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blind spots, visibility, and new cars... Posted by Snowmobile [Email]  (#686)  [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Snowmobile) on Fri, 31 Jan 2014 04:21:48
In Reply to: CX5 AWD ties the subjective tests- Car & Driver., Norm9-5, Thu, 30 Jan 2014 17:29:09 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
what's funny reading these comments is that you all find the og9-5 has great visibility. It's true that the 9-5 is pretty good by new car standards, but we really really notice the difference vs driving the c900's. *Those* cars had awesome visibility. You see everything! In the 9-5, the B pillars block a pretty big chunk but at least the headrests are not too tall. The rear window is quite high up and narrow also and that really reduces the view to the rear... but in comparison to a forester, it is practically a fishbowl. The 2 things we absolutely hated about the forester which would completely cross it off the list were the driving dynamics (terrible handling, awful 4 speed autobox also) and lousy visibility - combination of window lines and those awful headrests... if the encore has worse visibility than that, not even worth a test drive imho...
There is a trade-off between structural safety (heavy b pillar) and active safety (good visibility). There is also a tradeoff between whiplash protection and good visibility (in headrest design). The 9-5 strikes a good balance in both regards. Especially in the headrests, the new huge headrests all cars likely have marginal benefit vs SAHR and the lower heights give way better visibility. Headrest height was pushed by iihs when headrests were rigid, but times have changed. Few realize that the c900 headrests (which are quite low but very padded) were designed to reduce whiplash injury by catching the lower part of the head and neck and compressing. They have to be somewhat lower to work properly. It's an engineered thing that a blanket standard like iihs makes totally misses... and the advantage there is that the visibility is amazing! So the active safety is great. But they would get rated "poor". Sure SAHR in the 9-5 is better, but they are still great imho... would rather have comfortable ones that allow me to see and are 10-20% worse in a collision than ones 20% better that you use more often because you can't see around them!!
I'll stop ranting now...
, Fri, 31 Jan 2014 04:21:48 <-- Viewing This Message, Mon, 3 Feb 2014 11:54:44, Tue, 4 Feb 2014 12:34:34
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