Quote Originally Posted by Stephen Biko View Post
It really doesn't matter where all the weight comes from - focusing on that is a red herring. The point is that cars weigh a helluva lot more and yet mpg is roughly the same because engine technology has come a long way. You put a modern engine in a 1990 chassis and you are looking at way better efficiency than we had before. What we had back then does not compare to what we have today.
So we need to put new engines in old cars!!! I wonder if fuel prices affect accidents as well. When the prices go up, people drive a bit more conservatively, drive less and so on.
I couldn't find a fatalities per gallon of fuel sold or something like that. We couldn't really use miles, since we have no idea how many miles folks are driving. But gallons of gas, we could use an average mpg to get a ballpark, and then using the fatalities from each year come up with some accidents/mile figure. Say 2% of gas is not used in vehicles (lawn mowers, generators and so on, I have no real idea, just guessing. Its probably much lower than 2%)