air bags yet in Sweden, but I survived with only a sore back for a month, and no lasting injuries. My head and knees didn't hit anything despite me being 190 cm. Car I crashed into was a Volvo 140 of unknown year. That driver hit the head, broke his nose and some other minor injuries, but nothing major either. Pretty good outcome at the time. Now I drive a 20 year old Saab 9-5 since many years, which is far safer in every regard, with multiple air bags and still very good results in actual crashes, from the insurance companies statistics.
Thanks Fran, this was a gem of a video, yet again!
Back in the 1980s when I owned a used 240, I would bring it to a local mechanic, a Swedish immigrant to the US who had originally worked for Volvo in Sweden. He told me that they consider Volvo to be "moose safe" because if you hit a moose in most other cars, the moose would come over the hood and through the windshield; but he claimed that a Volvo would usually knock the moose down and run over it.
On the old TV series Night Court, they had an episode where a homeowner took a guy to small claims court over the damage done to his house when a passerby broke down the door and tried to rescue him from what appeared to be a house fire but was merely smoke from the guy cooking blackened chicken. An inventory of the good samaritans' trunk included a fire axe and numerous other types of safety and rescue equipment, including the Jaws of Life. "It's a Volvo", said the vehicle owner.
@@whitesapphire5865 my gramps ford crown vics' and Lincoln Towne cars are super heavy and safe. They weigh near 5000! Pounds. The frame is a,solid welded whole solid piece
I was stopped at a red light in my 1978 Olds Cutlass Supreme back in 1980 when a 1970 4 door Chevy Caprice rear ended me. Half a second before he hit me I just happened to glance in my rear view mirror only to see him coming in hot while just a few feet away. All of a sudden there was an incredible "BOOM". The Chevy was traveling at 40 mph. The front left half (driver's side) of the Chevy hit the rear right half of my Cutlass. The front end of the Chevy was destroyed. Battery acid and antifreeze was everywhere. His two small daughters were in the front seat unbelted and both hit their heads on the windshield. You could see the two small protrusions in the glass. He wanted me to move my car so I could jumper cable his car back to life before the police arrived. Can you believe that? My car needed a rear bumper, deck lid and right rear taillight assembly and some body work on a wrinkle in the quarter panel. The impact was so great that it shoved me into the middle of the intersection, jammed my seat in the tracks and the under the dashboard ash tray popped out. I drove home and he was towed away. He was not insured. I have the traffic report still to this day and the cost to fix my car came to $919.76. I still have the repair receipt for that too. That massive 5 mph chromed steel rear bumper on my car absorbed a lot of that kinetic energy too.
Were the two little girls ok?
@@Simplythathuman05i second that
@@Simplythathuman05probably not
Your cutlass was full frame.
I had a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Calias with the 305 Rocket engine and 4bbl carb I bought new to me in 1979. Boy with that a fun comfortable car. I eventually drove into the ground as my daily driver.
I saw this film in driver education back in 1978. A lot of the seatbelts were useless as they just broke rather than holding the person in place like they’re supposed to do.
I saw this about a decade later. From my experience (i worked in the auto industry my whole life starting in the eighties), most of the seatbelt failures were accessory retrofits. People would just drill holes in the sheet-metal floor to mount them with standard hardware and washers, but the forces would literally rip the fasteners out. And while lap belts were better than nothing, they didn't prevent the face full of metal dash that you'd get in those cars. Over-shoulder belts were standard starting in 1968, but well into the seventies many of them were just extra belts fastened to the roof that you had to combine with the lap belt. As a consequence, nobody used them. We've come a long way, baby.
@@hotrodsurplus I have a 1973 Mercury Montego with lap belts and shoulder straps fastened to the interior roof edge.
And here we are again - I drive a semi for work, and a subcompact as a daily driver. I am regularly intimidated by larger vehicles (trucks, SUVs, and semi's) in my daily driver. I am being pressured to buy a larger vehicle due to other drivers behaving in an aggressive manner. If I were to drive my semi that way, I'd get fired.
As the driver of a Honda Fit, I know the feeling. But we are doomed if everyone worldwide buys into the automotive safety arms race by opting for larger and larger vehicles.
Yea, small meaning unsafe is a myth for cars. There are numerous reasons why small cars have been unsafe, typically resulting from cheap construction and cost saving measures to reduce weight.
Larger vehicles are safer, but one needs a significantly larger vehicle for it to be an advantage. Like class B truck larger.
Smaller, even compact vehicles can be just as safe as large sedans and SUV. If that wasn't possible, then purpose built race cars would be death traps.
One of the ways in which small cars are actually safer is better visibility and control. In a small vehicle, one can more easily avoid getting into a collision at all.
Going between my Freightliner and my 72 Beetle was a world of difference. I could throw that little car around corners and obstacles without care nor worry. The truck, heh, it had a push bumper for a reason.
When I began driving in 1976 I drove VW Beetles for years and was well aware of the dangers, but had that mentality that a serious accident would never happen to me. One thing though, it made me a careful and cautious driver. I never did stupid stuff or drove beyond the car's capabilities. Reading Small on Safety by Ralph Nader helped too. Luckily, I never had an accident in a Beetle. The worst accident I had was in the early 80s and luckily I was driving my parent's '68 Ford Ranch Wagon (big detroit iron at its best) because my VW Bug had mechanical issues. I was driving on a divided highway at 60 mph and a kid that just got his license pulled out from a stop sign about 20 feet in front of me to cross the highway. He was in his dad's brand new Camero. All I remember is I began thinking about taking my foot off the accelerator, and not actually doing it. That's how fast it was. I impacted the Camero square in the middle of the B pillar. Three people were in the Camero. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt. I was wearing the lap belt only, no sholder harness. I did suffer a mild concussion. Both cars were totaled, but no serious injuries. I could only imagine what would have happened to me if I was in my Volkswagen.
The arched roof of the VW helped it's rigidity. You also did not have to worry about a cylinder head going up the crotch in a collision.
*Camaro
That intro theme is INSANE
A majority of the damage to the smaller cars is due to the ride height difference. Look at the very beginning where they are 'nose to nose'. The small car ended up with a big V8 engine in the cab.
A friend of mine bought a used Pinto from a co-worker back in 1981. It had spent its life in western New York state (near Buffalo), so it had been drenched in salt every winter. I rode back with him in his new "car", and we both noticed something...odd about the car's ride; it reacted very strangely to road bumps and potholes.
I found out later that there was a 18 inch-long crack in the unibody's floor pan and right side, just behind the passenger seat, caused by several years of Buffalo rust. So, the right side wheelbase of the car was changing by a few inches when we drove over bumps. My friend just bolted a steel plate over the crack and drove it several more years, until I think it just crumbled into a pile of rust with seats, like his Fiats...
lol, you were driving a round in a pan of lasagna.
One of the better crash testing videos I've seen. Good stuff Fran. Keep them coming.
I remember in a physics class one of the questions was something like, "a 2-ton car is traveling 60 mph in one direction and a 40-ton semi is traveling 60 mph in the opposite direction. They have a head on collision. What is the resultant direction and speed of the two vehicles together after the crash?" Of course, you can also run the same calculation on a freight train hitting a car and the train WILL slow down - almost imperceptibly.
Doesn't really matter because the semi is gonna win.
60
@@lurch789 Not really. Mass is mass and momentum must be preserved. Two very solid vehicles colliding will end up with the same final velocity and direction as two cushy ones (or even one cushy one) with the exception for any case where one rebounds off the other.
Incorrect. Deformation absorbs more of that energy; imagine Newton's cradle if the balls deformed with the first impact.
@@AC-io8qs No. I'm still correct. re-rea my last answer where i stated ""present a serious and substantial danger of prejudicing". So long as the two objects remain joined during and after the crash, the manner of the crash doesn't matter. You could have a mile long bumpers with springs such that neither vehicle experienced any damage at all, and the final result would be the same. The kinetic energy must be preserved. Deformation will change the TIME over which that kinetic energy is transferred, not the amount.
It's amazing how far we've come as far as safety goes.
Are 'we' though? Where do you base this on? Just check out the speed that modern crash tests are done at, you can not compare crash tests as much as you can not compare cars, the net result is still that many.... many people still die in car crashes. Many....
absolutely. way more vehicles doing more miles during their lifespan with way less casualties.
@@marcusnolte7476 With rather the infrastructure to praise than vehicles safety. Vehicles safety is mainly for the car industry sales pitch. Not saying they haven't improved, but it is definitely waaaay overstated.
Safety has a price and most Americans can’t afford these laptops with wheels 🇺🇸
road death rate is going up dramatically actually. turns out having 80% of new cars being light trucks (non sedans) has consequences.
I was surprised how well the Dodge Colt took the hit from that boat. But I was more surprised by all the seatbelt failures in general.
Dodge Colt was Japanese Mitsubishi built
Back in 1979, I was in a head on. Was driving a 1972 Chevrolet Kingswood wagon versus a GMC pickup. The size of our station wagon had us all with minor injuries. Guy driving the GMC was not injured. It happened on a rural NM road around a mountain bend..
In 1981 I was driving a 1970 Buick Electra when a drunk driver hit me head on. Because of the size and quality of the Electra along with the fact that I was wearing both the lap and shoulder belts let me walk away with only minor cuts, scrapes and bruises from the belts. Far better than the unbelted drunk driver.
I remember the "Road Safety Authority" in Australia , back in the 1970s , showing footage of these test collisions on t.v. to promote seatbelt safety . As a young child at the time it really "scared me straight" and I'd never get in a car without a seatbelt after that .
I love how they class a Chevy Vega as a "small" car .
Ironically every seat belt failed in this video.
Vega was a small car in those days.
It was. I had a couple. They hit just over 2200 lb, the Pinto about 120 lbs lighter. The Gremlin was around 2600
I remember seeing this film in high school auto mechanics class in the late 70's!
1973 I was a passenger in a 1973 Pinto that left the roadway at 95 mph and flipped end over end down the mountain and ended up in a creek right side up. First impact was the right side rear then the left front the roof buckled down to the steering wheel and the right rear corner pushed the tire up pushing me to the roof the seat belt failed to lock and I was almost ejected. Three of us walked away it was 2am in the morning at first we didn't know where the road was at then we seen the impact spots on the mountain where we hit 3 times. Only by the grace of God did we survive.. In a Pinto hatchback.
That thing could do 95 mph? Wow.
@@jeffrobodine8579 it could do over a 100 mph, also we where going down hill.
First mistake was going over 70 in a Pinto. I remember going much over 55 mph in my 1971 was a scary proposition. Of course, if I had had better tires on it, it might have been a different story.
I had a Pinto (78 King Cobra Mustang) with a 302 V8 a d a 4 speed it was Very Scary at 85 mph. The speedometer maxed out at 85. Don't believe for a minute a 4 cylinder Pinto would reach 90mph.
Unbelievable! Ye were all blessed 🙏. Glad to hear ye were all ok 👍
I owned a 1972 Pinto Hatchback (original owner), the driver door would misalign if I jacked it up to change a tire. I narrowly avoided a head -on collision with a wayward Vega of all cars on the Riverside FWY in the 70's with my two sisters with me. I wore out the SOHC 4cyl and put a Ford V-8 in it. Lol.
Years ago I had a tiny 1986 Honda CRX that got wrapped around a pole one winter in the Midwest. Amazingly I walked away just fine. The three year old mini car had over 300,000 miles on it.
I also survived two accidents when a tractor trailer destroyed my car snd left me for dead. The second was on the Pennsylvania turnpike when an eighteen wheeler pinned me against a concrete barrier and them fell on top of my Honda Accord crushing the roof. Again I walked away without a scratch but a little shaken up and without a car.
Cars are made so much better today than when this video was made in 1972.
It's interesting that, at this time, they were still conducting head-on crash tests. Later it was found that in most accidents, the drivers attempted to avoid a head on resulting in only 50 percent of the front of the vehicle being struck. When they changed the test to represent real world scenarios, none of these older vehicles did well.
There is a 50% offset crash test video on CZcams of a modern day and a 1960 Chevy Impalla. The 1960 Impalla suffers serious passenger compartment intrusion, whereas the modern day impalla does not. It's worth watching.
Also they are performing an almost 100mph (160kmh) frontal impact. No one tests that speed anymore.
Great old historic film. Keep them up Fran. I’d love to see a modern car attempt a 100 mph crash.
@@natew.5511 That was a 50 year anniversary “celebration” by the same group that shot all of these.
@@natew.5511 That is a great video, but be prepared for some really ignorant, and butthurt, comments about how the 59 was a rust bucket, the frame had been cut or compromised in some way, there was no engine or transmission in the car, etc., and "There's no way a "real" 59 would have collapsed like that!"
That's an eye-opener. I drive one of these old cars every day. The Duel car.
Just watch out for crazy, unknown semi drivers that wear cowboy boots.
7:00 When he says “The amount of damage being sustained by the passenger compartment of the smaller car hardly need comment”, that means it’s bad, right?
Vega actually held up pretty well in the first crash (at least before the rust compromises it). Needed front opening hood or better latches. True story: in the mid 70's a guy in a '68 Camaro ran a stop on my street and hit a lady in the side. (no deaths) The engine and front subframe of the Camaro went UNDER the Camaro as there are only about four bolts holding it to the floor of the car. Camaro/Firebird are not full unibody cars and frequently they get cracks in the a-pillars at the top of the windshield showing that they are not structurally sound designs.
That's the way virtually all vehicles are put together today and always has been for all unibody vehicles. They all have a front end subframe and most of them have a rear subframe but not all of them do. And look at how common it is for engines and transmissions to exit the vehicle now days compared to the full frame vehicles of the past. It's very common for the engine to exit the car now days
Volvo trucks have been designed since 1998 , so that the engine and transmission will break loose from their mounts and go under the truck cab instead of going back into the passenger compartment. Volvo trucks have many many design features aimed at reducing or eliminating driver injuries in a crash.
The car performed as designed. You would rather the engine and transmission enter the passenger compartment?
This is some seriously scary stuff. My folks bought a Toyota in 1972. The entire body was made of this very thin gauge metal. It was not anywhere near as substantial as other cars of the time. I thank God we never got into an accident with it. The fenders on it rusted out within a few years and had to be repaired and repainted. The fenders then rusted out again - but by that time, the entire car was rusting out all over. At the time, that was what Japanese cars were known for - rusting away within a few years. Well, at least we had these tests so they could make today's cars better.
The funny thing is there are people that think Toyota has never released a bad vehicle.
This quality was why everyone worshipped the Japanese cars. POS, but advertising is king.
Never owned a Japanese car, never will.
@@leahwhiteley5164me either, no rice - mobiles around me 👍
If these cars were made in Italy they would be called "Superleggera." That's how they drove rather well with less than 100hp.
@@rockets4kids "carozzeria superleggera" I remember 🇮🇹 🙂. I own something from Desegno di Bertone for the last 22 yrs
The gremlin was based on the larger AMC hornet sedan design where they just chopped off most of the back half. AMC didn’t have the resources to do a clean sheet small car design like their competitors. So it’s no surprise that it did better than the Vega or pinto.
The larger inline 6 engine helped a lot as well compared to the smaller 4 cylinder engines the other cars had.
Weight difference was about 480 lbs more than the Pinto.
That Plymouth fury that crashed into that little foreign car. Mom had a Plymouth Fury just like that model. It was dark blue with a white vinyl top.
Back in the late 60s a bunch of us kids were playing kick the can one night and we heard a loud crash from the nearby road. 3 teenage girls in a Mustang hit a tree. It was carnage. I remember seeing their bodies in that crushed passenger zone. The girl in the rear seat was thrown into the dashboard and impaled by the shifter along with numerous other life-ending injuries. My first car would end up being a 66 Mustang Fastback. Everything was metal in those interiors.
A guy I knew in high school had an accident and his car didn’t have the hood restraining hooks. The edge of the hood went thru the windshield and right into his forehead. He lived, but was severely brain damaged.
Jeez, that's bad. Was that a car of the 1970s? I've been warned that aftermarket cheap replacement hoods can do that, the good designs are supposed to crumple safely.
This happened in the 70's, so it was probably a 60'2 or 70's car@@zzoinks
Modern hoods are designed to fold.
I had a 2013 ford fusion hybrid. There was no spare tire, which definitely was a problem when coupled with the head up display that blocked view of small objects which would easily puncture the low profile rims.(leaving the tires intact). Anyway, the tire was omitted because in a rear impact collision, tests showed that the tire would be jammed into the hybrid battery causing it to instantly burst into flame within the passenger compartment (where it was located). This followed on the infamous pinto, and it turned out the fairlane had also been shown to be a fire trap. Kind of a company wide curse over time.
I had a 2014 ford fusion hybrid never had a problem with it as far S visibility
Congratulations to American Motors for better crash durability for the Gremlin compared to the other offered by Chevrolet Mopar and Ford
The Gremlin was a bigger car.
@@wymple09 About 480 lbs difference. Not a huge amount, but enough, obviously.
LOL, those soft padded dashboards had a quarter inch of sponge with plastic over it. That'll give you a lot of comfort.
I remember seeing a MG Midget and a 77 Trans AM have a head on collision in the 70s at about 30 mph . I swore I’ll never get a small car.
thank you Fran for breaking this out as a separate film !
This reminds me of how serious Volvo took occupant safety. In my young years Volvo had a commercial driving its 4 door model off the top of a parking garage down 3 levels to the concrete below. The front was crushed, but the occupant area was untouched and the dummies were intact and stayed in place with only the front passenger could of received a injury, but all would be alive if human.
Oh yeah, that's still on CZcams! They said it simulated a 35 mph collision, or around there, which is crazy to think. All that force in a car collision.
I had a 71 Vega. I’m glad I chose the Vega instead of a Pinto. If I had crashed in a Pinto, I would have been crushed to bits and burned up. With the Vega I would have merely been beheaded.😊
Had a friend whose brother was in a souped up Vega with his buddies. They were flying down a residential street when they lost control and hit a telephone pole. My friends brother and another kid were in the back seat and they survived, but with bad injuries. The 2 kids in the front seats were both killed. There was major intrusion in the front part of the cab. My friends brother had major survivors guilt and eventually drank himself to death.
I can't blame the car for that. In any car the pole will push the engine right into the passenger compartment. I don't know if people wold die with the air bags but it would still be really bad.@@gregggoss2210
I love it when people say….they don’t build them like they used to, in comparison to today’s vehicles…. Thank God they don’t build them like they used to.
So Pinto gas tank rupture even in the frontal crash. Now that is achievement 😂😂
I bet as the engine & transmission were pushed back, it shoved the rear axle (with that pointy bolt sticking out) back and into the gas tank.
@@johneckert1365 Must Be live that. Horrible passenger compartment deformation in the Pinto. Worst of all the small cars in this test.
@@CarWash811 I thought the same thing! Scary shit
@@CarWash811 The Gremlin did alright, but to be fair that's more of a mid-size car rather than compact
A Gremlin is essentially a compact Hornet with a chopped rear and the AMBO is essentially a Matador with a longer wheelbase so that crash is more like a compact against an intermediate rather than a subcompact against a full-size car in the other crashes in that film.@@johneckert1365
What's really interesting is how much better the 2 AMC cars did versus the others. The Gremlin was the only small car that didn't completely crush onto itself, and the AMC Ambassador was the only large car where the A pillar didn't buckle nor did the steering wheel/dash get pushed backwards. And yet AMC was the smallest of the 4 car companies at the time. Was that good engineering? Or just luck?
1. The AMC Gremlin wasn't a "real" subcompact, it was basically the compact AMC Hornet with its tail chopped off. That might have contributed a bit to the better results.
2. From what I have seen, AMC actually put some thought into crash testing. Hard to say if they made safer cars than the big three I guess, but.... AMC was never subpar on the engineering part and did quite a good work with the very limited resources they had, so maybe.
I think AMC used its smaller size to its advantage. They only had a 4 model lineup for cars (AMC) and 3 truck models (Jeep), so seven total where GM had maybe 11 car and truck models for Chevrolet, and had to make variations of these models across five other divisions, maintain all the different dealer networks and in other continents, field completely different lineups of cars (Opel, Holden, Vauxhall). Ford and Chrysler ran like this as well. AMC seemed to have the advantage to concentrate on making fewer models more well rounded.
And the moral of the story is:
IF you go back in time and want to get a small car, get a Gremlin. They are much better made and stronger.
But I still don't recommend a head-on collision with a car that is 2x your weight and size!
(Great upload-this came out the year I started driving...)
18:56 19:22
I like the opening song and wanted to hear it in reverse because it’s an interesting ditty. Kinda wild experimental production and brilliant in a Chet Atkinson production kind of way; a reversed jazz ensemble, riffing to reversed conga drumming. Neat. My mom had a pinto, we were always afraid we were going get blowed-upped.
A great video! I owned a 1973 Ford LTD back in the 90s, they were the same as the Galaxie, perimeter frame, heavy steel bumpers, thick sheet metal.... Anyway a 90s Nissan tried to pass me when I was turning left and we made light contact. The front bumper of the LTD caught the right rear wheel opening of the Nissan and removed most of the quarter panel and rear bumper of the Nissan. The Nissan was slowed down so much it made the turn with me. There was a rubber trim strip that went around my bumper and it was pulled out about an inch, the paint was scratched behind the bumper, surprisingly my cornering and corner marker lights were unharmed. Luckily no one was injured. After the police ticketed her for passing on a double yellow I drove away, she had to be towed, and the Nissan looked totaled. I have often wondered what a crash test would look like between an old car with a perimeter frame and a modern unibody with crumple zones. I saw a crash test on another channel involving a old car with a inboard frame and a new car and unsurprisingly the inboard frame car fared poorly as it was an off center front crash where that inboard frame offered no protection and was easily twisted. For anyone who does not know the difference a perimeter frame follows the outside edge of the vehicle and was intended to maintain the structure and shape of the vehicle, while an inboard frame follows the center line and offers no protection or support to the outside and only acts as a mounting point for the drive train, body and suspension. Police vehicles used to always be chosen from vehicles with perimeter frames because they were believed to hold up better to abuse such as pit maneuvers and collisions. I knew two people who were t boned by a semi while driving 80s chevy caprices which are perimeter frame vehicles and both walked away unharmed, one of the cars was even repaired after. Sadly a inlaw was in a head on crash while she was driving a Kia and hit a old ford pickup with perimeter frame, the Kias air bag failed to deploy and she did not make it. The driver of the Ford is in jail as alcohol was involved. Maybe one day all vehicles will be the same size and built the same way and everyone will share the same risks, but in the fifty plus years since this video was made that has still not happened.
Poorly designed small cars will always protect less than poorly designed large cars.
Ha! I bet if they crashed two Ford Galaxies (or one of the other fullsize ones) head on the damage would be comparable to the smaller cars. Some of these boats were already at the limit of what their structure could bear against these lightweight tin cans.
Exactly at least a big car has more metal around it.
That is a misnomer. The problem is the secondary collisions of the occupants slamming into the interior structures, and next is being ejected from the vehicle. My 40+ years of experience support that.
You must be a scientist
found my new niche to keep busy o weekends: watch old docs on small car crashes.
The Colt was a Mitsubishi into the 80's. Had a 1983 Hatch. Ran forever.
I owe my existence to a 72 Volvo. A couple years before I was born my mom was t-boned by a Ford pickup on the driver's side. She walked away with only minor injuries. I probably wouldn't be here if she'd been driving an American car.
Oh wow, well the old Volvos were good for their time, but are actually pretty terrible by today's standards. But good thing that little extra safety helped save your mom.
growing up in an age of streaming services, i never realized until recently that before things like youtube there was really no place to watch independently made or low-budget media without scouring the literal bottom of a barrel.
That Pinto, could nearly park itself in the engine bay of that Galaxy. 😳
Man, the Pinto may have been the most dangerous American car ever made. Besides exploding gas tanks the body integrity was poor even by 1970's standards. A friend of mine had one of those back in the '70's but his dad traded it in when the leaking gas tank issue made headlines.
Yeah the Pinto with it's light weight and rear gas tank filler was the worst and was made an example of in courts and government regulations. Too many people died to get Detroit to stop making rear tank filling cars.
My neighbor as a kid got rear endend in a Pinto. It exploded into flames as predicted. Fortune was on her side as she was able to bale out on time with only losing most of her hair in the back of her head.
Remember the movie Top Secret with the famous exploding Pinto scene?
All Pinto’s were recalled and fixed. There were 10 cars on that “exploding gas tank” list. How come nobody mentions them? Like 1964 1/2-1966 mustangs, Honda’s, Datsuns and Toyota’s. These were never recalled. My 1971 pinto lasted til 1993. (Parked when hit) It ran and passed inspection right up til it got hit.
I am so glad Volvo invented the 3 point seat belt and not a US company. Volvo decided to let the patent be free for all other car manufacturers just to save lifes. I doubt this would happen if a US company had the patent. It is estimatet that the 3 point seat belt has saved well over a million lifes.
I ❤ cars, especially classic cars. Owned over 40 since I was 19. This is very sobering. I'll say that I prefer personal luxury cars and if, blessed, my last classic will be a '67 Buick Riviera. Bucket seats with headrests and floor shift console. Shoulder and lap belts. I'll have the brakes updated to 4 wheel discs. 67's have collapsing steering columns and dual circuit master cylinder brakes. For a while I thought it may be fun to own a '64-'65 Corvair. Not now. I have three, modern, airbag equipped vehicles. I just want something classic and fun. Thanks for posting.
Lincoln offered four wheel disc brakes, mechanical ABS and air bags on its cars since the early 1970's.
This was the very beginning of NHTSA’s campaign for Crash Testing. It was up and running in 1978.
Their formal tests’ results have had to be listed on the OEM window stickers since 2006. You can look up NHTSA’s progress time line, as well as any car in their database of tests, at their website, which is a .gov.
My oldest sister was in an accident quite similar to these on July 4th weekend 1979 or 1980. Although the little Datsun or Toyota she was a passenger in was stopped and slightly angled as they were trying to avoid the collision. She was wearing a seat belt thankfully! It was still extremely bad as her head still smashed into the windshield and received lots of bumps and bruises and a few nasty cuts. She was 19 at the time and some 40 years later she would still pick a piece of glass out of her forehead!!
Nobody fooled themselves as to how safe these cars were. We all knew under the right conditions, they were dangerous. But back then, 30 miles to the gallon or better was something worth the risk.
If you take any small car today and hit it head on with a full sized truck both driving at 45 MPH for a 90 MPH crash, much of the same will happen.
@@mexicanspec Crashes don't add the force like that. 2 vehicles colliding at 45 doesn't make a 90. It makes two 45 collisions.
Modern small cars survive perfectly fine even with head on collisions with big rigs. Look at the comments from paramedics in here to what they say.
A bigger car isn't inherently safer.
When I was a kid, my father - who was the Master Mechanic for The County of San Bernardino outside of Los Angeles - once told me that the cost of making motor vehicles was calculated down to a tenth of a cent. In other words, in spite of whatever the engineers and designers did to put any car or other motor vehicle together, the final decisions were made by the accountants. So, if a manufacturer wanted to spend an extra $100 or so to improve the quality of a given car model, the accounting department would decide that would bust the car's price point and thus the public had to settle for what the manufacturers were selling. The Ford Pinto was perhaps the best example of that. It was made to meet a certain price point that ultimately proved to be its undoing with the gas tank that often ruptured in a crash, usually resulting in a fire. But the accountants decided that improving gas tank survivability by installing a $5 dollar piece of plastic that would've prevented/reduced tank rupture wasn't worth the effort and cost. So Ford rolled the dice and sold a car that was knowingly, inherently unsafe and crossed its corporate fingers that the costs of any lawsuits that resulted would be outweighed by profits earned on the car's sales. Despite advances in design, engineering, materials and technology, the motor vehicle industry today is still ruled by price point goals and profit margins expected and gained. Doesn't make any difference if a car costs $25,000 or $2.5 million, some compromise or decision will have been made to cut a corner - no matter how small - in order to save a dollar or two for the manufacturer.
I've tried to explain your first point many times in youtube comments, answering the "engineers are jerks (or worse) who hate mechanics" comments. Yes, there are incompetent and lazy engineers, but in the vast majority of cases, it's the accountants and members of management that mechanics are angry with. I've designed parts that fit perfectly and are easy to work on only to be told, "No, use what we have. You can't spend 5 more dollars to amortize new tooling for a new part."
@@excavatoree No problem. What always killed me was when I learned that most modern cars are literally designed by committee (which probably include accountants). I mean a committee for interior, another for the exterior, and yet another for what color everything should be. And then there are the federal and state regulations that have to be considered or incorporated. This resulted in an incredible number of mediocre cars to come out of Detroit in the 1980s, especially GM and Ford; it basically killed American Motors. And Chrysler was lucky enough to get Lee Iacocca, who was primarily an engineer, to save the company, or that company would've gone away too. Outside of Iacocca or J Mays (who designed for VW and Ford) and reaching to back in the day people like Harley Earl and Raymond Loewy, there are few outstanding personalities today in automotive design - and that's reflected in what's available. I guess even Elon Musk must be given credit for turning a niche brand name into a force that turned the industry on its head. So there are exceptions, but extremely few. I grew up in an automotive household, my ex's father was a lifer at Ford, and I got to meet people in the industry and do things that not everybody gets to do. Interesting stuff to be sure, which is why I personally enjoy riding bicycles. :D
Bean counters have ruined automobiles throughout their history. The Pinto lawsuits of the 1980's were proof of that.
Yes, great video. Grew up with two different Pinto models and I feel grateful never having to go through a wreck in them.
Here we have witnessed physics playing out by simple mass and kinetic energy and thankfully we have discovered we can indeed distribute that energy into the chassis and make a way safer small car. I agree these early videos contributed a lot to turn the tides towards safer cars but this video had (at least to me) only one message to deliver: "Buy a bigger car if you want to be safe." It is not the message for an engineer but for a consumer who have been made afraid buying a small car simply because he/she cannot afford a large one or being labelled reckless. For an engineer's perspective it was a challenge to tackle and thankfully it has been sorted since. Several small cars now have an NCAP rating of five stars. Thanks Fran for showing this for all of us. It was as always, educational.
11:44
I hope that's how the EMTs handle me in a bad crash 😂😂
Here's your head sir. You must have forgotten it.
Interesting that the AMCs were done at lower speeds. But man, it hurt to see those Galaxies destroyed.
The Impalas as well.
I felt the same about the Fury.
In physics class, the principle of "lightest vehicle has to deal with the most severe crash forces" was clearly demonstrated by the air sled collision experiments. My physics teacher drove a large pickup truck for the exact reason that he'd be in the heavier vehicle.
Search Renault Modus vs Volvo 940 crash test by Fifth Gear. You will be surprised. Although that is possibly not a fair test, because the Volvo was very old, it might have been very corroded, while the small Renault was almost new.
Physics 101.. Bigger Wins. That's why I drive Ford Excursion. My teenage daughters drove for learner's permit. When my tiny daughter drove it her Driving Class, the Instructor and contractors next door all chuckled.
@@lovestihlquality1369 one of the safest SUVS! EXCURSIONS! MASSING HEAVY BUMPERS! ALSO= THERE ARE SOLID' IRON BARS' IN A X PATTERN IN ALL DOORS. OURS HAS THE ADDED ON HUGE BUMPERS! SOLID STEEL! FRONT AND REAR.
@@captainamericaamerica8090 Trailer hitches standard to help minimize cars going underneath and a giant crossmember blocker beam in front behind air dam.
Retired firefighter, one crash Toyota Camry rear ended Excursion. Demolished Camry. Didn't even scratch Trailer Hitch
@@lovestihlquality1369 we added a thick Iron extended' bar into the hitch! It' has reflective tape! 3.M! THE FRONT OF OUR EXCURSION HAS THAT MASSIVE BUMPER ADDED ON! THE BUMPER!
My mom drove a pinto, I was 16 and she let me drive it, I also had a 72 Vega for a couple years in the mid 70's, glad I never crashed either of them.
…or maybe we need larger and larger cars each year, so each year, cars will be safer…from other, smaller, cars.
If my car can't survive a 80mph collision with a school, how can I be safe?
Eventually we can construct a huge car big enough for the entire world to get in and keep us safe. But to travel around inside the car, to see loved ones, go to work etc, we'd need some sort of personal transportation devices.
Someone should add some Beavis & Butthead commentary to this video: "Breakin' shit is cool!"
Thank you for sharing this! IIHS had another good film in the early 70s called "Boobytrap!" about all the hazards just off the shoulders of American highways, like boulders and unyielding signposts, that killed so many drivers. The official IIHS channel had Boobytrap at one point, and I'd hoped they would post more restored films from their archives, but they took it down and haven't added any others, sadly.
I remember that film as well.
Boobytrap is still up
A guy in high school was rear ended by a snowplow in a Pinto, the roof buckled and caused a fatal head injury.
I love how they treat the broken windshields like cursed blankets, lmao.
Where does the futile competition to drive the heavier vehicle end? A benchmark test of a compact vs compact and a full size vs full size would have been helpful.
Finally, crash videos without lugnuts pining for the good ole’ days in steel boxes that were safer than the “plastic boxes” of today.
What a relief that there are people who understand physics
I was a first responder for 22 years starting in '82, with lots of vehicle crashes including freeway crossovers with results that looked more like plane crashes, ejected unbelted occupants, etc. When I first started there were still many vehicles from the ''70s and even the '60s on the roadways, and the results of those crashes were generally ugly. I'm still haunted by some of what I saw, especially the children.
The last fatal I handled just prior to retirement was one of the worst, a triple fatal interstate crossover with an ejection that closed down both directions of the freeway during afternoon rush hour. What a mess. One person makes a mistake and two other innocent people and their families paid for it.
Automobile glass has a plastic sheet to prevent you from flying through it. The glass fragments expand and then contract, causing dreadful lacerations to the face. This happened to the admired actor Montgomery Clift. I don't know if the technology has changed. 10:45. Buckle up.
Geez, a 4800 lb car sustains less damage than a 1900 lb car. I guess that seems common sense nowadays but were they really this incredulous about that result back then?
Thanks for posting this film though Fran! Without you, we'd probably never have seen it!
I'm pretty sure that they weren't "incredulous". The narrator even said that they knew much of this many years before, when small cars began to be more popular (Mustang, vw, corvair, etc). This was just one of the first tests of its type where they could objectively measure the results.
Being a former 1978 Ford Pinto owner, this gives an interesting perspective...lol
My 1976 baby blue Pinto is enshrined in my high school yearbook. It was legendary.
0:30 That opening music, with every note played backward, gives me more of a headache than a flying leap through a windshield.
All student drivers should have to watch this film.
I am glad cars are better than they were 50 years ago..and that I never had a head-on crash.
Same thing today,if you have a smaller car you are at greater risk than if you are in a bigger car..
More so today a truck is the safest,unless you get on a head on with another truck..but if you have a smaller car or smaller suv vs a larger one you suffer same results as this test.
Those Impalas and Galaxies held up surprisingly well for the speed they were going. Give it some modern seatbelts and some airbags and it might be a relatively safe car.
Look up "1973 Chevrolet Impala w/ Air Cushion Restraint System (ACRS)".
You're welcome.
The 1973 Impala used in Sienfeld as Kramers car was an air bag car. I wonder where that car is today.@@PWRFORCE_
I noticed in each instance the small car hit the bigger car under the hood so it pushed in the grille and core support. That might have been why the big cars faired so well.
@@PWRFORCE_
Well I'll be damned. The more you know. I was talking about done more modern airbags though.
I'd like to see an updated video pitting modern vehicles against some of these older models.
I personally wouldn't waste one of these true works of art destroying one of these modern pieces of junk! They aren't even made of steel most of the time
Comsidering how badly the Impala was destroyed by the Vega, chashing it to a brand new Spark would easily result is death on the Impala, and passengers walking out of the Spark
There is a video on the insurance institute for highway safety with a 59 Impala vs a modern Chevy . check it out.
@@MrDejast
I saw that. No rust, it was in absolute original condition. Even the paint.
It fell apart in the crash test. The front seat sheared off, the windshield popped out, everything just fell apart.
Old cars ain't that great.
@@rescue270lmao you could see tons of rust and dust fly out of that 1959 Impala, it had no chance and it was a complete waste of a classic car
For anybody that hasn't seen it, look up the iihs 09 Malibu vs 1959 Bel Air crash test!
It's proof that small cars can be safe against the larger heavier cars, it just takes high strength steel and a lot of really good engineering!
The results of that crash test are shocking!
Also Renault Modus vs. Volvo 940
They didn't remove the engine but it was an inline 6 with a lot of empty engine compartment space. That contributed to the deformation of the front end.@@AL-jb1mh
Good video. I think its funny how they always say the battery is broken.
One big takeaway is that Ford really needed to work on the rear window of the Pinto. There is no good reason to allow it to pop out like that in a head on collision.
This video shows why the Pinto had a reputation of bursting into flames when hit from the back.
Thanks VOLVO you save lives!
and Mercedes-Benz. Its Greatest Hits were crumple zones and crash tests (fifties) and the offset-frontal crash test and antilock braking (seventies).
This would be a good watch for people looking for a project for a drag-and-drive event. You may look cool making the Colt go fast, but think of it like a liter bike you can get trapped in.
Love the control car B-body!
I bought a 71 Colt brand new. Best car I ever owned, one of 20 cars. I raced it but never damaged it.
Many of those cars were destroyed by rust long before they wore out.😢
I knew the Pinto was bad, but damn!
It’s not just about the physical look a very very strong car that doesn’t bend. It all will probably be unsurvivable because the GeForce and energy is all transferred to the occupants. It is about absorbing the energy with the slowest amount of deceleration and of course a least amount of body intrusion into the passenger compartment.
Bingo !
True - this video is only a matter of years after seat belts were even put in cars - they weren't "sexy" to make people think of safety in the 60's. The front and rear crumple zones were in their infancy, to absorb the impact. Before it was all about the *car* looking ok after a crash, the fact the occupants had all their internal organs and face smashed into a rock-hard dash and were now mushed didn't as much attention. My mum was a medical photographer for plastic surgery (before and afters) in the 60's. She never had to be reminded to wear a seat belt if available.
Watching this makes me appreciative of the safety advances we have but also wondering why such failures in safety occurred in 1972. Seat belts were mandated in all new cars sold in the United States in 1968 and headrests in 1969. You would think both would have done their jobs given why they were implemented to begin with. This was the era where the government began getting seriously involved in safety, especially after Ralph Nader and his book "Unsafe At Any Speed".
No one wore seatbelts in those days,lots of people still don't..!
Thanks for posting this. It's crazy but way back then; before there were anti-lock disc brakes, air bags, and 3 point seat belts, we drove even faster than we do today. And everyone knew (well, the smart ones) that a small car was a death trap. The ford pinto had a really bad reputation for not only being weak - but had a propensity to explode if struck from the rear because of the fuel tank location. It was really due to size of the car - not the tank location being in the rear. This video takes me back to "the day"
And the message is: “Buy a big American car with tail fins and not a well-built Japanese car because the politicians who determine our departmental budgets want the vote of the UAW.”