I Should Have Died, Epsiode 1, prelude

In keeping with my idea of posting interesting stories from my past, here's the first of several in the "I Should Have Died" series:

When I was sixteen, I had a 1966 VW Beetle. At the time, it was about 17 or 18 years old, which isn't ancient, but it was old. Also, over the years, lots of redundancy and safety features have been added to cars - the 1966 VW Beetle had almost none of those. When I got it, it had lap belts, front seat only.
Now, in this car, the engine is in the back, so all that's in front of you is a trunk; and the windshield is literally like, 6" in front of your face. And 2" away from your chect is a pointy, non-collapsing steering column. In short, this is not a car you want to be driving if you get into an accident.
Another major safety improvement modern cars have is that they basically have two (some even have four!) braking systems - one for the front, and one for the back. The idea is that if you get a leak in one end, your car will still stop at least a little, so that you can get safely off the road, or to a shop. And this is also another safety feature missing from the '66 Volkswagen. If there's a problem anywhere in the brakes on a '66 VW, the whole system goes out. All of this intersects to create the interesting story in my next installment....