Quote Originally Posted by Marlin View Post
You can't compare the weight of a base model from 19 years ago to now and say its only because of safety stuff.
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.

Strange, I looked at the traffic fatalities numbers, from 94 (thats as far back as it went) to 2006, traffic deaths went up almost 10%!!! Went from 36,200 to 39,200! I wonder if that is due to speed limits going to 70mph?
Just wondering, since our vehicles got safer, yet fatalities went up.

US population in 1994: ~260M Fatalities: 40,716
US population in 2006: ~300M Fatalities: 42,642
US population in 2009: ~306M Fatalities: 33,808

That's a population increase of 15% but really only a %5 increase in fatalities by 2006 and a 17.5% decrease in fatalities by 2009. That drastic drop over the last ~5 years is due to increased safety requirements starting early in the decade.