Date:         Sun, 15 Feb 2009 13:52:48 -0600
Reply-To:     joel walker <uncajoel@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         joel walker <uncajoel@BELLSOUTH.NET>
Subject:      Re: VW bus and beetle on Yahoo's 10 deadlies car list. Any thruth?
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
              reply-type=original

> Is there any objective truth to this? I once saw an article that
> despite the obvious challenges in making a forward cab vehicle safe
> in head on collisions, the T3 bus/vanagon is in fact one of the
> least
> accident prone vehicles in the insurance statistics. Obviously

no truth ... just opinions by uninformed biased idiots.
my insurance company, usaa, gives me a safe-vehicle discount on my
vanagons ... because the chances of serious injury is LESS than in
comparable vehicles. so i kinda don't see how it (or the previous
generations, which are pretty much the same design) could be 'deadly'.

> accidents are caused by vehicle plus driver. (The no 6, Corvette,
> on the list might have been safer if marketed as an "Oldsmobile" to
> that segment of GM customers.)

i MIGHT agree that the corvette is 'dangerous' simply because it is a
very low car.
but then so are the triumphs, mg's, fiats, porsches, and all the other
'sports cars' of the 60's and 70's, so why not pick them as well?

this all smacks of ralph nader and his 'unsafe at any speed' crusade
years ago, against the gm corvair and the volkswagen beetle. road &
track magazine took him to task on the beetle and redid his 'research'
... only to find out he flat lied. the research groups/papers he had
cited did NOT support his conclusions ... quite the opposite: they
pointed out that the beetle was rather a safe car design for the
times, certainly no worse than the fords and chevrolets.

people who didn't live though those years and don't do enough research
forget how dangerous automobiles were back then ... i can recall a
mechanic in my home town being killed by a fan blade flying off and
hitting him in the head ... the holding rivet had rusted from
boil-over from the radiator. we have plastic radiator fans nowadays,
possibly partly due to such accidents. and there were LOTS of things
just as dangerous ... non-shattering window glass, pointy objects in
the dash, poorly anchored seats, no seat belts, no 'crush zones' ... i
recall another accident that involved two large american cars, head on
crash. the engine of one car wound up in the front seat with two
people and the transmission crushed the legs of one fellow in the rear
seat.  it really is a wonder any of us survived accidents back then.
:(

but to pick on just ten? and especially the beetles and buses? no,
this is just garbage. unfortunately it went out over the internet and
will be perceived as 'truth' by millions of people, most of which will
shake their heads and mutter sagely " i knew it all the time". :(

unca joel