A HGV destroyed the front of my 406 estate a few years ago. The driver didn't even know he'd hit me.

A 406 is quite a big lump of metal. It weighs about the same as an entire class of children.

Do we mean 1950's era children or the more weighty modern variant .

Actually, that's a measure they should use in tabloid stories in the 'twice the size of Wales' mode. "Last year NHS hospitals threw away an amount of food weighing the same as 14 classes full of children".

IIRC 406 only has a poor 3 star NCAP rating so im not surprised

What's the NCAP rating of a school kid, then?!



Nah, that's usually football pitches or double-decker buses? Those well-known units of measurement.

How does the Euro NCAP rating of a vehicle affect the ability of one driver to tell when they've hit a vehicle? You'd think a car with lots of nice crumpley bits (designed to soften impacts) would be in some cases more difficult to detect.

I was stating that the low ncap = weaker metal plus easier to crunch, its french too so

I think children and cars have probably kept pace over the decades. Modern cars are much fatter than their 1980s equivalents.

Probably because of the NCAP thing. Stronger cars are heavier, and fat kids bounce better

So does that mean that fat kids are 5 star safe?

Safer than thin kids I would have thought. Real safety is all about who's driving them though.

Yes but thin kids could easily go under a car without actually touching the chassis or axles, especially with high 4x4's.

My neighbour has an Austin 7 he's working on. He brings it round every so often. The doors are thin - and I mean 3-ply thin. Compare that to the thick air-bag rich doors in my car. Cars have indeed got fatter as they have more safety feats built in. A modern car is designed to crumple easily, and send the shock of an impact away from the cabin. That's another reason they are bulkier - all those pockets which are designed to buckle in certain ways to achieve this effect.