[Mgs] MG6 Review

Barney Gaylord barneymg at mgaguru.com
Mon Mar 28 19:04:23 MST 2011


Yes, please.  You can kill most of the government mandates on crash protection.

Crumple zones have been standard issue on just about all cars for 
about 50 years, ever since Mercedes patented it in 1952, made it 
standard issue in 1959, and gave the production rights away free to 
the general public.  It was not originally mandated by the 
government, but in more recent years the govenment specifies how well 
it should work (crash test standards).  Crumple zones are essentiall 
free in production after the engineering is done.  MGA, MGB, and even 
the Z-Magnettes have pretty good crumple zones.  They can likely take 
a 40 mph staight on whack on either end of the car and still be able 
to open and close the doors.

While seat belts and side intrusion bars are a good idea, they should 
not necessarily be mandated by the government.  If we left out the 
air bags and most of the other expeneive safety devices, maybe the 
idiots who drive bad and refuse to wear the belts would eventually be 
weeded out of the gene pool (in about a thousand years).  When people 
think they are surrounded by a NASCAR crash cage they have lots less 
incentive to be careful and courteous drivers.

Somewhere in Europe some years ago (Italy perhaps) there was a study 
of Mercedes taxi cabs that were equipped with alti-lock brakes.  The 
ones without anti-lock brakes had lower accident rates and smaller 
insurance claims, because the idiot drivers with anti-lock brakes 
thought the brakes would save them from anything and proceeded to 
drive more aggeressively (causing more accidents).

By the way, I did not say GPS and Sat Nav was a bad idea, only that 
it should not be built into the cars.  It is good business if there 
is a public demand for it as an optional asseccory, but people who 
don't want it should not be forced to share the cost.

$0.015

Barney


At 09:06 AM 3/29/2011 +1000, Murray Arundell wrote:
>You're assuming of course that said lights and brakes are working....
>
>Should we also make seat belts, airbags, intrusion bars and crumple
>zones optional as well...?
>....


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