Echoes

[What?]

Sorry, this isn't (supposed to be) a Floyd thread...

The last two days I had the "pleasure" of driving a Toyota Echo; one of the new-style egg-shaped shopping trolleys with a loooong windscreen. Apart from being utterly horrid to drive, the vision out of these things is piss poor, other than straight ahead. These things have a poorly placed interior mirror, which creates quite a big blind spot, and the HUGE, FAT long sloped A-pillar creates a blind spot to the right quarter that is big enough to hide a B-train.

So beware of Echoes, people. The driver really may not be able to see you.
(This doubtlessly applies to all similarly designed vehicles)

[Motu]

Getting to drive a dozen cars a day I've noticed this too - the cars are supposed to be safer,but this is a huge step backwards I reckon.I have a 1990 Diamante,a nice car to drive with good visability all round,but the later model one has a higher belt line and huge rear pillars like and HT Holden and a boot lid a metre off the deck - hey,it's better in a crash test,but you can't see a thing going on behind you.

[Biff]

You've hit the nail on the heat there Motu. In order to comply with strict crash tests in Europe 95% of car manufacturers have strengthened the cage's structures, and to do this they've widened the cars pillars. Great if you crash in a cage, a nightmare if you're a bike rider or pedestrian as this things block a cage drivers already suspect view of the road.

I've a bike mag that contains some test results from simulation pf a cage approaching a roundabout at X MPH. They also rode a bike around a roundabout at X MPH. The results were startling. At certain speeds the car would track the bike as the car approached the roundabout with the bike going around it, and for around 7 seconds the bike was totally invisible to the cage driver as it was hidden behind one of the cars support pillars.

[Monsterbishi]

And thus the reason why loud bike exhausts are a good thing : "Be Safe - Be Heard"

[Sniper]

Yea but it still seems like people are concentrating on how to protect the driver while at the same time maximising damage to the other person

[vifferman]

I hired a Toymotor Corolla in Nelson a couple of weekends ago, and it was the same. It was a horrid car too - I thought REALLY hard about it and what feature it had that was better than our car (Peugeot 306), and the only thing I could think of was the pedal position was slightly better for me. That's it. Everything else (motor, brakes, transmission, controls, seating position, seats, lights, instruments (horrid white-faced things that were too brightly lit, and no dimmer), aircon, mirrors, central locking, stereo, even the windows, were crap in comparison.

And it's not just the Corolla - I've had several 307 loaners, and while they have some better features than the 306, overall they're not as nice to drive (even the salesmen said that they prefered the 306), being less of a driver's car, and with bad visibility. But they pass the NASCAP test (or whatever it's called), due to those horrible A-pillars that feck up the visibility, the looks and the interior layout..

[Paul in NZ]

Those Echos are bloody awful cars except....

They go and go and go and go and cost peanuts to run... sigh!

Paul N