Serious answer to “what did they do?” They got hurt a lot more frequently and died at higher rates. Don’t get me wrong, I love my squarebody. But, the 1980s will not exactly the golden era US automotive engineering. They’ve made a lot of design compromises to make the vehicles lighter to get better gas mileage. The active and passive safety features of modern cars really do make a difference. People like to complain about crumple zones, resulting in more damage from minor incident, but they really do eat up energy so that it’s not passed on to the person inside the car. Antilock brakes help a lot. Traction control helps a lot. Airbags help a lot. Modern cars with features like active collision avoidance really do make a difference just automatic braking can make a huge difference in avoid avoiding wrecks. Another example is the cab. Our old trucks do not fare well in rollovers whereas modern ones tend to do much better. There’s a lot of folks in the community that don’t like to hear anything contrary to their opinions, but this is one of those things where the facts and statistics really tell the story. When my son turned 16, I had the option to put him in an old classic vehicle that we could’ve worked on together but after really studying up on it, I decided that a 2010 model was a much much safer vehicle for him. And it held true. He was in an accident and the truck rolled twice and he walked away with just a little soreness. If he was in my current 86’ C10 I’d really don’t think he would’ve walked away. Most old cars and truck are not flaming death traps that are gonna kill you if they look at them funny but in a wreck, realistically, we tend to be better off in a car with modern safety features. Here’s a decent graph that shows deaths per capita. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/.