Be­fore fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy took prece­dence over ve­hi­cles struc­tur­al safe­ty, the ma­te­r­i­al strength of ve­hi­cles gave added pro­tec­tion to oc­cu­pants in­creas­ing their chances of walk­ing away from a ma­jor au­to crash un­scathed. Iron­i­cal­ly, mod­ern ve­hi­cles are de­signed to fold on im­pact, crush­ing oc­cu­pants, yet they are fit­ted with airbags to pro­tect them. The car Jizelle Sa­landy was trav­el­ling in dur­ing the ac­ci­dent that took her life is a typ­i­cal ex­am­ple of fu­el ef­fi­cien­cy giv­en pri­or­i­ty over struc­tur­al de­pend­abil­i­ty. Sure, the car has safe­ty de­vices, but even if the airbags cor­rect­ly de­ployed, Jizelle had no chance of walk­ing away from a high im­pact ac­ci­dent in that struc­tural­ly un­sound car.

What stu­pen­dous rea­son would it take to raise the bar on ve­hi­cles im­pact strength? Pa­per-thin ve­hi­cles have long proven how un­safe they are in an im­pact. It's the pub­lic's con­sen­sus that au­to im­porters must make au­to safe­ty a top pri­or­i­ty. Had they been do­ing so, this coun­try would own few­er ve­hi­cles that col­lapse on pas­sen­gers, maim­ing and crush­ing them to death when ac­ci­dents hap­pen. Isn't it ob­vi­ous that re­gard­less of dri­ver vig­i­lance, ve­hi­cles are too struc­tural­ly weak to with­stand the mildest crash or do cit­i­zens await "for­eign ex­perts" to con­firm this fact? As much as we want too, we can't pre­vent every road ac­ci­dent, but we can ex­er­cise choice. We have the pow­er to im­port stronger safer ve­hi­cles to safe­guard oc­cu­pants. Now is a fine time to start do­ing so. What would au­to im­porters gain by pro­cras­ti­nat­ing or stick­ing to the sta­tus quo - more un­time­ly deaths, more road car­nage to match the mur­der toll?

B Joseph

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