Is an XT safe/can I make it safe?

[idosubaru]

10 hours ago, linkthehero1234 said:

 

also, i found some crash test data for the xt here and here, can anyone help interpret this data?

Doesn’t matter.   What Id recommend is buy the car and take note of what is actually killing  and severely maiming people on the roads.  Then do your best to drive appropriately knowing you’re at an enormous disadvantage in the event of an accident. View it more like a motorcycle than a truck. 

Seriously if you want it you’re better off getting it and realizing what you have and what your risks are, and drive appropriately, rather than trying to anecdotally look for one ancient, out of context, weak data point to prove your case. That’s a false sense of security and avoids a real world practical approach that would help you.  What you’re doing won’t be accurate or meaningful. But maybe if you’re trying to convince parents that doesn’t matter?!

The single biggest factor in vehicle safety and DEATH by a long shot is vehicle weight.  Period. It’s light relative to what will be encountered on the road today and has no drivers air bag. Light and no air bags. There’s literally nothing to talk about.

Economists at UC Berkeley I think showed 47% increase in deaths for 1,000 pound weight differential or something like that. Wealthy people (and probably others) know this and talk about it and are buying large cars for this explicit reason - just to be the biggest, and thereby safest, on the road. I’ve heard the statements in person.

Average vehicle weight since the 1980s XT has increased like 1,000 pounds.  And that doesn’t take into account miles driven by large vehicles which I think has ramped up drastically as well. Meaning the extremities of sizes - commercial trucks (we love our low cost China products and Amazon), hummers, Yukon’s, Trucks and how many miles these large vehicles are driving to their cabin or second beach home  have increased dramatically and soccer mom people buying these things drive a lot.

New car consumers obsession for heavier is correlated with cheap gas which seems to be the rule in the US.  But that’s an only indirectly related tangent. 

Large vehicles dominate road ways, drive like they know it, and have latest safety improvements when the XT doesn’t even have a basic airbag to save your neck when a texting person rear ends you. Which happens all the time.  We are lucky airbags preceded cell phones or wed have a lot more deaths and paralysis.

Average speeds are increasing, distracted driving (screens) are through the roof (and killed a friend of mine who got rear ended at 60 mph while waiting to turn left). Populations are migrating to cities at high rates increasing congestion and incidents. All of these disproportionately impact small car safety in ways a crash test from 40 years ago won’t show  

A 37 year old XT crash test is more akin to history than accurate data.

Im not saying don’t get it. I’ve owned an XT since 1992.   But data and basic physics tell us there’s nothing safe about a small 1987 sedan/coupe with no airbags in 2022. And an old crash test won’t bear much of this out  

And it’s not a bad idea to realize all of this even if you get a hummer  

 

[GeneralDisorder]

idosubaru is absolutely correct. That's why I said the XT is terrifying to drive. Every other vehicle looks like a skyscraper driving past you and the roads are absolutely full of morons on their phones and screens built into their cars. 

This is part of why my daily is a lifted K5 Jimmy on 35's and my recreational vehicle is an Army LMTV that weighs 21,000 lbs. I'm not about to get taken out by some soccer mom in a Suburban.

GD