The point here is not how much your car costs. Its you, the driver... Even if the car is built to withstand any impact (hypothetically), if you the driver drives like a c0ck... nothing is gonna save you or your passengers. The lady in Aberdeen aquaplaned, nothing any driver can do about it. She is lucky to be alive considering the impact.
Yeah, the GTI has seatbelt warnings which activates after 60 seconds or so. Its bloody annoying.
HM
I'm not making a point of how much a car costs, I'm trying to make the point that you should be getting better and more protection in a car at any given price compared to one at say half the price. If a £30k car has the same safetly rating and protection of a car at £10k then I will be asking questions. As you say, if the driver drives like a c0ck then he is asking for trouble, but the c0ck driver should be more protected in a car that costs a fair amount of money.
A base golf costs 14k or thereabouts, sticking a bigger engine and some body kit on it isn't going to make it safer...
If your GTI is specced up to 28k it is exactly double the cost with no additional protection. Well, a couple of airbags maybe? What do you expect them to do? Redesign the entire car becuase your paying a bit more? Its not hard to see that while there is much tinkering around the edges with airbags / crumple zones and the like - at the end of the day it is (like every other car) a jumped up tin can thats going to deform badly if you drive it into anything at speed.
IMO people should drive as if they expect their cars to give them no protection whatsoever in an accident. The standard of driving would be much improved ...