rev up your engines, today I'm talking about the safest car that you can drive
realize that in the United States in 2018 about 40,000 people died in car
accidents so they're not the safest things in the world let's put it that
way, although 2018 had a 1% decline from 2017 if you know anything about
statistics that is not statistically significant at all, maybe it's not a bad
idea to think about buying the safest car you can buy, now just off the top of
my head I'd say the safest car you could buy today would be any Jaguar, Jaguars
break down all the time they spent a lot of time at the dealer being repaired or
they don't run at all and you can't be injured in a car if it doesn't move down
the road, it's really safe in your driveway or sitting at the dealer, but on
a serious side if you want to have a safe car I'm gonna go into a little of
the history of car safety to show you what today's safest car is in my opinion
if you're going to be driving down the road in it and not just letting it sit
there because it doesn't work, now in 1970 the National Highway Traffic Safety
Association began in the United States and its whole mission was to make cars
safer and reduce deaths in car driving and in 1978 they actually started
testing and rating cars using those crash test dummy stuff, in 93 they came
up with this five-star rating system of you know 1 stars bad five stars best and
then they graduated into more serious testing side crashing, rollover
crashing they're really testing these things a lot better than they used to
I've been in cars didn't even have seat belts on them seat belts were the big
technology for car safety so you wouldn't go flying through the
windshield or flying out the door if you get in a big wreck and actually if you
use seatbelts they work quite well, the main reason I came up with airbags was
because people weren't using their seatbelts, so they stuck airbags in and
then whether you have your seatbelt on or not you getting a big rock the airbag
is gonna boom and hit you and keep you from smashing against the dash
the they added side impact airbags, cars have numerous airbags now just realize
one thing about airbags they only work once they're an explosion
boom they make the airbag and then they quickly deflate, so you still want to use
your seatbelts, when you get in a wreck boom they all blow off what happens if it
twirls around then you get hit again or are the car rolls and rolls and rolls
and rolls, you still want to use your seatbelts, look at racecar drivers
they wear seat belts of course the race car drivers have
multi-point systems they even have helmets they have systems that hold them
in place and if you really want the safest vehicle up there get yourself a
Formula One race car you ever see in all those races the guys fly up in the air
you think they're all dead and they walk away cuz they're inside a cage that can
break away and they're totally safe, cars aren't that safe they cost too much
money to make if they built them that way
but since the United States about 90 people die every day from car accidents
and over 3 million people are injured every year, it's a good idea get a car it
has the most safety things that actually work and in that respect of course the
newer cars are much safer than the older cars, we're starting to put all these
collision avoidance systems in it that'll warn you someone's on the side
if you're trying to turn and start beeping some of them even have semi
automatic braking systems so that if you're not noticing you get too close to
the vehicle it starts to apply the brakes itself and these systems are
becoming more and more available, they claim I guess by the year 2022
it'll be mandated in the United States that all cars are gonna have to have
this collision avoidance systems put into them when they're built new if
you're getting a vehicle of all these collision avoidance systems they're all
electronically operated you in a car that has electronic systems that
actually work and hold up over time it's no good if there's a system that
electronically can help break your car but it breaks down it doesn't work
correctly when you need it, when I was younger everybody said Volvo's they're
the safest they're built like tanks and yes decades ago volvo had the
highest safety ratings, as of 2018 Volvo didn't even make the top ten list
of most of the people who have analyzed which cars are safer than others
hey 2018 the IIHS that rates safety didn't have a single Volvo with the top
safety rating in it, you don't necessarily need a super-heavy vehicle
to be safe, sure when I was young you get a big Lincoln Continental in the
nineteen sixties it was huge there's just kinetic energy when you're
driving down the road and if you have a huge Lincoln and you hit a smaller car
it's gonna push the smaller car around it was safer that way
because they didn't have all these other technologies, didn't have crumple zones
on cars, they didn't have airbags, so bigger was better but today it's more
technology, that said I wouldn't be seen dead on the highway driving against
these 18-wheelers and one of those little bitty smart cars, so when you
take all this information in consideration what do I really think is
the safest car you can get today, I'd say it's the 2019 lexus rx350 from all the
research that I've done is certainly in my own customers experience with the
350s, no one has ever died in a crash in the
United States driving on rx350, hopefully I won't jinx
anybody who's driving one now to get in a massive wreck but no one has, so that's
telling you hey nobody's ever died in one of these things and these are fast
vehicles it's not like people are driving 20 miles an hour in them, they're
very safe vehicles from my experience of working on cars the last 51 years
Lexus electronics are extremely reliable in the past
the stuff has worked for quite some time I'm assuming they're still making them
the same way 2019 if the systems are there and they actually work correctly
you're gonna be safer, now of course being a Lexus their not giving these things away
you want to spend that kind of money, it's the best bet as far as I'm
concerned, now of course a Sherman tank or today and Abrams tank would
definitely be much safer but they get horrendous gas mileage and really you
can't buy one if you're a private citizen anyway, so my choice for the
safest car you can buy is the lexus rx350, hey like
I said so far nobody's even been killed in one so how can you beat that
their a lot better looking than those old Volvos were, hey they ride a whole bunch
better, modern technology they also get a lot better gas mileage, so if you never
want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring that Bell!