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Comment by ddejohn

1 day ago

My first car was a 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme S, which I got in 2010 and drove for three years before it bit the dust. It was an absolute boat but it was fun to drive, and I could see virtually 360°. I never once in the time I had it had any vision issues.

My next car I got in 2021 was a 2007 Prius. It has a super thick A-pillar in a really terrible spot that makes turning left quite stressful. The turning radius is amazing and I love driving what these days is considered a "compact car", but I absolutely loathe the A-pillar. I am constantly dancing in my seat to see around it, and will check both ways 4 or 5 times before crossing roads from a side street because my field of view is so limited.

I've always mused about whether reducing vision for the sake of crash safety actually ends up resulting in more accidents. Is it better to try to prevent accidents by improving visibility or mitigate harm in the event of an accident (which seems more and more like an inevitability these days where I live where there's virtually zero traffic enforcement; I see red-light runners multiple times per day, and a section of our city highway with 55 mph speed limit has the entire traffic stream going 75)?

I could talk for days about the design of modern cars in the US...