[yourusername]

In the 70s there we about 1/4 as many cars on the road in my country compared to today, but 5 times as many road deaths. People got killed or seriously injured all the time before improvement in safety standards. As a society having to replace 50 $1000 bumpers to save 1 person being seriously injured is a great deal.

[potato3732842]

You're basically using the outlier here to mislead about the typical/median and erroneously implying that they're more linked than they are.

40-50yr ago in the era of 10mph bumpers and whatnot the typical experience was superior because the typical driver is experiencing minor no-injury mishaps. Sliding off the road in the snow at low speed was a tow truck bill and only that, not $2k just to get the car drivable again.

Buuuuuuut, the results for the minority of drivers experiencing injurious crashes was way, way worse back then, as the people who screech about stats are happy to tell you.

What makes a car cheap to repair for the average user getting in the median or average accident and survivable for the guy who gets piss drunk and drives off a cliff are mostly tangential from each other. There's no reason we can't have both and there's no reasonable and non-malicious reason to hide or downplay the regression on this axis. Modern cars would likely perform way better than old cars if shrugging off minor accidents was not a decreased design priority due to stiffer cabins and other changes in construction.

The stuff that makes modern cars get totaled in minor hits is mostly a reflection of styling and fuel economy based choices.

[SR2Z]

The typical driver was significantly more likely to die back then. Modern cars shrug off small accidents too - you just end up with dents or scratches or other ugly but cosmetic body damage.

The thing that makes modern cars so easy to total is unibody construction. We do that to save on costs, but also because it leads to better ride quality and fuel efficiency.