passenger issue, is it safe? Options

[TROJANMAN]

my 2 year old is itchin' to go for a ride in "daddy's new car." this morning on the way to daycare she said "daddy's new car ? (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/rolleyes.gif)" no sooner did she notice me make our way to the grocery getter when she spouted "no mommy's car, Daddy's car! (IMG:http://www.914world.com/bbs2/html/emoticons/mad.gif) "
so my question is:
can i drive her to daycare safely without having to worry about someone plowing into me? i know, anything can happen, most accidents happen within 1 mile of your home, etc..... the risk probably won't outweigh the reward here, so i just wanted to hear a few opinions. thanks.

we spent $300+ on a car seat, so it has to be worth something, right?

[lapuwali]

QUOTE (aylanco @ May 3 2005, 02:23 PM)

Not to be a downer, BUT...the Civic probably has a crash rating of four stars while a 914 would probably get a 1 star rating in todays standards. Safe for 1973, but not good today. And last I checked, we are driving these cars today in today's environment.

That may very well be true from formal crash tests. The real-world is often rather different.

Last year, my wife, driving the Explorer she had at the time, hit the passenger side of a recent Civic driven by a woman who turned left in front of her. Impact speed was about 30mph.

In 1975, my father was hit by a jacked-up K5 Blazer while driving a 1971 Bug, also in the passenger side (he was crossing an intersection, and the Blazer ran the light). Impact speed was about 30mph.

The two cars (Civic and Beetle) looked remarkably similar post crash: passenger side crushed all the way over to the driver's side. Both drivers got out with basically no injuries. The SUVs were lightly damaged in both cases.

Now, this doesn't prove anything, as accidents are always different. However, for my money, all of the extra technology and expense poured into the Civic did nothing useful relative to the Bug in a very similar accident. I'm sure NHTSA would say the Bug was far less safe than the Civic, and have plenty of perfectly legitimate statistics to prove it. Physics is all that matters in the real-world, though, not crash statistics.

The SUV v small car problem is also obviously not new. We lived in Alaska at the time, which was FULL of vehicles that are called SUVs today, but were just called trucks then. I'd not be surprised if the situation was similar in Colorado at that time, too. Driving a Bug in America in the 50s would have been about the same thing, except it was you v. nearly every other car on the road, as they ALL weighed 3500-4500lbs then.