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Can anything be done to reverse the current ridiculously thick car roofs’ front posts at both ends of the windscreen? They must be 5 or 6 times the vision blocking width of what I had at the start of my driving in the mid 80’s with the British Leyland Mini and Maxi: my wife and I find ourselves constantly looking either side of the driver’s side post, especially when going around right hand corners.
I’m left wondering how many accidents are being caused and lives lost by this interruption in vision ,compared with the number of lives being saved by having modern cars able to ride along the highway on their roofs in the rare instance a car might end up skidding along on its roof after a severe crash?!
Another danger is the increasing widths of cars, without a commensurate increase in roads. How can it be safer to have cars coming towards each other inches apart at combined speeds of 60+ mph, rather than maintain the previous widths of cars with greater margins of driver error? Again, what do the stats show?
I hope this at least gets people thinking about what really is safe.
I understand where you’re coming from, but the A pillars are not just about the roof, but firm part of the vehicles structural integrity, especially the cabin.
The difference in occupant protection of your examples Mini/Maxi to even a small ‘basic’ car of today is worlds apart.
It’s fair to say car design /safety has changed significantly, alas, the baseline driver behaviour has not evolved at the same rate 😆The case of A pillars expanding is one of the clearest cases of unintended consequences in history.
A pillars were made structural members and made massively thicker to protect car passengers in a roll over collision, so they have saved some lives, and some A pillars incorporate air bags, making them even thicker. The unintended consequence is that drivers’ vision is obstructed, some road users are masked by the thicker A pillar, especially pedestrians, motorcyclists and pedal cyclists, and drivers collide with them more, frequently seriously injuring them or killing them. It is not clear whether passenger lives saved exceed vulnerable road users killed.
The EU has rules that limit the width of A pillars because they have belatedly recognised the problem, and some manufacturers have trialled transparent pillars, but this has not reached production models.
Like many schemes to increase safety for car passengers e.g. seat belts, safety for those outside the car is reduced.
Good article here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-10/why-did-cars-get-so-hard-to-see-out-of-blame-the-a-pillars
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