Disappointing

Anyone here old enough to remember the 70s 80s or even the 90s will remember a time when people smoked on busses, planes, in restaurants. The tobacco industry knew the effects of first hand and second hand smoke in the 50s!!!!! And yet it took government regulations to stop public smoking.

I recall as a kid everything everyone was always smoky. Teachers smelled like smoke it was everywhere nonstop. Today? You might see a cigarette if you travel to Alabama or Florida. But they are largely gone.

Edit: I'm adding this fact a few hours later.. my dentist was a smoker... I remember him cramming tools in my mouth working away with a cigarette on the stand.

God bless federal regulations

 

That's all good until you get into an accident that in a modern car is completely survivable but kills everyone in the little Mazda. A more accurate comparison is the modern midsize Tacoma to a 1 ton truck built in 1980. They're practically the same size.

 

You may be right at that. But . . . We were able to keep track of the little Mazda from the day we bought it to the day of its ultimate demise. Odd but true. After driving it for 16 years, we sold it to my supervisor's youngest daughter. She drove it for several more years in a job picking up specimens for a medical lab, putting on at least another 100,000 miles. In turn, she sold it to a friend of her younger brother who drove it for a couple more years stacking 70K miles on it. One winter in Oregon, on I-5 between Medford and Grants Pass, he hit black ice. (I think this would have been about 2001-ish.) The car caromed off the jersey barriers on both edges of the highway and rolled at least once, landing back on its wheels. He and his passenger were both wearing their seat and shoulder belts. I was told that the car was a total loss--they had bought it for $350--but they walked away with a few bruises saying basically, "Wow, what a ride."

I used the little Mazda in a car pool. On busy days, we had five people. Before my wife scraped it off, the front passenger window had a sticker with the assembly line emission tests results printed on it. We commuted into Riverside, CA. Every morning, the L.A. Times printed the prior day's air quality results for most L.A. Basin Cities, Riverside included. One morning, a car pool member was reading that part of the paper and also looking at the emission result sticker. He commented that the air coming out the tailpipe was cleaner than the air going into the engine. That was late 1979, and the regulations have cleaned car emissions up even more.

As for comparing a 1980-ish 1 ton truck's size to a Tacoma, well, maybe if it was a single cab Chevy. I drove two of the early 1990s small-body 1 ton Chevy K-3500 trucks on the job. One was a long bed crew cab, and it was way bigger than a Tacoma. The other was a K-3500 diesel short bed analog to an Tacoma Access cab. It was also bigger, but not as massively bigger. It was also amazingly unreliable FWIW.

 

I would rather be in any modern vehicle than this on today’s roads. It would be great to have this as a second vehicle,but it’s a death trap

 

My friend was a mechanic and said it many times. The people who design cars don't work on them. If it saves half a second or half a penny it's a great idea, meantime they made hours of extra work to replace something down the road. It's one thing if you have a part that rarely fails, but when it takes 3 hours to change headlight bulbs that is quite another.

 

I don't disagree re safety, that's for sure.

 

I saw a similar accident long ago with an early 80s Subaru in front of me on the highway, they drifted and overcorrected. Flipped the car about 3 times and landed on the roof. Pulled over and ran back with my 2 buddies...adrenalin bumping but all fearing the worst. Two ladies in their early 20s crawled out with a few scratches each. Not sure what happened at the hospital but they shouldn't have survived.

 

Guys, we have had another really healthy conversation on tacoma world. I can't believe how adult this thread has been. I've actually learned from some of you with other opinions.

I like TW.

 

You realize that the parts falling off have nothing to do with Boeing, right? Those are all maintenance items that have been removed and replaced dozens if not hundreds of times during the service life of the aircraft. It's 100% on the poor maintenance of the airlines running them.

 

Another great example is seatbelt and helmet use. I grew up in a time helmets were lame, and seatbelts restricted your access to a beer...


You can't make people be intelligent and respectful. So we are left with punishing when they break more then them...

 

To an extent. I work on a Boeing product everyday and it’s not great.

The 737 Max issues were the direct result of ramming an entirely new airplane behind the cockpit of a 1980s plane in order to not require recertification. Poor hardware solutions bandaided by even worse software solutions killed a bunch of people.

 

I like TW and I like people who can have said healthy discussions. Much fruit is born this way.

Never rode a motorized 2 wheel vehicle, but I rode BMX bikes all the time..still do. Helmets were a must when I raced, no helmet no race. I usually didn't wear it doing tricks but when ramp riding I always did..my dad and I built one and the deal was helmet required or I lose the ramp.

Seatbelts..never wore one driving until I was 28 and got in an accident. I don't force people to do so in my truck, except my niece/nephews and my father in law when he was still alive.

Very true re humanity/history. Many companies, regardless of the good or service, seem to prefer to stretch or bend if not break the rules and consider any fines as cost of doing business.

I think the bags, brakes, zones are a good thing. Vehicles can be fixed or replaced, people not always.

One of many reasons I won't part with my 2010 single cab is that replacing it with a similar midsize would be difficult at best, and probably require me to buy something well used.

 

The airlines were the ones who were unwilling to spend the money to train pilots properly on the Max.

 

Huh?

 

That's your choice, but I won't drive or ride with somebody else not belted in. They become a missile in an accident.

 

Like @Cpl. Punishment said, I thought it was found to be a lack of training that caused the Max issues? I get there can be dumb changes and systems (currently dealing with it at work), but if it can be trained, then that isn't a failure of the manufacturer.

 

Don't get me wrong, it was also a poor design that they tacked controls onto to try to make it "safe". But then no one bothered to explain to the pilots how those over ride controls worked.

 

At least in part you are correct. There were a couple of incident where the same thing happened and the US carrier based pilots were able to correct the problem and keep on flying. At least for now, training requirements in the US higher than many third world countries.

 

For sure. Poor design doesn't mean unusable. As a hyperbolic example, if they put out a plane that didn't use inverted yoke controls. Is it dumb? Yes. Goes against all established yoke functions in any plane ever built. Is it the manufacturer's fault if people aren't trained on it by their airline and they crash as a result? No. Not at all.

 

Airbus put out a plane that had two options for turning off auto pilot. A third world airline bought the version where doing Action A turned it off. They didn't buy a simulator and sent their pilots to another country for training. The problem was that airline had the version that used Action B to turn off the auto pilot and Action A turned it on. The pilots returned from training knowing exactly the WRONG thing to do to turn off the auto pilot and they crashed as a result.