xke safety

Just visiting... But I want to say:

This is absolutely baffling to me. In my every day course of business I drive probably four or five vintage cars without headrest or three point belts, or door bars - without dieing. I own several cars personally that are period correct and not one have anything past antiquated lap belts. Yet I have not perished. These cars are small, uncomfortable, some not particularly quick and most have inadequate brakes and outdated tires - but I live on without fear.

Am I just older than you guys (middle aged - bought my 1st car in 1982)? Do you just lack a option to ignore the risks that I see as insignificant? Are you honestly serious when you write things like Driving a car without headrests and 3pt belts is simply nuts. ?

I am baffled. I would bet cigarette use kills more people than the lack of 3pt belts of XKE's.

Please please please dont buy any vintage car (or God forbid a motorcycle). I dont want people like you risking your life ever. Wrap yourself in bubble wrap, dont drink any milk past its expiration date, wear SPF 50, dont run with scissors & no unprotected sex for you.

Leave the bad stuff for people like me.

 

I wear one because it is law in Australia and I am used to wearing one (due to my car racing days), and also because I am a husband and father. I always wear my gear because of this promise I made to myself because of my family.

It is not impossible that during a "play" I might over cook it and end up sliding along the road. I do usually ride way below my humble limits, but I am human and a petrol head and thus sometimes I have some fun .

Note: I started riding after both my kids were born because I suddenly realised that I was so over protecting my children, wife and myself that I was restricting our LIVING of life. I now let my children live and every now and then we have to get the bandaids out and give them a hug, far better than constantly saying no you cannot do that, or that and that, etc. Yes my kids wear bicycle helmets, but occassionally my son rides around our backyard without one and I no longer go mental. I never ever wore a bicycle helmet as a kid and I rode millions more miles than him, unsupervised. Poor kids nowadays are not allowed 10 feet away from their parents. What sort of life are they growing into? Are we preparing them for a padded cell, because I was going nuts myself ?

I never take my kids on the m/c, or my wife, but when my Alfa Romeo GTV is restored we will happily go everywhere (if they can still fit in the back). I will fit rear safety belts, but that is it and we will have great times .
Pete

 

I would have thought the logical response from seeing these injuries would be to book yourself into advanced driving classes/schools, not bubble wrap yourself and live in fear.

EVERY accident is caused by bad driving, ie. somebody fncked up, simple as that and it is time ALL drivers took on that responsibility. Infact every accident of every type is caused by somebody making a mistake. I've told my children this as I do not believe that accidents are just accidents, ie. when my son spills drink over the floor, it was not an accident he made a minor mistake and it was his lack of care. If the rest of the world was like this we would not have the need for so many lawyers sueing other people for their own mistakes.
Pete

 

Yes you did, but I'm done trying. Good luck.

 

Great post -- and a great thread actually.

I wouldn't say "no fear" (I'm a Porsche 356 owner), but I do take every drive in a vintage car with a motorcyclist's view -- full concentration, full time.

Only thing I can add is that when I drive these cars I find that I'm a focal point for attention on the road. That would seem to be plus when it comes to safety, even as I tune out all the silver Camrys when I'm in my daily driver.

Well said, although part of driving a vintage car is taking even greater responsibility and compensating for other people's potential fnck-ups. I.e., know where their blind spots are, use your signals sooner than you would, plan ahead when you're stopping (vintage brake lights are nothing compared to modern LEDs), etc.

 

I think it comes down to your level of risk tolerance.

One advantage an E-Type has is that it looks different than anything else on the road, so you do attract more attention, and I suspect (but don't have data) that you're less likely to be hit.

Also, you're probably not going to be out in your E-Type on a snowy New Year's Eve. You also improve your odds using it at daytime on dry roads, etc.

So while older cars are riskier, I think you can minimize those risks.

One thing to keep in mind about older cars is that even when they have 3-point belts they aren't nearly as safe as a modern subcompact car. You're still in a very old steel box, probably without crumple zones, possibly without a collapsible steering column, without side impact protection and with lighting that is smaller than, and inferior to, what the average Camry or 3-series BMW has these days.

Also, in many cases the angle of the shoulder belt in vintage cars (especially roadsters) is too low, so depending on your height you may run a risk of spinal compression.

In other words, don't have an accident, and don't count on seat belts to save you in an ancient Jag.

 

Great thread. Where you drive also has an influence. I live out in the country and there is very little traffic. Still my vintage car has a roll bar, modern seats and belts. Got to watch out for the 1/2 pinters in thier F150's driving drunk out of their minds

I drove a 212 Inter in traffic in Arlington VA recently and that was not fun. Brakes on those cars are not the best.

I used to drive my Lusso in traffic in NYC in the 80's did not seem as bad. Back then it was a 20 year old car on the roads and not a 50 year old car. Of course traffic density and velocity has changed a lot in 30 years on Americas roads.

 

95spiderman,

A couple of changes could be made to improve safety. You could install a modern racing seat with a 6 point harness. You could install a roll cage (not that attractive in a roadster, but more subtle in a fixed head coupe). Finally you could put in a fuel cell.

 

Roll cages are dangerous in any car unless you wear a helmet ... banging your head against steel tube I'm sure 95spiderman would agree would not be good sight for his colleagues and him.
Pete

 

Not that I'm proud about it, but back in the 70s when I was a kid and picked up e-types for less than $3000, I was a bit wreckless and totaled 2 of them (a '69 ots and a '66 ots). One head-on and and the second was center-punched in the firewall. I can attest that although these cars are small and may look frail, they are built like a tank. Remember, they're decendents of the D-type which as a race car had to be built stong to handle the stress of racing . And for some reason, they're low center of gravity makes the car stable when its hit... it just gets pushed. It may be a different result today though, with big suvs that can go right over them now. But as far as the overall design, the tub and especially the front engine frames are stucturally very strong. They're not built out of cheap sheet metal and there are many support walls beneath those curved lines. When I broadsided a car headon, the nose hinged forward, detached and flew a few hundred feet down the road. The car spun around and after the smoke settled I was look out the windshield at the engine. Fortunetly no one was hurt, except the girls feelings in the other car who had just got her license that day. The second accident when I was hit in the firewall, the front fender was flattend and basically the entire car was buckled. A passenger in the car that hit me had a compound leg fracture, and I tore my gums on the wood steering wheel.
And there's more... a 3rd car ('69 ots) I spun out on the parkway... the front nose went unto the center divider, and clipped the wooden guard rail. The car rolled onto it side with the nose raised off the ground, so the side of the car never touched the ground... the nose was clipped to the rail and the rear was resting on the side of the back wheel. I got out of the car by popping open my door, which was facing the sky, and climbed out...quickly before any cars behind me coame crashing through the floor. Once again the engine frame rails were a little tweeked, but fortunelty with the help of some friends that were following me, we pushed the car back down onto all four wheels and drove it home.

SO.... don't be driving like an ****** as I was when I was a kid, but I have to tell you, e-types are very, very, very structurally sound cars, and I pretty much walked away from some very serious accidents. They don't have all the safety features of modern cars do, but none of the old cars do.

 

The one and only serious accident that i had was in a series 2 coupe in 1978. I had
just modded the engine with webers, cams and headers. Coming home one evening
i passed a slow motorcycle on the twisty 2 lane going home. Halfway around the
cycle he decided to speed up and i just put the pedal down to get around at which
point i was doing maybe 90. Back into my lane my right wheel went over the tall
shoulder (they had just resurfaced and there was maybe 2 or 3 inches drop) When
i corrected and my front wheel hit the road it flipped the car. The car skidded on the
top about 50 yards (still have the burn scars on my back) before going off into the right
side ditch (20 ft drop) through a barbwire fence and landed top down into a muddy creek bed.
The hardtop was crushed down to dash level. Convinced that if i were wearing
my belts i wouldn't be here today because i would have been held upright instead
of bending over the console. Remember along with the emerson lake and palmer
cassette still playing in the stereo hearing the fuel pump pumping like crazy so i
reached over and turned the key off. Luckily the gas fumes didn't ignite. I was
penned upside down in that wreck for about 90 minutes because the local fire
dept. didn't have the jaws of life and had to borrow from the next county to get me
out. The only injuries i sustained was a damaged nose (bent the steering wheel
with the area between my eyes) burns and glass fragments in my back. My
father donated money so that the fire dept could get their own jaws.
I wear seat belts now-they are mandatory in arkansas, you are fined if caught
without them on, and 99 percent of the time the help in an accident. I am
glad i wasn't wearing them in 1978.

 

Any truth to the statement that they replaced the S-I dashboard toggle switches with plastic ones in the S-II cars for safety reasons?

Cant envision getting impaled on a 1" long toggle switch, but I suppose it could theoretically happen.

 

I have a series 1 OTS and would not like to get hit in drivers door, but I also have a TVR and I have said before if I get hit in it they dig a hole big enough for . . . well I would rather not think about it and I don't or I would never get in a vintage car again.

Some amount of caution is advisable (I also take the approach I'm riding a motorcycle), but not enjoying the cars would be waste of time and money for me.

 

Don't know about that, but I'd better not have an accident!