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26 Mar 2003
p. [Sunday 23rd March]
p. Today I had my first ever motor accident. And it happened in a foreign country and in a hire car. Mr. Butshesagirl and I were leaving the conference hotel to visit Okechobee, and a colleague asked if she could follow us in her hire car, as she was a bit nervous about navigating on her own and she was going in the same direction as us. I was just waiting at the exit to the car park -- minding my own business -- when there was an almighty bang and we got thrown forwards. I couldn't work out what had happened at first, then I realised that my colleague had run into the back of me. At least we knew each other and were still at the hotel. The duty manager called the Police as our rental companies both said we needed to get a police report. The Police told him to call Highway Patrol. Highway Patrol said it was nothing to do with them as it wasn't actually on the highway, so we gave up and filled out a hotel incident report instead. Finally -- after a few hours -- we finally got under way again, a bit shaken up, a little dinged, but otherwise OK.
p. By the way, modern cars are rubbish. In my old Hillman Imp, an impact like that wouldn't have caused any damage. The impact of the rear car would have just bounced off the sturdy steel bumpers. This piece of junk Chevy got a dented bumper and big flakes of paint peeled off the plastic. They don't make 'em like they used to.
2
Oh I know I would have been toast in my Imp. Quite apart from the lack of crumple zones (they are sturdy little things), the seats had no head rests, the seat belts were rubbish, and the brakes were rather dodgy. Fun though! I love rear-engined cars. My point stands though: if you have a teeny bump, it shouldn't make such a mess. That shouldn't be impossible to engineer, should it?
3
You wouldn't really have been toast in an Imp, they were very well designed, and it is believed that even today they would pass an N-CAP safety test. Besides, I have an Imp rally car, which is soon to carry modern safety gear, so i get the best of both worlds! And I agree that they are hardly damaged in a small accident, I had a brake failure during a test run, and the only way to stop the runaway Super Imp was to bounce it off a concrete garage wall! the car was in fine shape, the front-mounted Ford radiator fine, the front panelwork soon straightened out (OK so I resorted to a fair bit of Isopon on both wings to smooth out the repairs!)The Imp survived well, needing only new indicators to be bought to rebuild the front end. That and a fibreglass bonnet, but that's just me, I'm into that kind of thing! Few modern cars would survive this as well, not even Volvos!
by C. McArthur @ 19/05/2003 6:06 pm • Permalink •
4
Imps DID have crumple zones! They were one of the first cars to have them. I saw a crashed one at an Imp National Weekend a few years back and everything ahead of the 'A' pillars had concertina'd to about 10'' long - just as it was supposed to do. If you read aboyut the prototypes, one hit a steamroller and broke it (!) and another was 'borrowed' by an apprentice, who rolled about six times - and walked away! Tough little cars...
by Laurence Watts @ 17/07/2003 3:08 pm • Permalink •
1
"This piece of junk Chevy got a dented bumper and big flakes of paint peeled off the plastic. They don�t make �em like they used to."
American cars are crap. Get an SUV, much more fun and nice and solid.----- your old hillman imp would indeed have been fine. and in a serious crash, your hillman imp would hardly have been damaged while you would be crushed into a mass of very, very dead person. better the car crumple and absorb impact than you crumple.
and SUV's are for people with no respect or concern for anyone else alive. wait'll you see a wreck with a scratched SUV and 4 dead people from the compact it hit. welcome to the US of A.
by jon smiley @ 30/03/2003 4:03 am • Permalink •