A Tesla owner’s dream of taking his new Cybetruck for a spin turned into a nightmare. He landed in the emergency room with blood spurting from a wrist wound before even getting behind the wheel.
A Tesla owner’s dream of taking his new Cybetruck for a spin turned into a nightmare. He landed in the emergency room with blood spurting from a wrist wound before even getting behind the wheel.
There’s a reason we don’t have hood ornaments anymore, but somehow a vehicle completely constructed of sharp corners and edges is just fine.
… in the US. In other countries, they can’t be bought and likely never will be.
We can’t have pop-up headlights because of pedestrian safety, but you can buy a 5,000 pound vehicle that does 0-60 in three seconds and has a hood level with most people’s heads because that’s totally safe for pedestrians.
Well, You can’t buy it in the civilised world.
Are we pretending to care about pedestrians now? The US has long held the attitude that it was their own damn fault for not being in a car. There are a multitude of established, studied, simple changes that could be made to make things safer for pedestrians with relatively little needed in the way of sacrifice from car designers if anyone felt pedestrians have a right to live.
Can you share some of these? I had a small stint in the auto design industry and am genuinely curious.
First and foremost look up the benefits of roundabouts. On the grand scheme of city planning and. Construction, these are low cost life savers for pedestrians and drivers - easy win.
Lower hoods, rounded edges (stares at cyber truck), and smart braking are some of the big design elements that already exist See https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-ratings-address-pedestrian-crashes As a good source.
I don’t have any resources but my Volvo has a long, low hood and a heavily padded engine cover
I don’t have a car and go for a walk most days, where I live drivers treat pedestrians and (bikers/scooters/other alternatives) as enemies/targets/antagonists/etc.
With zero oncoming traffic or an empty second lane, where I live people swerve toward you instead of around when passing you. At a particular intersection I only cross on the ped signal cause its by the interstate, I get cussed out a few times a month just for not being in a car - Its fucking nuts.
Also you can put a steel crash bar on the front that completely bypasses the crumple zones and presents hazards to both pedestrians and passengers solely because it makes the owner feel “tough”.
Extra bonus points if you bolt some super bright Led lights to said bar and shine them on people that look suspicious to you.
Machismo culture: Maim yourself and your familial property to own the libs. Now that’s what I call husbandry 🇺🇸🫡🦅🎆🐢🏝
They’re also damage multipliers in otherwise minor accidents. So instead of needing a new plastic bumper cover and some styrofoam, you now also need a new grill, headlights and hood too.
Although those rules are European, and the Cybertruck isn’t being sold there. If Telsa wanted to sell the cyber truck in Europe, they would need to make some pretty dramatic changes to complying with pedestrian safety laws.
I’ll wager that they’re not going sell this in Europe. Big ass trucks don’t have a big market in Europe, and this thing is like the OG roadster. An expensive impractical toy for rich folks.
Is that the listed reason pop-up headlights were outlawed? I thought it was because the pop-up mechanisms fail and then you don’t have lights, same reason the brake lights can’t be on movable bodywork.
I had a car with pop up lights for twenty years and the mechanism was supposed to fail?
Supposed to, no. They just did so, and a lot of them did, felt like at least a quarter or more of them to saw at least one never popped up
Probably a bit of both. Having that mechanism is just another point of failure, and seems like it would a pain in the ass to install and test on an assembly line.
And here in Canada it’s required that new vehicles have daytime running lights, ie. lights are on (but at a dimmer setting) whenever the vehicle is running. Because it’s easier to see vehicles with lights on them than a vehicle with no lights in poor weather conditions. So pop-up lights would only make the vehicle look nice when it’s parked, but it wouldn’t look good whenever you’re driving, even in the daytime.
You know, I had never considered why we don’t have hood ornaments anymore. It does make sense, though.
Doesn’t certain Mercedes and jaguar still use hood ornaments? I don’t think this is a safety thing, they just fell out of style
Yeah they do, along with Bentley. Not sure about any regulations, but I do know that they are usually (always?) Not rigidly fix any more. You would have to look at the EU to know for sure. I don’t believe that America has any pedestrian impact standards. Hell the the DOT crash standards for passengers are a joke.
You don’t see those long rigidly fixed guillotines they had in the 50’s anymore. I do know from experience that the little Mercedes three point hoop thing is kind of spring loaded so it’ll flex during an impact.
The two aren’t linked?
Hood ornaments were mostly an artifact of how radiators used to be filled. There was SOME discussion of whether they are more dangerous to a pedestrian but most were flimsy to the point that the corpse rolling up on your hood would snap it off rather than get impaled like a Spindlebeast is running a train on them.
Mostly… it was a mix of people wanting “sleek” cars coupled with those inevitably getting broken off and stolen.
Early hood ornaments, and hood “spurs” were most certainly dangerous to pedestrians. Regulations in the US eliminated traditional fixed hood ornaments, though some later models featured smaller spring-loaded ornaments.
The risk factor of traditional hood ornaments was always very suspect and more a function of hood design than not. The actual danger (which, again, is still very questionable when you are getting hit by a car at speed) was more stuff like (going by the wikipedia page) the 1949 Kaiser and the texas faux horns. Literal spikes on the front of a car. Not a pointy bit on top of the hood. And breakaway bits or springs go a long way toward negating those.
Also, it is very much worth actually looking into the kinds of car regulations the US has. We have a LOT of stupid knee jerk regulation and laws that don’t actually make sense (and, in a lot of cases, make our cars more dangerous) but passed because only one “side” had lobbyists involved.
You’re arguing against a point I never made.
We don’t have hood ornaments anymore. Regulations in the US in 1968 eliminated traditional fixed hood ornaments - along with implementing all sorts of safety and economy standards - shortly after Johnson signed the Department of Transportation into existence. And that came shortly after Nader’s overwhelmingly popular book, Unsafe At Any Speed.
Later spring-loaded and breakaway hood ornaments fell by the wayside for style and aerodynamic reasons, but they were mostly gone anyway.
That’s what actually happened. Hood ornaments were, for all practical purposes, eliminated by safety regulations. Whether that specific, or other general, safety regulation is effective or the result of lobbying one way or another is not relevant to actual historical events.
Yes, there was (very limited…) legislation. But they were already on their way out in the 60s. And there were hood ornaments on rolls royces and even mercedes well into the 2010s.
If hood ornaments were really something people valued then we would still see the spring mounted or snap off variety. Hell, car manufacturerers would LOVE to sell a disposable status symbol. But they went out because, as you yourself even mention, “aerodynamic reasons” (which is also really questionable but…). Cars, especially in the 90s/00s, stopped being boxy messes and started being smooth and “sleek” and the hood ornament aesthetic was not part of that.
This is not a win for legislation or safety. If it were then we would actually see strong legislation against steel frames and putting those bumper bars on civilian vehicles.
The corners are insanely dangerous IMO. You’ve got basically a sheet of metal along the edge of the truck which sticks out a bit. Relevant bit from a Youtube video https://youtu.be/LC9a3GR1HJY?t=437
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/LC9a3GR1HJY?t=437
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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