Somebody posted this on the other site, thought I'd link to
The age of average by Alex Murrell https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average
this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2025
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And what happened to shapes?
Shapes has a bit more logical of a reason. Pedestrian impact standards basically dictated that the nose of a car be “flatter” so you don’t chop a persons legs off at the shins. Sadly it leads to a very common style since there’s only so much you can do with that. Couple it with the SUV craze and everything starts looking similar.
also leads to the terrible wall-of-death tall flat front that everything has now with horrible visibility, with the bonus that the LED headlights will blind the person you're about to run over so they can't even try to evade you
pedestrian safety standards have become a joke
Wait what does that have to do with led headlights? That's always a problem if you have
Led headlights themselves are just lot better than the older tech since their lifetime is massively longer and they're rather cheap
It's to do with the drag coefficient too. There's only so many ways you can bend the bodywork of a car around its contents in an aerodynamic way.
I'm not disagreeing but it's annoying when a 20+yr old box shaped car gets the same economy and looks 100x better.
I think some of that is still marketing. You can pack a higher power engine in a more aerodynamic package with the same economy, the extra 5-10Hp will make it sell better. Also helps to standardize assembly lines across models.
There's always the matter of following a trend and appeasing the business people's expectations to consider.
Especially with electric cars becoming more popular. It's cheaper than ever to go a certain distance. Now that I can use cheap power, give me less efficient and more interesting designs. (yes range is affected too, but it is negligibly cheap to recharge)
The boxy style actually leads to more pedestrian injuries due to reduced visibility and sharp angles.
The best design is a gentle slope. That is why most modern cars have a gentle grille angle, sensors in the front bar and pyrotechnic actuators in the bonnet hinges.
They loosen and push the back of the of the bonnet up so that when the victims head hits the bonnet, there is some give and they are less likely to receive debilitating head injuries.
Still, there is no substitute for driving more slowly and paying attention to your surroundings.
My number two rule of the road is to assume that every person on the road as complete idiot and is going to make mistakes, including yourself.