The suggestion that today's cars are somehow inferior to their predecessors - the "they don't make 'em like they used to" argument - is one of the great fallacies of motoring.
It's a particularly absurd view when it comes to safety.
Next time you spot an older car, say one from the 1960s, have a look at the interior
You'll see hard, unforgiving surfaces everywhere, sharp edges on the dash, a thin-rimmed wheel with, perhaps, a nice decorative metal bar for the horn. The driver's seat will be flat and unsupportive, with no head restraint. The roof pillars will be thin and unpadded on the inside. The windscreen will probably be unlaminated.
Now picture yourself having a crash in the thing. Bear in mind that, if you were actually beamed back to that decade of full employment, Vietnam and flower power, you would probably not be wearing a seatbelt. The fact is that crashes from which, today, you would stand a better than even chance of walking away - low speed impacts, say less than 40km/h - often killed people in "the good old days."
Safety technology has accelerated, particularly during the past decade, driven by legislation, the engineering skills of the car makers themselves and, most importantly, by consumers demanding safer cars.
Safety did not become a selling point for new cars until the late 1980s, but it certainly is now. Increased public awareness of the relative effectiveness of safety features in different models has been raised by the introduction of independent crash tests, particularly the New Car Assessment Program - NCAP - a worldwide crash test regime in which the NRMA and other groups are participants.
While significant legislation such as the introduction of blood alcohol limits for driving has played a major role in reducing road crash injuries and deaths, the seat belt remains the invention which has saved more lives than any other.
The seat belt
Volvo can take the credit for being the first car maker to introduce the three point (lap/sash) seat belt as a standard fitting. It debuted on the Amazon and PV544 sedans of 1959.
Victoria became the first state in the world to make seat belts (in the front seats) compulsory in 1970. NSW followed the year after.
After seat belts became mandatory, a 50 per cent overall reduction was reported in the number of drivers per 100 vehicles being admitted to hospital.
The basic seat belt design has now been made much more effective. The inertia reel initially minimised the problem of poor adjustment. It now incorporates in most cars a pre-tensioning mechanism, which during an impact tightens the belt to take slack out of the system and prevent excessive forward movement of the occupant. A load limiter, now also common, releases the belt in a controlled way when it senses that your body is being pressed so tight against it that injury may result.
While the seat belt is the most obvious piece of crash protection equipment in a car, some of the really important advances have occurred where you can't see them - in the structure of the car itself.
Car structures
Our 1960s sedan was engineered with very little knowledge of how the destructive energy of a crash can be absorbed and dissipated to minimise harm to its occupants.
Modern cars are specifically designed to do this, thanks to sophisticated computer simulation techniques which allow automotive engineers to create and crash "virtual" cars on their desktop. They can experiment with different body structures, and measure how effectively they absorb and reduce crash impact energy, in an accurate, timely, cost effective way that is not possible with real prototypes. Ultimately, however, they must check their computer models with an actual crash test.
Today's car essentially consists of a strong, rigid passenger "cell" - the structure around the cabin - plus front and rear "crumple zones," which, in an impact, deform in a controlled manner to absorb, spread and reduce the amount of energy generated by the crash itself, before it reaches the passenger compartment.
The front end of a modern vehicle may well suffer more visible damage in a prang than its 1960s ancestor, but that's what it is supposed to do - "the vehicle is sacrificed instead of the occupants".
Engines are, in some cases, now mounted so that in a frontal impact they slide underneath the floor, rather than being pushed into the cabin. At present, plenty of work is going into making vehicle structures more efficient at absorbing side impacts. This is a difficult area, because the point of impact is much closer to where the occupants are sitting and there is less structure to absorb energy.
Airbags
The airbag has made a significant contribution to reducing injury and death in crashes. It was originally developed in the late 1960s by General Motors in the USA. In Australia, Holden was the first local maker to introduce a driver's airbag on the 1993 VR Commodore.
While front airbags are now standard on nearly every new vehicle, side airbags are also becoming very common. They provide extra protection to the upper body in a side-on impact, and in some models, including small cars, are also now supplemented with full length window bags, which drop from the roof and shield occupants' heads from direct contact with an intruding object or vehicle.
The latest airbag technology also includes variable deployment, which measures the severity of an impact and can deploy the airbag at a commensurate speed and force. Some airbag systems can also "read" the size and weight of an occupant and take this into account.
There are many other pieces of clever crash protection engineering in new cars, though their availability still largely depends upon the model and make.
Pedals are now designed to break away in a severe impact, minimising injury to feet and ankles. Seats are shaped to securely hold occupants and prevent them from sliding forward under the seatbelt. Absorbent materials are used between the body structure and the interior trim. Some head restraints automatically move forward and up to cradle and protect the head and neck from whiplash injury.
While all new cars in Australia must meet a statutory federal crash test standard, the test is not as severe as consumer testing and the results of these tests are not, unfortunately, made available to the public.
ANCAP crash tests
The ANCAP program aims to encourage car makers to exceed these minimum standards, and give safety conscious consumers the information they need to make informed choices.
Cars are put through a variety of frontal, side and pedestrian impact tests, then rated on a one to five star basis, five stars being the best result for occupants and 4 stars for pedestrian protection.
The Australian New Car Assessment Program - ANCAP - uses the same methodology as Euro NCAP
A study by the Monash University Accident Research Centre in 2010 of the correlation between ANCAP results and real life crash injury found that "Vehicles that perform well under the ANCAP testing protocol on average also perform well in the UCSR crashworthiness ratings and vehicles that perform poorly under the ANCAP testing protocol on average perform poorly in the UCSR crashworthiness index."
Read our detailed analysis of ANCAP crash tests, and the latest results for individual models.
While today's cars offer superior occupant protection in a crash compared with their ancestors, they're also much better equipped with features to help you avoid disaster in the first place.
Tyre & brake technology
Tyre technology has come a long, long way since the 1960s. Today's tyres now provide grip levels, especially in wet weather, and puncture resistance unheard of on the old cross ply rim protectors.
Disc brakes, independent suspension and power assisted rack and pinion steering also make today's cars, be it in normal driving or an emergency, much more predictable, responsive and forgiving.
ABS brakes, which prevent wheel lockup under heavy braking and allow you to maintain steering control, have now been supplemented on many new cars with traction control, which prevents wheelspin under acceleration, emergency full power assist, which automatically ramps up the brakes' servo assistance beyond a certain pedal pressure, and electronic stability control.
Some ABS systems also regulate the braking force between the front and rear axles.
Electronic Stability Control
Electronic Stability Control (ESC) takes ABS a lot further. It can automatically sense a skid and take action to assist the driver to correct it. It does this by employing steering angle and yaw sensors, in addition to the individual wheel rotation sensors in the ABS system. These sensors detect when the car is deviating from the track the driver is trying to follow- such as when a skid or a slide begin - and automatically employs the ABS brakes on individual wheels to bring the car back on to that track.
At the extreme end of stability control technology, cars such as the Lexus GS300/430 and the Mercedes B Class also have their electric power assisted steering linked to the stability control system, so that if the driver is using an excessive, or insufficient, amount of steering input to correct a potential skid, the wheel is automatically adjusted by a few degrees towards the correct angle. This is felt by the driver at the wheel itself as a gentle tugging, a hint that the wheel needs to be turned in the indicated direction.
Bosch stability control, used by many manufacturers including Mercedes, also incorporates a brake preparation function on the latest version. This senses when an emergency may be about to occur by reading the speed with which the driver releases the accelerator prior to hitting the brakes. If it's much faster than normal, it automatically moves the pads closer to the discs, saving a few fractions of a second, which could mean the difference between disaster and salvation. It also periodically wipes the discs with the pads in wet weather, improving braking effectiveness when required.
Mercedes-Benz, which has electronic stability control (it calls it ESP) on all its cars, claims that in the next 15-20 years, crashes could be halved if all cars were fitted with such systems.
Its head of passenger car development, Dr Hans Joachim Schopf, says ESP is "as significant to the improvement of road safety as ABS, seatbelts and airbags".
This is borne out by several recent studies, which have found that stability control is effective in reducing single vehicle crashes, for example, by up to 56 per cent.
Backward steps
Some aspects of current interior design, particularly the dash layout, can be also seen as a step backwards in safety.
The dash of a modern luxury car often has, literally, more than 60 buttons and switches, plus one or two screens which display the status of things like air-conditioning, audio, trip computer, satellite navigation and other systems.
The driver is in danger of information overload and unsafe levels of distraction, trying to monitor and adjust all of these gadgets instead of concentrating on the road. I recently tested a car which required you to move a cursor, watch a screen and push a button several times just to change radio frequencies.
How many times have you tried to open a CD case, extract the CD without damaging it, line it up with the narrow slot and insert it? It's impossible to do with one hand, quickly, easily and safely, while keeping your eyes on the road. Cassettes might be old tech, but at least you could just leave them lying in a storage bin, grab one and shove it in the slot without being distracted from the driving task.
Latest safety features
As is usually the case, the short-medium term future of car safety technology is evident in the latest luxury sedans from Germany. Most safety features are introduced at this level, and then filter down to more affordable models.
BMW's 5 Series, for example, has headlights which turn with the front wheels, illuminating the path around a corner.
Mercedes-Benz has infrared headlights on its S Class, which are invisible to the naked eye but which effectively turn night into day. A camera on the windscreen captures the image, which is projected on to the instrument panel as a greyscale impression.
BMW and Mercedes-Benz now have "intelligent" cruise controls that uses radar to monitor the gap between you and the car in front, and automatically adjust the speed of your car, applying the brakes if necessary, to maintain a safe distance. Subaru will introduce a similar system in 2011 using cameras.
The Mercedes Brake Distronic Plus system can bring the car to a complete stop, without you even touching the brake pedal, to avoid a rear end collision. They use long and short range radar, to operate effectively at any speed up to 200 km/h. Volvo includes a system that also recognises pedestrians and pulls the car to a stop before impact at up to 30 km/h.
The S Class Benz also has anticipatory technology, called "Pre Safe", which works on the assumption that two thirds of crashes are preceded by "critical dynamic situations" - skidding, emergency braking or a sudden evasive manoeuvre.
Pre Safe uses the ABS and stability control sensors, plus radar, to read these danger signs and prepare the car for a possible impact in milliseconds. It automatically tensions the seat belts, adjusts the seats (front passenger and rear) and head restraints to their optimum protective positions, and closes the sunroof. If high lateral forces exist, the side windows are also closed. Benz claims that, in two thirds of crashes, there is sufficient time for Pre Safe to make these adjustments before the big bang.
After impact, Post Safe automatically switches off the engine, lowers the windows for ventilation and unlocks the doors. The new S Class even has indicator markings on the windscreen adjacent to the point at which rescuers should cut the front pillars to get to you in the event that you are trapped inside the car after a crash.
The car safety story continues to develop as automotive engineers gain a greater understanding of crash energy and vehicle motion and then apply that understanding to the design and construction of new models.
"They don't make 'em like they used to", is absolutely true. And as far as safety is concerned, that, by and large, is a very good thing.
