I'm not sure if this came up before, but I found this tonight.

http://www.injuryboard.com/view.cfm/ID=887

 

yes... the safety design in the 95-96 is worse than the 97-99. anybody got tat site with the ratings on it?

 

I remember when 60 minutes did their usual special about crash testing new cars. The 95 Maxima did the worst because the driver's seat seperated from the floor.

 

Seems nissan had alot of safety design issues around that time, the early model Altima's also had issues with the front passenger air bag deployment, it shot out at an odd angle and literally punched people in the face with incredible force causing most to lose eye sight, break their nose, and have some severe concusions and internal bleeding etc. I believe this issue for the altima was not addressed quickly enough, but has been since, obviously. It's interesting that in the the process of designing the car to meet safety standards they over look things such as these. It is pretty obvious that they knew it was potentially a problem, hence the euro version having the added support. Just goes to show you that when you try to cut corners to save a buck you end up losing in the end, 14.4 million dollars to be exact.