Lester
I appreciate your passion on this subject. I might add that I am a skummy
car salesman to boot, so my lively hood depends on people believing that new
cars are safer, more desireable, etc, etc. I'd love it if everybody could
just pop on down to the lot and buy each of their 2.5 children a brand new
car. Then I could retire in a few short years.
In the majority of the real world, however, parents aren't buying their 16
year olds brand new cars with the latest safety gizzmos. They can't afford
it. A brand new Focus, Cobalt, Civic, etc. is $15-20k, and even then you
have to buy the upper trim levels or option the car to the upper price
scale to get side impact air bags, abs, etc. No, they are handing down the
180,000 mile family crapster because momma is getting a new Accord. Given
that at a half a zillion miles, the average 15 year old Ford Escort/Nissan
Sentra/Toyota Tercel, whatever is almost worn out, any of the original
safety features have long since lost their effectiveness. Airbags are only
built with a 10 year design life; abs pumps fail, and instead of fixing
them, people drive around with the abs light covered with electrical tape
because the repair is more than the car is worth; even the slightest fender
bender that got repaired by the lowest bid at Maaco renders the original
crumple design ineffective; the original seat belts are beyond their design
life and are weak due to exposure to the sun, diet coke spills etc, very few
teens are actually in a safe car.
Since the above described vehicle is really what we should be comparing a
spridget to in terms of safety, take the same budget of $3-5k, spend it
putting new brake components & hoses, new seat belts, a roll bar, & a
mechanical freshening on a spridget, and which is the safer car? The $3500
1994 Ford Escort with 170,000 miles, or the $3500 mechanically restored 1979
Midget?
Put my daugher in the Midget.
David Riker
davriker@pacbell.net
http://home.pacbell.net/davriker/
http://community.webshots.com/user/fool4mg
----- Original Message -----
From "Lester Ewing" <lewing at sport.rr.com>
Cc: <spridgets@autox.team.net>
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2005 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: Accidents was Re: Spridget wanted.. rant..
> is not about any given task, but rather taking advantage of all that
> science has to offer about making any given task safer.
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