Wednesday 10th September 2003

How Thick are your Pillars?

Crash test requirements could be making our cars more dangerous because we can't see out of them so well

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[Black S2K]

It's taken a long time for anyone to wake up to this!

Designers should be forced to drive a 60's saloon, which you can see out of.

The MX-5 is ok with the roof down, but up, especially with the big mirrors, you could lose a bus if you weren't careful!

[pdV6]

Didn't Volvo (predictably) come up with a concept car recently that had glass A-pillars?

[Psychobert]

Yup, vehicle design is known to cause visibility problems, though its rarely documented as that could lead to an admission which could get all legal. Its pretty obvious when you think about it that some cars are more difficult to see out of..

[Avocet]

Citroen's "DS" in the late 1950s made a selling feature of the fact that the "A" posts were so thin. The were, indeed amazingly thin but I wouldn't like to roll one! I also remember being impressed by a late 70s or early 80s Saab saloon which had asymetric "A" pillars. They were both triangular in cross section and each was angled so that the apex of the triangle pointed towards the driver's eye line. I assume they had different pressings for right and left hand drive cars! A final thought is that all modern cars need to pass the "Forward Visibility" requirements of an EC Directive as part of their Type Approval. Obviously all the cars on the list (even the worse ones) must have passed this EC test?

[dandarez]

just been out in a VW Passat - how that got 11th place gawd knows - should have been near bottom. The curvature of pillars and width makes it a nightmare. then jumped in ol G reg saloon - like being in a glasshouse in comparison.

[Dodge]

The Vauxhall Meriva, with 1.33 is shocking! What does it have - two small eye holes in an otherwise opaque screen?