Huge study about safety can be misinterpreted by SUV drivers

You can't do it because there are none on your side. It's like someone

Well at least that doesn't stretch credibility beyond the breaking
oint. -Dave

 

Subaru.

Already answered by more than one poster. Too small to be considered a good
value. -Dave

 

How big of a car do you need? The Legacy is downright cavernous, at
least from my small-car-loving perspective.

nate

 

If this posts twice, I'm sorry... the first one hasn't shown up yet (posted
yesterday)...
Isn't the emissions inspection done with a tube in the tail pipe at idle?

 

Forester is not the largest model. It is built on the Impreza frame.
Here's what I replied to:

By "Name one that is a good value for the money" I assume you meant one car
or minivan with "4x4 capability". Subarus are, in my opinion, "a good value
for the money" and have "4x4 capability".

So please explain how "Nope. Even the largest model doesn't seat more than
four comfortably. Even four are not comfortable in the forester" is
relavant at all?

 

Approximately 10/23/03 19:06, Joe uttered for posterity:

Depends on the state. In Kalifornia, as of mumble mumble this
past summer, the emissions check is done on a dynamometer in
addition to idle. Local dealer is still complaining about how
expensive said equipment is, how impossible it is to get, and
then how impossible it is to get personnel trained on the thing
to perform the smog test that just roughly doubled in price
at the minimumimum.

 

Subaru cars are not "small". My Legacy Sedan hold 4 adult males (fat US
male (that's for you Leo Lee)) comfortably. Easily holds 5 females. My
Wagon holds 5 adults very comfortably.

 

"It's no wonder your claims are ridiculed: your research sucks"
No, his claims are ridiculed because they are borderline asinine...

 

AH!
Thanks.

 

Too bad they never imported the Holden Torana--a slightly lengthened, reinforced
Kadett that in one version, Holden actually had plans to stuff a 5-liter V8
into. They were also available in left-hand drive versions until about 1980,
and the post-1974 models were actually slightly larger than Vegas (101"
wheelbase), and _were_ available with 5-liter engines (or fours or sixes), as
well as radial tuned rally suspension.

--Aardwolf.

 

And hit the !@#$!@#$ send key before noting that the
Kalifornia Dynamometer test is excluded if the vehicle
has full time 4wd, limited slip, etc. so watch out for
some goofball that puts your jeep in 4wd and puts only
the back wheels on the dyno and runs it up to Cal-97
smogcheck speed...and out the back of the garage.

Approximately 10/23/03 19:27, Joe uttered for posterity:

 

I can't speak for him, but I need lots of leg and head room. Jeep Cherokee,
to small, I have to recline the seat way back to get my head low enough to
fit. Monte Carlo, to small, again I have to lower and recline the seat as
far as possible just to squeeze in. Mercury Grand Marquis, better, at least
I can drive it in reasonable comfort, but it could stand to be a bit larger
yet. The 1972 Olds 98 LS I used to drive? Perfect! So now I just stick with
full size pickups, which could use a little more headroom themselves. It's
size discrimination I tell you, where's my lawyer? ;-)

 

Germans have the same sort of laws as the Japanese. There are very few 9
year old cars in Germany. The average age of cars in Europe as a whole
is only around 7 years, compared to something like 10 years in the US. I
suspect this is the reason why VWs and Mercedes has such poor long term
reliability. In this county people seem to be willing to spend
incredible amounts of money to keep German cars running. It has always
been a mystery to me why people do this. One of my old office mates had
a really crappy 240D that he spent more on in repairs than I paid in new
car payments. The car was uncomfortable, dead slow and ugly, but he
seemed to think it was some sort of status symbol To me it was a second
rate taxi.

Ed

 

Not from what I saw. I saw lots of old vehicles on the road in northern
Germany. Including an early 80s F-body GM, a GM full size station wagon,
countless old VW products, etc etc.

There were some sort of inspection laws, but hardly the get the 4 year
old cars off the road ones I've heard about for japan.

 

It doesn't change the truthfulness (or lack thereof) of your statement. It
is a statement about the absurdity of your statement. If someone doesn't
think that they can avoid crashes by being alert, then there is no reason
to be alert.

Like looking at a motorcycle and not really seeing them, then pulling out
and hitting them without ever having seen them (a relatively common cause
of motorcycle crashes), just looking in the right direction is completely
useless. You must also process the information correctly. If you do that,
you will be able to predict other drivers.

If you think that you can not predict other drivers, then you are
incompetent.

Marc
For email, remove the first "y" of "whineryy"

 

And I've heard that even at those prices, the 18 wheelers are still doing
more proportional damage.

Marc
For email, remove the first "y" of "whineryy"

 

My car is smaller than your car.

Marc
For email, remove the first "y" of "whineryy"

 

None of those 5 have long legs, if they are comfortable.

 

Well, yeah. And of course, I am quite confident that non of us are going to
be around when the oil finally does run out. I've read some experts that
feel
that there's more oil located offshore than all the land-based proven
reserves
now. And of course, while as long as oil is pumping from the Mid-East,
ANWR will be safe, once that goes down then they are going to drill
in there regardless of what the environmentalists want.

And then there's things like oil shale, where the United States has the
largest
reserves of it, that are estimated to produce enough oil to last for
centuries.

It's going to be at least 500-1000 years I feel before humanity has sucked
the very last drop of recoverable oil out of the ground. Of course, the bad
news is that extracting oil from shale, from played-out oil fields with
steam,
and from offshore, is going to be a lot more expensive than just importing
it
from the Mid East today. What we can hope is that what has happened with
population in Europe (it is heading down) as Europe has got more civilized,
will happen in the rest of the developed world. One of the biggest and most
obvious ways to reduce oil consumption is simply to reduce the population
by everyone having fewer babies. Nature alone would do it if
everyone had just 2 kids. But this is another discussion, of course.

So, yes, a lot of this is really science fiction. But as the easy-to-pump
oil fields dry up, and we start switching to harder-to-extract oil, there
will be a rise in fuel costs that will level off again, thus forcing some of
these
transportation changes.

No it wouldn't. Most electric cars would be recharged at night when
power use is very low. And the power companies can easily enforce
this, they have been ramping up for this as a matter of fact. A number
have pilot programs that used computerized meters, that report usage
back via cellular. Industry has got used to paying different rates for
power consumed during peak periods, and if electric cars became widely
used, the power companies would simply change tariffs to allow them to
charge a lower rate for off-peak power, and a higher rate for peak power
for residential users. It's unlikely the PUC's would object because the rate
structure can be designed simply to make it more expensive to charge
electric
cars during the day, while otherwise the average rate paid would be little
changed.
Keep in mind that the power distribution grid has to be designed to supply
enough power for everyone in the city to switch on their A/C unit
in the middle of 100+ temperatures in the city. Most of the time it
is loafing along.

The big problem is generation capacity, espically in some areas (like
California for example) The cost to bring new generation capacity
online today is five times what it cost to bring it online 30 years ago.
This is due to the requirement that the emissions requirements for
new plants are more stringent than for old ones, also because now
everyone and their dog can try to delay construction with environmental
complaints and such during the environmental impact statement period.
And unfortunately the only really available fuel we can use for power
genration on a large scale is coal.

That is OK, though. We have a long, long time before the price of oil
becomes impossible to use it for fuel. If the price of it doubles, then
electric cars will become cheaper than gasoline for city people, even
though gasoline still won't be too expensive to use for trucks and other
shipping, as well as long-haul family vacations and road trips.

After all consider the last time you took your boat up to the lake (or
equivalent)
It probably only cost about $30 in fuel. Now double that. While it
hurts a bit, it's still not impossible to keep using gasoline for
recreational
use, hauling sheetrock, etc. But merely doubling it would be enough
to get a lot of 2-car owner families in the city who own 2 gasoline cars to
switch
over to 1 gas burner, 1 electric, or to switch to 2 electrics, and 1 gas
burner, assuming of course that electric power plants with their
increased efficiencies of converting oil/coal into electricity are able to
hold the line or just slightly increase electric power costs.

Ultimately of course in the far future when the cost of oil really does
go up ten times over today's costs, your going to see a lot of both
short-hop and long-hop commuting switch over to electric rail
lines. This already is cost-effective and very popular in cities like
New York, and it is catching on as above-ground light rail in many
other cities. And also people forget that once oil is pumped out
of the world and the supply of it dimishes, the cost of aviation gas is
going to skyrocket. And nobody has figured out how to power
non-military airplanes from anything other than liquid fuel. Hence the
interest in high-speed bullet trains.

When the choices are going to be electric cars and electric rail or nothing,
people are going to take the electric cars and mass transit.

Your forgetting one thing and that is that it's possible to design a
_constant_velocity_ engine to be more efficient than a
variable speed engine. You can tune the ports and a lot of
other things. If the hybrid designs were a highly efficient engine
coupled to a generator that fed motors in the wheels, with a
battery for idling speeds, you might use even less fuel. The big
problem here is that accelleration is shit, which is why the hybrid
designers didn't go this way. Once again, though, if gasoline was
$25 a gallon, people would suffer not being able to make
jackrabbit starts off the light.

There's a tradeoff you missing here, and that is convenience.
The reason the personal automobile is so popular right now is
that the cost of running it is pretty low and it is enormously
convenient. As the oil runs out and
the cost of running it starts to rise, people will be stuck with
a choice between paying a lot of money for the convenience of
running a personal car and paying less money and being more
inconvenienced by using subway/light rail/walking/busses

Ultimately what is going to come out of this is a society where
if people want to keep their cars they are just not going to be
able to put 10,000 miles a year on them, or they are going to
have to give them up and waste more hours of their life sitting
around waiting for busses/rail/etc. My guess knowing the
population of the United States, that people are going to hold
on to their cars as long as possible, so your going to see a
lot more people selling homes and moving close by when they
take a new job, or they are going to be demanding their
employers supply telecommuting options for jobs (clerical
etc.) that can do it.


Ted

 

Read the posts again. Think about the context before you head off on
some crusade that completely misses the point that I made.

To review, here's Nate's response

"> sounds like nate has an amazing ability to control where other cars

--nate wrote--

"No, just to *predict* what other drivers are going to do and *avoid*
being collected by them. Works pretty well so far."

My response:

"If you think you can avoid accidents because you think that you can
predict what other drivers are going to do then you are even more
hopelessly clueless than your other posts indicate."

Of course some accidents can be avoided if you have good SA.

Nevertheless, good SA doesn't make one immune or make one able to
*predict* where all other drivers are going.

Get it?

I don't think that nor did I write that.

Read again.

Slowly if it helps.

Good luck.