[Johnny555]

and is comparable to normal cars with a hood

Well, at least when compared to cars from 1984. I wonder how it would fare against a modern car?

Cars are much safer today, the paper below says that the probability of a driver being killed in a new 2008-2012 car is 0.29 versus 0.42 in a new 1985-1993 model year car.

https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

(another interesting finding from that paper is that the probability of death increases as the vehicle ages, even within the same model year)

[kube-system]

> (another interesting finding from that paper is that the probability of death increases as the vehicle ages, even within the same model year)

Looks like they don't speculate much on it -- they mention improvements in driver behavior over time and maintenance. Not bad, but my first thoughts were:

* a 20 year old vehicle is often driven by a person with a different socioeconomic situation than someone with a 1 year old vehicle, and those economic situations correlate heavily with other driving behaviors.

* as vehicles are getting safer and more powerful, highway speeds are rising, so 20 year old vehicle that are just keeping up with traffic are going faster than they used to.

[brummm]

One could also just use the current version of that car to compare to other cars. VW has been making that type of car forever and still does.

[Johnny555]

VW doesn't seem to make any van in the USA, I took a quick look and don't see any current rear-engined VW vans like the Vanagan sold in any country, but do see some front-engined styles sold in other countries.

Where do they still sell a rear engined Vanagan style van?

Wikipedia says the T3 was the last of the VW rear engined vans (last made in 2002 for the African market, and 1990 in Germany).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Type_2_(T3)