Good to hear feedback on this.
I agree that safety for pedestrians is an important issue.
Maybe I have high expectations of car designers, but I would like to see bumpers that are as safe as possible for pedestrians, but not painted - cant they put a synthetic bumper on? Something that wont show every scratch.
I just think its mad to paint a "bumper". I mean no-one bumps on purpose into another car
but with these painted panels everyone gets a scratch sooner or later, and that is a minimum of 200 quid gone for cosmetic or 600 quid or so for a bigger panel replacement. These are simply unnecessary costs for us already-broke consumers. We pay for more car body-work, and we also we pay higher insurance premiums as there are more body-work claims coming in to the insurance companies - I for one have other things I want to spend my cash on!
I know there are a few cars on the market with "Sensible" bumpers - mostly French cars
. Also most big 4-WD cars used to be more practical as regards bumpers - though even these are changing over to painted bumpers now I noticed - a sign that most of these cars never really go off-road much... as who wants to drive up a mountain track with painted bumpers.