imo We've come a long way in a short period of time when it comes to vehicle safety, and i get the impression automobiles are going to be quite a bit safer in the near future.

I've been the cause of three minor fender benders in my life, and all three would have been avoided if i was driving a new fancy car equipped with collision avoidance gear.

I was thinking about car safety and how the biggest variable is likely the driver...how specific cars are driven on average, and it struck me that the best way to promote public safety would be to make your maximum speed limit variable based on gvw (gross vehicle weight). This is already done for vehicles with more than two axles or those towing trailers because it's obvious they take longer to stop. The same logic should apply to every car. It's a no brainer that a Humvee takes longer to stop than a Miata, and is far less controllable under emergency braking. For the safety of both those in such larger vehicles and the general public, they should not be allowed to go as fast as cars weighing 1/4 their weight with better brakes.
A side benefit of such a system would be greater average fuel economy, because bigger cars have greater wind resistance (on average) so become less efficient at higher speeds.
Of course, I wouldn't expect that kind of reason to ever fly in America where the most popular car is a heavy truck that's never used for hauling and could be replaced with a Honda Civic with no loss of functionality for >75% of owners....but everyone wants to drive a tank so they're safer, with no thought about what that means for the other cars on the road.

*quality explanation of why crash testing is only a tiny part of real life safety in cars
*promote

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A good way to get a feel for the difference between modern and older cars is to play BeamNG. Crash an old car at speed in that and it will get destroyed while a modern car will hold together.

Maybe for average cars, but that's not true when it comes to old Broncos or Jeeps. In the early 70's, they built them like tanks (heavy and slow), especially with the roll bar option properly installed, Broncos even had a thick full tube frame, not just a C channel, not unibody, and definitely no plastic.

Granted, the safety systems were lap belts and nothing more and the steering column would spear through your chest in a head on crash while the bare metal dash cracks your passenger's head, even stock they tend to roll, the fuel economy is non existent, and top speed is well under 2/3 what modern cars can produce (good thing since the brakes are sub par), but the cars themselves are nearly indestructible (I have one of each). I've dropped my jeep frame 3+ ft onto solid rock, it chipped the rock (and maybe my spine). ;-)
Late 70's early 80's that all changed, mostly for the worst.