Road safety: the modern visibility hazard

Have any of you noticed how enormous the dashboards fitted to modern cars have become? Where 10 years ago you could sit in the driver’s seat of your car and easily reach out and touch the windscreen, this simple manoeuvre is now impossible in plenty of new cars.

This unusual characteristic of modern vehicle design has become popular for what I believe to be the following reasons:

Renault Scenic interior

- - Acres of elongated dashboard together with larger windscreens and thicker A-pillars are simply a contemporary design feature and perceived as very “now” and stylish.

< - Far more extensive and complicated safety features and especially the adoption of airbags are better integrated into a large dashboard design. Also, drivers are now positioned a lot further from the windscreen than before and this makes sense from an increased safety perspective.

All of which is wonderful in theory. A swoopy dashboard with curves in all the right places, a multitude of airbags and plenty of buttons to touch makes the modern car interior a treat for both the family man and the self-confessed technocrat.

However, UK-based WhatCar magazine ran what I believe to be an extremely underrated car safety study in 2003. They termed it the “visibility test” and they tested all the most popular cars from all segments of the market to determine how easy they are to see out of from the driver’s seat.

The results were quite shocking. MPVs like those from VW and Opel faired especially poorly, and these “mom’s taxis” are known for their large dashboard / thick A-pillar design.

Take a look at the picture of this recently-replaced Honda Jazz and one can see just how expansive the dash is. It had the second worst score in the survey and obstructed a significant portion of the driver’s sight on each side with those obtrusive A-pillars.

Honda Jazz interior

Even the tiny “quarterlights” (those miniscule non-opening windows fitted to the Jazz and lodged between the rear-view mirrors and windscreen) could do little to alleviate the lack of forward-vision.

I’ve driven a Jazz and I currently drive a previous-generation Ford Fiesta and can vouch for the inconvenience of having to stretch forward when going around certain corners to see clearly. It’s a problem that simply didn’t exist in the huge ’91 Toyota Cressida I used to drive!

It's a phenomenon worthy of consideration; has safety technology and subsequent changes to design become too smart for its own good?

Well, consider the Mini Cooper. WhatCar tests confirmed that Mr. Bean’s version offers an extra 10m² of exterior visibility compared with the 6-speed, supercharged, two-tone beast I would love to drive. Admittedly, WhatCar ran these tests based on the 2003 Cooper but with the 2009’s design having hardly changed, one can expect much of the same. This is despite the modern Mini's fairly shallow dashboard which indicates that visibility is badly affected by those thick A-pillars.

New Mini interior

What all this means is that the 2009 Mini Cooper looks and protects you a million times better than the one that became an icon in the ‘60s, but the old one gave you a far better chance of spotting a potential hazard and avoiding an accident in the first place!

Old Mini interior

When Run-Flat means run home

I admire BMWs and always have for their immense innovation and willingness to push the boundaries of design and technology.
I even went against all the backlash that the company faced and has faced since 2004 when they began fitting their vehicles with Run-Flat tyres.

Essentially, Run-Flats are fitted with far thicker sidewalls than conventional tyres. This allows – by BMWs claims – a car with a flat tyre to be driven up to 80km/h and for a distance of 150km while the driver remains in complete control.
The advantages are clear; no need to stop on the N2 at 3am in the morning and climb beneath your car in an ungainly fashion to locate the spare. Safety is a major concern for many and Run-Flats, in principle, eliminate this worry.

I would be willing to drive a car with a slightly harsher ride quality (due to the stiffer rubber) and to pay more for repairs to enjoy the luxury and sheer convenience of this technology.

However, the owner of a BMW X5 recently wrote into CAR magazine. He was on the long road, got a flat tyre and, unfortunately, ran into disaster.
The tyre deteriorated until it no longer existed. The desperate owner still pushed on to reach some help, but was eventually left stranded 150km away from anything with an immobile vehicle and a ruined alloy wheel (which will probably end up costing close to 10k, if not more, to replace).

So, in conclusion, and I absolutely loathe to admit this, but BMW has gotten ahead of itself here. Perhaps Run-Flats will work in other parts of the world where shorter distances are covered. In South Africa, however, BMW (or any other manufacturer) simply doesn’t have the coverage or infrastructure to send a 24 hour emergency support team out everytime someone gets stuck in the Karoo after having passed their 150km limit.