For the drivers inside, but not for everyone else. In fact, they just had getting bigger and bigger, an arms race prompted by bad regulation but kicked into perpetual high gear by standard market and consumer forces.
That's not exactly a ringing endorsement, given there are tens of thousands of auto fatalities every year. In fact, as I understand it, you are far more likely to die while driving to the airport than flying for any given trip you take.
That isn't because of the cars, it's because of the drivers. If you get into a plane crash you pretty much die; safety rules are directed to preventing crashes.
Only 2% of car crashes are caused by mechanical failure and nearly all of those are from improper maintenance rather than vehicle design flaws.
> If you get into a plane crash you pretty much die
If you're thinking about the scariest plane crashes, where the plane hits the ground at more or less cruise speed, you're right. But, when a crash occurs during take-off or landing (and that's most of the crashes, although they don't tend to capture the public's imagination as much as the others), the chances are much better. There are some photos of pretty badly broken up and/or burned planes (e.g. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/emirates-jet-burns-runway...) where you would be surprised to hear that all or most passengers managed to get out...
> But, when a crash occurs during take-off or landing (and that's most of the crashes, although they don't tend to capture the public's imagination as much as the others), the chances are much better.
This is not really attributable to planes having great safety features though, it's just the type of event which is most survivable (and which they therefore spend fewer resources trying to minimize).
It's basically like saying that people rarely die in car accidents that occur in parking lots. That's neither the reason for nor the result of the modern safety features.
Only for new liscences, and that provisions seems unable to get a majority at the moment. Which kind of makes sense, why limit it to weight? EVs and most family cars are above the proposed 1.8 tons. Limiting it by power / speed (EVs have a ton of power but lower top speeds) would make more sense, similar to what we had for motorbikes in the past.
The single biggest design factors on whether a car will kill someone they hit, is its weight and height. And cars are significantly heavier and taller than they need to be.
I learned in Driver’s Ed that if I was ever in an accident I wanted to be in a head on collision at 45 mph in a 74 Lincoln Continental hitting a 72 Chevy Vega. I think you would be hard pressed to find a heavier passenger car.
In particular, cars (like personal aircraft) are predominantly bought by the people who ride in them, so this is the kind of market where buyers will actually care about safety.
Compare this to a market where e.g. a government agency or health insurance company is choosing which product to buy for someone else to use.
Euro NCAP, for example, was a UK government initiative that was adopted continent-wide. Car makers used safety as marketing to prompt people to replace older cars with newer safer ones, and it worked in this context.
