Why a $469 car repair now costs $9051
A few years ago, the Cover Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) set out to as a matter of fact test car bumpers - to put them through the paces of a real-way of life crash. Engineers smashed bumpers into other bumper-like objects, in preference to of into walls, and set collisions at angles and different heights.
Some of what they found is scarcely a surprise, like the fact that many of today's bumpers don't align. Anyone who's seen a minuscule compact next to an SUV could tell you that.
But engineers also reached a troubling conclusion, predominantly given the dramatic improvements in vehicle safeness over the past 40 years. Bumpers, it seems, haven't kept up. In details, they may have gotten worse.
"Bad bumpers," the IIHS summed up, "are the usual."
To understand just how bad, consider this: the bumper that provided the most artistically protection, by far, in the low-speed crash-test was on a 1981 Ford Beau. After four impacts - two corner hits at 3 mph and two full-width hits at 6 mph - the 30-year-old Ford ceaseless a total of just $469 in damage, all from the 6 mph hits.