“Safety today is a luxury,” says Giiororgetto Giugiaro after his crash – Jalopnik

We feared the worst when we saw the news that the famous car designer Giorgetto Giugiaro had rolled his new Land Rover -defender from a cliff in Sardinia. Despite his injuries, the 87-year-old, however, had climbed out of the car by the time the authorities arrived. Anyone who has survived a big crash can have a new perspective on life, and Giugiaro is no exception. The designer himself prescribed an article for Print About his testing and his new appreciation for the safety of the car, as well as his worries.

“My car, with its intelligent safety belt, its countless airbags, its reinforced, gradually deformable body, protected me as a bowl,” writes Giugiaro. “It was the difference between an epilogue and a new beginning.” Even, he has three broken vertebrae and wears a brace while he heals. He does not complain to ride on his bike, but fully acknowledges how happy he is that he is still alive to undergo this inconvenience. He regards himself as “privileged” to be in such a good form as he is, and credits the modern luxury car he drove to make it possible.

Over the years, Giugiaro has not only designed exotic cars such as the BMW M1 and Delorean DMC-12, but also ordinary cars for the ordinary driver, such as the Fiat Panda and the original Volkswagen Golf. While he appreciates his own relatively happiness, Giugiaro is very worried about people who are not as happy as he was.

“Safety today is a luxury,” writes Giugiaro. “Those who can afford a new car have a better chance of making it alive.” He continues to say: “I owe it to the technology that I helped in my own way to form. If I drove a car from fifteen years ago – the average age of vehicles on Italian roads – I would probably not tell here.”

It is a similar story in the US, where the age of the average car was 12.6 years old from 2024, and rises. New cars are for the rich that most of us are not, and even used cars are becoming more and more expensive. The inability of the average person to buy a new car does not only cost money. It also costs lives.

“The statistics don’t lie,” writes Giugia. “A new car, with its safety functions, offers seven times more opportunities to survive an accident than an accident from fifteen years ago. I am one of those times.” Despite his crash, or perhaps partially, Giugiaro does not intend to give up new car designs, perhaps with a renewed emphasis on safety.