First it was fuel mileage: The skinny people spouting off that us fat guys were causing the fuel crisis or something like that. Now, our cars are trying to kill us in accidents!

Seriously, Joel at The Car Blog is reporting on a UK study that says that overweight people are twice as likely to have a car accident than skinny people. The reasons? Sleep apnea, high blood pressure and diabetes. Sleep apnea? If that’s affecting my driving, then perhaps we should deal with my narcolepsy first! Blood pressure? Well I suppose that resulting heart attacks probably cause the odd accident, but I would suspect that more drivers have a heart attack after the accident.

What concerns me more is the fact that vehicles aren’t designed to keep fat people safe. They are designed to protect average people. Well there are lots of factors that go into average, but
they say that over 64% of americans are considered overweight and 30% are obese. That’s a hell of a lot of fat people. Do you think it might be time for automakers to find a way to deal with that?

Joel makes a very good point, that we have the technology to create intuitive, 2 stage air bags and seat belts. Why not ensure (as best possible of course) that the vehicles are designed to protect the people who actually drive them.

I vote to end the engineering world’s discrimination of us fat guys. We are not a minority!