Is a 2nd gen safer than a 1st gen Tacoma?

95-97 only have driver side bags

 

I like my Tacoma, but I rather crash a 2nd or 3rd gen. These things are death traps

 

I had excellent tires and brakes on my 2006 MINI Cooper S. So much so that I was able to avoid a very severe head on collision. Unfortunately for me, the driver behind me wasn't paying attention and rear ended me with enough force to crack my windshield, break my driver seat recline mechanism and push the B pillars 2" forward from where they should be.

Still though; I couldn't agree more. Thanks to good tires I was able to avoid being at fault for an incident that could have cost me tens of thousands of dollars.

 

Newer cars will always be more safe than older ones.

 

I'd rather NOT crash in either, lol...

 

Hmmmmm, doing no research whatsoever, ignoring all safety devices etc but looking at the heavy vs light as a pure logic exercise and thinking only of mass...

All things being equal is hedge my bets towards a light object suffering less damage than a heavy. If i hit a massive object with a hammer, the object moves away slower (Newton's laws and whatnot) forcing it to absorb more energy, vs a light object that will begin moving sooner and transferring more of the incoming energy into forward moment.

Punch a brick vs punch a balloon kind if thing. Don't know if it's true, but i have that image in my head.

 

First gens had good safety ratings for the time, true, but as others have stated a 5 star rating in 2003 isn't the same as one a few years later. There is a major generational leap between the two trucks.

 

I'm seeing 4 stars frontal, 5 side for my year/model (2003 double cab). https://www.nhtsa.gov/vehicle/2003/TOYOTA/TACOMA/4%2520DR#safety-ratings-frontal
But still, the basic architecture of these trucks was designed in the early 90s; there's no getting around that.

 

What if I told you that both objects are absorbing the same amount of energy? Don't forget that you are sitting inside that object, it's the accelerations (or decelerations) that can really mess you up. If you had to choose between sitting inside of a golf ball or a bowling ball that was about to get hit with a baseball bat, which would you choose?

That's the main idea behind crumple zones, seatbelt pre-tensioners and airbags. The crumple zone is designed to spread the impact out over a longer time, reducing the rate of deceleration. Same idea with the pre-tensioners. By pre-tensioner, I'm referring to the explosive charge in the seat belt retractor mechanism that fires and causes the seatbelt to tighten up against your body. The sooner your body is in contact with a locked seatbelt, the less time there is for your body to accelerate independent of the vehicle. Another way to think about the pre-tensioner is with driving into a wall. Drive into a brick wall at 40mph and you're going to use your crumple zone. You want the seatbelt tight against your body as soon as possible after your start using your crumple zone so that your body gets the benefit of the crumple zone. You don't want to be in a situation where you've used up most or all of your crumple zone before your body takes up the slack in your seatbelt. It's bad if your body is still going 40mph but your truck is going 10mph. The last piece of the puzzle is the airbag. Deploy it too early and it's deflating before it has a chance to protect you. Deploy too late and your body has moved into the area that it is going to be exploding into.

What I find fascinating is the speed at which all of this is going on. There's probably more computing power in your SRS system than what we used to get to the moon.

 

I'd say they both receive the same amount but "absorb" a different amount since the lighter object will move sooner and carry less of the energy with it.

If we look at it from a balls perspective between a wiffle ball and a baseball being hit by a bat, the heavier ball will absorb and carry a lot more energy than the lighter. If I think of the bats perspective a bugger heavier bat wins.

Like I said, im ignoring entirely the safety systems in a vehicle, ignoring cargo really, and just thinking of the mass of the 2 objects. For cars, lighter tend to be smaller with less room so less time to absorb energy from an impact. To apples/apples comparison you would need 2 identically sized vehicles of different masses so you have identically sized crumple zones to compare.

If you did have that, the same safety systems, and both traveling at the same speed, the lighter vehicle will be carrying less energy. Anything it hit would be better off in comparison. But the driver will be carrying an identical amount regardless of the vehicle so the only difference to him would be the effectiveness of the crumple zones in front of him.

If I assume 2 identically sized vehicles of significantly different mass, I'd also assume the lighter vehicle would be made of more advanced materials. Carbon fiber and titanium vs steel. And I'd assume more work was put into the crash systems, and I'd assume that in a collision the lighter vehicle would take a lot more damage to itself but the occupants would fare as well or better because of improved systems. But that's a lot of assumptions and doesn't really reflect on the 1st vs 2nd Gen tacoma

 

Kids destroy cars! Get him something you won't mind getting wrecked.

 

I can't stress this theory enough. I wish my parents didn't let me buy a toyota pickup to start, I DESTROYED my leg in a bad car accident, granted I wasn't wearing my seatbelt like an asshole. But I can only imagine I'd have faired better in a volvo or something like that.

 

All things being equal are the key words for sure.
I think a better analogy might be punch are large brick vs punch a small brick.
Or Punch a large balloon vs punch a small balloon.

 

I like the one of you driving off afterwards!

 

Still using that whole drivetrain including wiring harness haha

 

Except that they both absorb the same amount of energy the result is a very different acceleration. For the same amount of force, a heavy object will accelerate less and have a lower final velocity, a lighter object will accelerate more and have a higher final velocity. Imagine hitting a baseball and a wiffle ball off the batting tee. Assuming the bat is swung with the same amount of force, the baseball will leave the tee going much slower than the wiffle ball. You've used up more of the force getting the baseball moving due to its higher mass, you therefore have less going toward the acceleration side of things (F=MA). I guarantee that both will leave the bat with the same amount of kinetic energy. For the same reason, the wiffle ball will also slow down much more quickly after leaving the bat. It doesn't have the mass to keep its momentum through the atmosphere in the same way that a baseball does. If you could somehow do the batting tee experiment in a vacuum, the wiffle ball would go a hell of a lot further than the baseball.

Carrying this thought process over to a vehicle, a heavier car is generally considered better (assuming the same SRS systems) simply from the point that it will take much more force than a lighter car to give the occupants the same amount of acceleration. It's too much acceleration (positive or negative) that hurts you.

 

2nd Gen trucks have a slightly wider track. I think that makes them less likely to roll.

 

My rollover has more to do with me driving like an idiot than my truck being 4.5" less wide

 

Generally later model years are safer than earlier model years

 

Ha! I showed my wife the pictures and the first question she asked was how f'n fast you were going.

FWIW, the track width difference isn't that big of a deal. I drive my 1st gen offroad and I drive my 2nd gen offroad. Going back and forth between the two isn't a big deal, the biggest hassle is the different sight lines (higher hood and bigger A pillar on the 2nd gen).