[ozim]

There are older cars that have the same safety features as new ones but those cars are still expensive. I don’t remember any super novel safety feature that came up in last 10 to 15 years. Especially ones that could be just added to any car. Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.

Besides that older cars are less safe because they are old not because they lack safety features.

That airbag 15 years old might or might not work. You have 300k kilometers driven there will be rust here and there.

[byw]

Open Pilot essentially created an aftermarket advanced adaptive cruise control that works better than most brands outside of Tesla. They just can't sell it legally as a whole package, so you buy the hardware, but the software is open source.

The difficulty of modifying the body, is mostly a financial decision I think. The body is by-and-large optimized for assembly rather than repair and modifications - that's why body shops charge an arm and a leg.

> Crumple zones are model specific you can’t just change those without making new car.

Yep, and I think that's the problem. Cars should be designed in a way that you can make this kind of safety upgrades. There's little technical reason why with a more modular body and platform, the manufacturer can't design a new crumple zone for retrofit, run finite element analysis, and crash test it.

They may need to rethink fundamentally how mass-market cars are made, like using more fasteners instead of welding in the body and frame, or using plastic instead of sheet metal when they are not necessary, like for the body panels.

That old malfunctioning airbags should be able to be replaced easily.

But then it would incentivize the customers to keep their old cars instead of buying new ones.

[ozim]

You either know a lot about designing cars or you know nothing about it.

My guess is you know nothing about it based on malfunctioning airbags that should be possible to be replaced easily.

Airbags are one action components so until they fire up you don’t have certainty. You might check electrical connections or replace them „just in case”. Yes airbags might not be good after 15 years and I don’t think anyone who is driving 15yo car has money or is willing to spend money on replacing them.