It’s sort of amazing to realize just how often I’ve been banging on this drum. I first wrote about this problem way back in 2012, then again in 2018, and, thanks to my hard-earned efforts and the vast respect that the automotive and insurance industries have for me, precisely absolutely nothing, give or take one fuck-all, has been done to change the situation. The truth is just the same as it was back over 12 years ago, which is that modern car bumpers are absolutely useless. They’re incapable of doing the job that they need to do, because they, effectively, do not actually exist.
I’m still bothered by this. It bothers me because I vehemently believe one of the best qualities a machine can have is forgiveness. Small errors made by the person operating the machine should be able to be absorbed with as little damage as possible, that’s what I mean by forgiving. And the current state of modern bumpers is decidedly unforgiving.
Car body repair costs are more punishing than ever, and something as simple as backing into a low wall or bollard or underground parking deck support column or anything like that can result in absurd amounts of damage, needlessly.
Just to give this a bit of focus, let’s pay special attention to rear bumpers, because they tend to be where the most common sort of low-speed impacts occur, precisely the sorts of things that bumpers once steadfastly defended. In the present day, though, for far too many cars, rear bumpers are effectively AWOL, and expensive body parts like entire tailgates are left to be the first point of impact in even a small impact.
My co-founder David Tracy has been noticing this too, and made this very helpful video showing some of the worst offenders of this let’s-sacrifice-the-tailgate-for-no-good-reason way of thinking:
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Look at that! This is absolutely absurd. Let’s just look closer at some of the examples David pointed out, starting with the Ford Mach-E:
The liftgate or hatch or tailgate or whatever you want to call it, is the first thing that will be contacted if you’re hit from the rear or back into something that’s a certain height. It’s also the largest single body panel on the rear of the car, and is expensive to fix and replace. It’s made of metal, not plastic that can deform at least a little bit, like the bumper cover hiding behind it.
It makes no sense. It’s like, if you’re male, protecting yourself from a fall by pushing your balls out in front of you so they take the initial impact. Nobody would do that. And yet Land Rover does this:
On both of these models, Land Rover Discovery and Range Rover Sport, the tailgate extends rearward further than any sort of bumper, which barely exists, anyway. So, in an impact, it’s the tailgate that gets the whack. I included the service costs for the tailgate here, over two grand, but even that is just a tiny part of what an actual repair would cost, even if they just repaired instead of replacing the tailgate. A small dent could easily run into big bucks to repair.
Here’s a very common example, one that’s actually been noted to be a problem before, the Tesla Model Y hatch:
None of these are okay, and we should stop thinking of this as okay, because it’s very much not. If you back into something in a Model Y, your tailgate is is likely what gets hit. And it is not cheap to fix or replace. The punishment does not fit the crime, and it’s all just from bad design.
This is garbage, absolute garbage. I know all of these cars are safer than old cars when it comes to rear-end collisions, and under all that painted metal and plastic are special impact bars and crumple zones that absorb energy, but those only matter in catastrophic conditions. For day-to-day driving life, these are essentially unprotected rear ends.
It wasn’t always like this, of course.
Cars used to have substantial and very forgiving bumper protection, front and rear, and while there were plenty of people who don’t like the look of the battering ram/diving board/whatever bumpers, these things worked. The 5 mph bumper standard, Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) 215 (later 581) demanded that a car could be driven into a flat wall at 5 mph and suffer no damage to critical systems like lights or fuel fillers or even the horn. Some cosmetic damage was acceptable, but no significant body damage was permitted, hence big, rugged bumpers that extended far from the vulnerable body panels and supplementary thick, beefy bumper guards like these:
Sure, laugh at all that black rubber if you like, but you could whack into a dumpster at a good clip and suffer nothing beyond a little jolt that reminds you to pay attention, dummy. That is what I mean by forgiving.
And if you don’t like the look of those, remember, this could be done in an elegant way with body-integrated bumpers, and I know because carmakers did just that. Look at these two rear bumper solutions:
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, companies as different as Porsche and GM both found ways to meet the strict 5 mph bumper standards and still have body-colored, fully integrated bumper solutions that actually worked. So I don’t want to hear any OEMs pissing and moaning about how modern designs aren’t compatible with strong bumpers, because they absolutely could be.
These 5 mph bumper standards came about from pressures from insurance companies who were sick of having such huge payouts for relatively minor wrecks; when Ronald Reagan became president in 1980, he indulged his love of de-regulation by reducing the bumper standards to 2 mph in 1982 and making the damage restrictions more lenient, as well as opening up possibilities for even more lenient standards in the future.
Also, SUVs and trucks always had lower standards, and maybe that was okay when those types of vehicles were uncommon, but almost everything is an SUV or truck now.
Now we’re in the future, and it sucks.
Insurance companies seem to have just decided, screw it, we’ll just charge more for premiums and everyone will just pay more for repairs than ever before, and if they don’t like it, tough.
We shouldn’t have to accept this. The lack of basic, simple protection from small-scale impacts on modern cars isn’t just absurd, it’s stupid. Sensors and cameras are integrated into bumpers, sacrificed at the smallest meeting of machines, taillights and headlamps are at vehicle corners, vulnerable and nauseatingly expensive to replace, everything requires painting, and the whole thing has become this insipid mess where a minor rear end thump can end up costing forty grand.
Why do we accept this?
Besides, I think SUV design could easily make some big, old-school bumpers work, design-wise! I don’t think any car makers will take this path willingly, but perhaps the car-buying public will finally get sick of having to total a car because someone didn’t see a bench or tree stump until it was too late.
I can dream, at least.
Long gone are the days when you’d see rear end collisions with the rear of the impacted vehicle showing little to no damage versus the impacting vehicle’s crumpled front end.
Now only are rear bumpers effectively useless, but automakers are increasingly placing expensive sensors and critical lighting elements at the perfect bumper height where even a light tap may be expensive enough to eventually get these cars totaled by insurers once they’re on their 2nd and 3rd owners. Perhaps one reason why one of my neighbors has been driving around in a smashed Kia Sorrento for over a year.
This! Cameras, sensors, adaptive cruise control, various fancy ways to open and close the trunk, fancy lighting… had two different cars rear-ended, one stopped at a signal and the other hit while parked (my car was stationary.) They both absolutely needed repairs.
Even replacing a side mirror gets pricey. My son’s 2006 SAAB has a side mirror that’s heated; it syncs to the memory seat positions – this is before today’s mirrors with cameras, sensors, warning lights, folding when car is locked, fancy Bat Signal lights that project your car logo at your feet… yikes!
I love the idea of a 5mph bumper, and my insurance premiums have been actually skyrocketing, but what do automakers care? I suppose I could walk into a dealership, say “Let me test drive this sweet new…. ohhhh wait a minute! No bumper, no sale!” and walk out, but what good would that do? If the Voltron of David and Jason can’t budge the industry on this, what hope do any of us have?
Part of the problem is that most people (myself included) don’t do a good job of checking insurance rates before they buy. So the automaker has no incentive to fix this (other than avoiding Jason’s wrath).
Funny enough, this morning I drove past a low speed rear end where a newer crossover was the victim of a pickup truck love tap. Guess what was smashed more (hint the crossover’s tailgate). Everyone was ok but boy the rear bumper situation stinks
My Express van has a real rear bumper that has taken its share of low speed bumps like a champ. (Where did that boulder come from? However, it was useless when I managed to back into a 4×4 pickup with a bumper higher than mine. I now have a dented rear door.
Bring back bumperettes!!!
This is why I bought an Odyssey over the Sienna and Carnival. It still has a real bumper.
That Carnival interior, though!
The Carnival grenading V6, though…
People keep asking if I’m going to put the slim and pretty euro bumpers on my E12 – no, because I think the park benches aren’t awful (not like Mercedes at the time) and they work. My Fiat? Ditto, and they’re not even bad-looking. My Saab? Ditto, and they look the same everywhere in the world. 911? Same once again.
I have a vague recollection of Consumer Reports testing the 5-mph bumpers on every car they bought. Repair costs were listed front and rear for each car they tested. I’m guessing that even they can no longer afford the damage costs (either that, or nobody cared).
On the subject of repair costs, Volkswagen used to advertise how inexpensive replacement parts were in the 1970’s. They obviously don’t do this anymore. Isn’t there a niche market for a company to that doesn’t charge $750 for a plastic wheel arch trim piece? I think an automaker that doesn’t make replacement parts part of their core business model could capture a decent part of the market of consumers that don’t care how miserable a car is to drive, as long as it is cheap to operate. It would be like Toyota 4Runner/Tacoma owners, but for people that can’t stomach 16 mpg.
The people who don’t care aren’t going to replace the parts anyway.
Maybe they would if it was cheap and easy.
“I have a vague recollection of Consumer Reports testing the 5-mph bumpers on every car they bought. “
Yup… I remember it clearly. They used to do that until the mid-2000s when they dumbed-down their ratings and testing.
I’m not sure some of these should even be called bumpers anymore, something like rear panels or sensor housings would probably be more appropriate.
I do enjoy the simplicity of a basic, black metal bumper from older vehicles, they are useful beyond driving as well. If I need to reach something on top of a garage cabinet, stand on the bumper. Straighten a tent stake or something, use it as an anvil. Transport some hikers across a 2′ deep creek who don’t want to get wet, tell them to hop on the back bumper. Sawing through a log across the road that is up above my head, again, climb up on the bumper. If I want to knock mud/snow/etc off hiking/ski boots before putting them in the car, whack them on the bumper. Any minor damage doesn’t require a body shop, just taking out a few bolts and spray painting the thing.
I like seeing the work trucks that have an Anvil on the bumper
There is another incovenience. You can’t no longer put a bicycle rack, the type you begin to hold on by resting it on the pronounced part of the bumper.
I’ve seen this done on a motorhome, but a bike rack attached to a bumper?
I think they are referring to trunk-mount racks that are sort of corner-shaped and rest on the top of the decklid andtypically the corner of the decklid and rear fascia. I used to use one decades ago on my ’93 Sentra SE-R, so picture that. These racks still work though – the vertical loads are substantially taken by the tensioning straps.
Those were awful, anyway. Hitch is the way to go and I wouldn’t go back.
No… if you want to attach a bike rack to a modern vehicle, you install a receiver hitch first.
Counterpoint: Pickup trucks.
Maybe it’s knowing what a bumper does that makes me think this way, but I really dislike when an SUV/CUV doesn’t have a nice, defined bumper. Those Range Rovers look very silly to me.
they should mandate 5mph impact bumpers like back in 80s. that would be hilarious to see on a modern car
These are 5 mph bumpers. They just figured out a way not to have them stick 15 feet in front and behind the car.
No. 5 mph bumper standard was watered down to 2.5 mph… and then watered down further from ‘no damage’ to ‘some damage’ allowed. And then it was further modified to “non-existent” in the name of pedestrian safety… which is a bit of a joke given the danger modern tall trucks pose to pedestrians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(car)#:~:text=At%20the%20same%20time%2C%20a,offset%20by%20higher%20repair%20costs.
Won’t somebody puleeeese think of the taillights!!!
…oh wait.
Sounds like someone may have bumped their car into something today. Seriously though, with back-up cameras, backing into things should largely be eliminated. Front bumpers tend to be more robust than the rear ones, but with sensors in them, they still get expensive fast.
Rain snow, mud all these defeat cameras
On some cars, this is true, but not all. On my Benz, the reverse camera is motorized and only comes out when it’s in use, otherwise it’s tucked up out of the elements. Practically though, it’s been very rare that I have been in a situation where my rearview camera on other cars was to messy to be of use, but I’ll admit that the worst of our weather is generally rain and I avoid going out in the snow.
Same for my GTI. I miss that feature on my Audis. Seems like something all premium cars should have.
In winter if I drive anywhere I have to remember to clean off the backup camera.
Once I drove from my apartment to my boyfriend’s – two blocks – and the camera already needed to be cleaned.
For the record we were going to a third location I wasn’t too lazy to walk two blocks.
Great – you have a camera for when you’re backing up.
So what happens when you’re parallel parked and some crackhead decides that running into your car is how they’ll determine when to stop and back up for the 3rd time?
Tell that to my elderly MIL that has backed into at least 3 parked cars with full 360 degree cameras.
Counterpoint: For a minor bump, $2k for a brand new liftgate, no body prep or straightening, just add paint. $3k out the door is about the same as you would pay for a bumper repair.
But it’s likely also the bumper that’s damaged.
I whacked a brick porch when backing up in my 2009 Mercedes a few years back.
The local mobile bumper repair guy came out and refinished my bumper with custom blended paint & clearcoat, replaced the piece of chrome that I pre-ordered, and fixed a curbed wheel all for $375.
In my parking lot at home.
In about 2 hours.
If I had an SUV, that would have been a multiple-thousands of dollars and several days without a car fix.
1. No, you would not pay $3k out the door for a bumper repair, especially not an actual steel bumper.
2. No, replacing a liftgate AND a bumper is not cheaper than replacing just a bumper.
Nobody uses a metal bumper anymore. If you replace the inner core, straighten some metal, and replace the bumper cover you are between $2k and $3k.
Yup. And even putting aside how well some OEMs were able to integrate bumpers, it’s not like style is an excuse with all the boring-yet-ugly designs out there making up the vast majority of the market. Is anyone buying a RAV4 (or almost anything else) because they’re enamored with the looks? Besides, we’re talking primarily utility vehicles, so where’s the f’n utility? Utility means they’ll potentially be used for a wide variety of often dirty jobs in tight quarters or on low grip surfaces where sliding is likely and that’s where these bumpers would shine. Not only that, you could stand on them, making it easier to load those roof racks and making them far more useful (of course, they wouldn’t use chrome anymore—and good riddance—but they could use some kind of material or optional rubber covering to protect the surface, especially since unpainted plastic is popular as if they’re bargain basement cars in 1990).
I remember sliding on black ice in my friend’s ’85 Delta 88 into a giant wood traffic island planter made of railroad ties, hitting it with one corner of the bumper, spinning off into about a 180, smashing 2 ties and expecting some fair damage, but not receiving a single mark on the Oldsmobile. Today’s cars might be safer, but none would shrug something like that off (then factor in the much higher cost of the repairs on the modern shitbox). They don’t even have to be that heavy. Shocks aside, the chrome steel bumpers on my ’84 Subaru weighed about the same as a modern plastic cover and modern ones wouldn’t be chrome steel, anyway. I haven’t weighed them to say for sure, of course, but I remember carrying one through a junk yard and amazed at how light it was and I’ve picked up numerous plastic bumper covers over the years that couldn’t be considerably lighter and possibly even heavier. In Detroit, with those bumpers, I could bomb alleys slamming abandoned appliances without damage or even a mark. My Mazda3, OTOH, was made out of papier mache (and malaise era steel) and the protruding cover did nothing to absorb a modest rear ending impact that allowed the tailgate to get damaged to the point of needing replacement.
Jason, lest you forget that every car in the US at least built in the last decade or so has a back up camera and likely proximity sensors. Low speed collisions are much less likely than the days prior to these features. Not saying it couldn’t happen but you would *really* have to be distracted to back into something.
However, I am in complete agreement with you as it pertains to people rear ending you. Crash structure should be improved. An acquaintance of mine was rear ended in a hit and run accident and ended up dying from the injuries he sustained.
Oh my sweet summer child, if you were a sweet winter child you would have had to use a backup camera on a messy winter day where it immediately gets covered in crap.
All the cameras in the world don’t matter when all of those cameras are covered in snow and mud. And those are the conditions where it’s most likely to be tricky to back up.
It drives me nuts that my backup camera is just hanging out, unprotected from rain. On my last car it was so bad that I kept a little rag to pre-emptively wipe that lens in the winter. They should put a little nozzle next to it, to blast air constantly onto it, to clear it of any water or fogging.
Fair point- I’m in Houston so it’s not something I usually have to worry about
My biggest problem is no standard for bumper height. I’ve been at stop lights in my boxster and am eye level with many trucks and SUVs.
My car is just a ramp for them to get to the county line.
Be careful what you wish for – if there was a mandated height for these crash structures, the car industry would probably lobby for that to be around about eye-level for folks in Boxsters.
That would be hilarious. To rent. Owning you are spot on.
I really would like to see torch or bishop mock that up.
And tied in with that… the high placement of ultra bright headlights on modern trucks that cause excessive glare to oncoming traffic.
I was thinking the same of the front ends of the Mazda and Alfa crossovers the other day. they look a bit like a 70’s matador sans the massive 5mph bumper….which is to say they look a littler derpy from the side.
Farmers are saying that because of the hot weather there won’t be a bumper crop this year, so that probably complicates things.
There is always a lot of damage underneath when you get into a bumper accident. What looked like a small scratch on the bumper resulted in a 5K repair, they even had to replace the exhaust since it was bent from the impact and you couldn’t tell at first. (2019 Ford Escape). The BMW that rear ended us got the radiator leaking all over the place, looked very bad compared to our damage.
Cars are so complex these days, I just replaced a parking sensor in the Polestar for $550!! thanks to a small chip from a rock, it was throwing an error.
I was adding sensors to a base Taco just today and the bumper seems to be two layer of plastic snapped together to give the impression of depth. couple in the plastic bed interior and I wonder if these are more forgiving or just implode in an accident.
A lady driver drove into the back of my subaru at a stoplight. She was stopped, turned to check on her kids in the back seat, lifted foot off the brake and drove slowly into my subaru. A large portion of the front end of her honda crv literally fell off. I spent about 15 minutes reassembling it for her on the side of the road. No damage done. I suggested that if she is going to look into the back seat, while stopped or if moving maybe pull over and put the car in park.
When I was a kid, Mom never looked back to see which of us she was smacking across the face.
She just reached over the back of the bench seat and let loose.
Its getting worse. The side of Rivian truck is one piece of aluminum from the rear bumper to the front. And being aluminum, repair shops aren’t allowed to pull dents. So after a very minor hit in the back, they have to replace the entire side of the vehicle for north of $80,000. This happened to Rich Rebuilds on his R1T.
This should not be allowed. Or at least there should be some limit where if the damage for a minor tap exceeds a certain threshold, then the manufacturer has to cover the difference for their foolish design. Functional bumpers would return in short order.
It’s not quite as big as you say. The Autopian even did a piece on it: https://www.theautopian.com/heres-why-that-rivian-r1t-repair-cost-42000-after-just-a-minor-fender-bender/
Secondly, the process has been improving as time has been going on, but yeah, still a shit-show for replacement compared to traditional vehicle repairs.
Finally, the updated R1T is supposed to address several issues like this.
“Insurance companies seem to have just decided, screw it, we’ll just charge more for premiums and everyone will just pay more for repairs than ever before, and if they don’t like it, tough.”
I mean, yeah, insurance companies don’t set regulations. Are you suggesting you want insurance companies to be able to dictate car design? Really, is that the utopia you want to live in? Cars designs dictated by the insurance industry.
That’s a rhetorical question. That answer is NO. So, they have no choice but to take what it is and price their product accordingly.
They kind of are through the IIHS and that’s where the idea for impact bumpers originally came from (I’m not 100% sure if that was insurance industry lobbying or The Man in the guise of the NHTSA on their own trying to reduce costs for the taxpayer, but that sounds more like lobby effort than The Man’s own initiative especially where rates were going way up at the time). Instead of resilient and cheap now, we get fragile, expensive safety theater that enables bad driving and then they complain they have to raise rates to cover the cost of repairs.
The IIHS is a private company that has no rule setting power whatsoever. It only influences consumer buying habits and has no direct authority over anything. So, no, even the IIHS isn’t setting regulations.
I never wrote or implied the IIHS has authority and they don’t need it. OEMs build their cars to excel in IIHS’s scoring system with its ever-stricter testing and standards than the NHTSA’s as they can publicize the safety ratings and use them to potentially stand out against their otherwise very similar competitors, as it’s a major-to-top selling point to the majority of buyers. Things like garbage active “safety” systems, expensive headlights that many people now find to be too blinding, and structures that are far less repairable are things the IIHS has pushed/pushes as part of their scoring (they’ve recently made headlights part of the scoring and penalize for lower end trims sold with less effective—read: cheaper to replace and probably still decent—headlights). The NHTSA is rarely in the forefront of pushing anything and has infamously held back advancements in things like lighting standards. Though the NHTSA been following along with the IIHS a lot closer than historically, they aren’t the driver. So, no, the OEMs aren’t being told they need to do these things by The Man, but the IIHS is driving the marketplace to demand meeting increasingly stricter safety and “safety” through their rating system and I’d argue they’re more effective than the NHTSA could be were they the driver, as the IIHS’s fast moving safety goal posts push the OEMs far more than NHTSA could when working against automotive manufacturer lobby money.
As Cerberus has said, insurance companies already have and definitely can influence car design, and they continue to do so.
Car design being dictated by the insurance industry would most likely result in safe, durable and repairable vehicles, why do you pretend like that’s a bad thing? It would almost certainly be better than the current reality of the EPA dictating car design.
What’s wrong with cars being clean and efficient too?
If Insurance companies dictated car designs then exciting cars that do exciting things would not exist. Fast and powerful cars are inherently more expensive to insure, so we could all be driving whatever the equivalent of Yugo is with no other choice.
I’m fine with “influencing” car design. But not dictating regulations like some people seem to be ok with.
Also, I’m much more accepting of EPA dictating car design as that is a benefit we all enjoy.