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I feel the same way about my C900 as I feel about my '74 Triumph Spitfire - I am going to pay attention and not crach the thing!
A C900 was a pretty safe car for 1979. Only a big German would have been better back then. EVERYTHING is better now. You probably won't get killed in an accident in a C900. But you know what? You probably won't get killed in anything as long as you have your seatbelt on. The crashes where people get killed these days while wearing seatbelts tend to be unsurvivable regardless of what you are in at the time. The question is, how injured will you be? Less so in a modern car than in a C900. In particular, be very careful about pulling out across traffic in an older car - side-mpact standards have come a LONG way in the past 10-15 years.
Anecdotal "strength" based on how the car looks after a crash or when a bunch of wieght is piled on it is meaningless - big barges from the 60's and 70's looked great after a 30mph crash, but the impact forces killed people at relatively low speeds. The car needs to crush to absorb the forces involved. Lack of intrusion into the passenger compartment is nice, but not if it means the internal injuries from the deceleration forces kill you anyway. I'd rather lose a leg than my life.
One final thought - about the best sort of high-speed accident you can have is the one described where you go in a ditch, out of a ditch, flip over roll a few times, etc. No major impacts involved! That's an eternity to come to a stop! Looks impressive, but extremely survivable. The bad kind is what happenned two cars in front of me in MA last year. A trailer truck on the Northbound side of I-495 was hit by a hydroplaning car. it lost control, skidded across the median and hit a Southbound full-size pickup truck at about a 45 degree angle. The pickup was unrecognizable - the engine block ended up a 100 yards down the road. The driver was killed on impact. Killed is an understatement actually - I wish I could get that scene out of my head. No-one survives 80,000lbs hitting them at a closing speed of 120+ mph no matter what they are driving.
So pay attention to what you are doing, and what is happening around you.
Kevin Rhodes
Westbrook, Maine
posted by 74.75.36...
, Fri, 6 Nov 2009 11:43:52
, Fri, 6 Nov 2009 09:28:57
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