I am sorry, I do not hate Europe. I hate that our Pres. is a idiot, and that he wants us to be like you, with you dumb little lawn mower cars

@Sticky:
Some of it yes, I like the running light/turn signal light that seems to be standard on VWs and other euro cars (can be seen on the gery car in this pic). Side airbags and the like.

That said

A lot of euro cars would never pass US safety standards, the “Smart” car could not be sold here until very recently for that reason.

And there is still the laws of phsyics. Small cars are always going to be less safe. Big cars are always going to give you less MPG (although that is improving) then a small car. what MPG is your life worth when you hit a white tail deer at 70 MPH?

As a Paramedic, if I roll onto an accident and see a Cadillac and a Prius I do not usually worry to much about the people in the Cadillac. Crumple – zone – matters. Distance between you and the tree your just hit, also matters.

Fuel efficiency is hard to judge, you can not just look at the total MPG. we could make a car that gets 70 MPGS and is a respectable size, but it would never pass emission standards in any developed nation. We have largely demonized the diesel engine for this reason. I understand eurp. likes the diesel more then we do. Wish we could pull our heads out of our asses.

Some of it depends what side of the coin you are on. Do airbags save lives, yes. However side impact airbags can be very dangerous to first responders, there have been emergency workers seriously hurt when these devices are damaged in a crash, or are cut by fire fighters because the locations of the compressed gas canisters are not marked and have no standardized location.

And yes, people are forcing us to move to those little cars, through the manipulation of the free market and imposing of excessive taxes.

@... nyokki. older style (early 90s) airbags only had one charge, and it as big. The airbags all expanded with a lot of force. How fast they inflate is important. New cars (with the trend being towards the more expensive ones) have sensors that can figure out you weight, and use less charges to deploy the bag if the person in the seat is only 100 lbs.
This is better for you in a wreck. But multi-charges means more things can get damaged(this would really happen in a truly catastrophic wreck.

IF you SIT where you are SUPPOSED to, and not right on top of the steering wheel & wear a seat belt, you’ll be fine no mater when the car was made.

If you an idiot, and have so much crap in the car that your seat is moved all the way forward and then you tilt the seat forward so you can get more crap, leaving your face ~ 1 foot from the dash?

The airbag is going to break your nose, and teeth.

You can make driving idiot proof

but we SHALE develop a better idiot.