'safety Today Is A Luxury,' Giorgetto Giugiaro Says After His Crash

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We feared nan worst erstwhile we saw nan news that famed car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro had rolled his caller Land Rover Defender disconnected a cliff successful Sardinia. However, contempt his injuries, nan 87-year-old had climbed retired of nan car by nan clip authorities arrived. Anyone who's survived a awesome crash whitethorn person a caller position connected life, and Giugiaro is nary exception. The designer himself penned an article for La Stampa astir his ordeal and his newfound appreciation of automotive safety, arsenic good arsenic his concerns.

"My car, pinch its intelligent seatbelt pretensioners, its myriad airbags, its reinforced, progressively deformable body, protected maine for illustration a shell," Giugiaro writes. "It was nan quality betwixt an closing and a caller beginning." Even still, he has 3 fractured vertebrae and is wearing a brace while he heals. He laments not being capable to thrust his bicycle, but afloat recognizes really fortunate he is that he is still live to suffer this inconvenience. He considers himself "privileged" to beryllium successful arsenic bully style arsenic he is, and credits nan modern luxury car he was driving for making it possible.

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Over nan years, Giugiaro has designed not only exotic cars for illustration nan BMW M1 and DeLorean DMC-12, but mean cars for nan mean driver, for illustration nan Fiat Panda and nan original Volkswagen Golf. While appreciating his ain comparatively bully fortune, Giugiaro is rather concerned for group who are not arsenic fortunate arsenic he was.

"Safety coming is simply a luxury," writes Giugiaro. "Those who tin spend a caller car person a amended chance of making it location alive." He goes connected to say, "I beryllium it to nan exertion I've helped, successful my ain mini way, to shape. If I'd been driving a car from 15 years ago—the mean property of vehicles connected Italian roads—I astir apt wouldn't beryllium present telling this."

It's a akin communicative successful nan U.S., wherever nan mean car's property was 12.6 years arsenic of 2024, and rising. New cars are for nan rich, which astir of america aren't, and moreover used cars support getting much expensive. The mean person's inability to bargain a caller car isn't conscionable costing money. It's besides costing lives.

"The statistic don't lie," Giugiaro writes. "A caller car, pinch its information features, offers 7 times much chances of surviving an mishap than 1 from 15 years ago. I'm 1 of those times." Despite his crash, aliases possibly partially because of it, Giugiaro has nary volition of giving up connected creating caller car designs, possibly pinch a renewed accent connected safety.