- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars
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- cross-posted to:
- fuckcars
- [email protected]
Tesla Cybertruck’s stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns - experts::The angular design of Tesla’s Cybertruck has safety experts concerned that the electric pickup truck’s stiff stainless-steel exoskeleton could hurt pedestrians and cyclists.
Why are they hitting their heads on it? Is that really the worst possible outcome, multiple people intentionally bonking their heads on it and getting more hurt?
I don’t buy this story. I think it’s a plant.
Edit: lots of stupid replies to this comment, holy shit. At least try to understand the point I spelled out in plain English.
This is a lesson that we already learned a while back.
We used to make cars that were tough, but then we noticed that people were dying way too easily when they hit a tree or a wall.
In an indestructible car, all of the forces of a crash are directly applied to the people inside of a car. You might as well have have been riding a motorcyle when you crashed. They would need some advanced harness system that gives a little on impact without letting you hit the steering wheel or center console… there’s not a whole lot of space for that.
In the cars of today, the car is meant to crumple in a way that absorbs as much of an impact as possible while trying to keep the occupants alive.
If the cybertruck is too stiff, even a collision at a slow speed will kill or severely injure the occupants.
Late reply but to specify, the crumple zones dissipating energy to protect the occupants, but in part the situation you’re describing airbags do a great job at preventing people from hitting the steering wheel / walls.
A very very advanced harness system might compensate a little for a lack of crumple zones during a very rapid deceleration collision. The issue isn’t so much as stopping someone from but being thrown around in the car, seat belts do that, but nothing can stop one’s internal organs from doing the same thing inside their body. So when a body stops during a rapid deceleration, internal organs still try to move. This movement tears everything, most notably one’s aorta and a torn aorta means death with no possible chance of survival.
A small tear in one’s aorta and one may survive long enough for emergency services to show up, a bad one and they will have bleed out before a 911 call taker has time to answer a call for help.
The thing that can stop that is being immersed in liquid.
I’m guessing they are talking about accidentally hitting someone with the car. At lower speeds, collisions shouldn’t be lethal at least with a regular car (there are a lot of other factors too, but anyway). I can imagine that if you hit a thick steel panel it’s going to cause you more damage than the regular aluminum car.
It genuinely scares me that they are so confident in them being right that they didn’t stop for one second to try and understand what the sentence actually means.
This will happen with any car. Mass x velocity wins every time. A car would need a giant balloon around it to transfer energy into the pedestrian slowly enough to not injure them significantly.
And what “regular aluminum car”? Cars aren’t, by and large, aluminum. They’re still mostly steel. Not that it matters, aluminum body panels are less flexible than equivalent steel panels. The places where aluminum is heavily used are things like engines, suspension components, substructures, etc. There are very few cars using aluminum extensively in the body. Ford pickups use it in the bed, Jeeps use it for the engine hood. There are others, but making aluminum body parts is more complex than steel that’s easily stamped, and assembly is different.
You’re probably right, I’m no car connoisseur.
Still, reading the article it seems like the cybertruck is using thicker panels for it’s body.
And yes, I very much agree that mass x velocity always wins, but in urban areas where there are accidental hits in crossroads at very low speeds that are, normally, not lethal, a harder material can cause worse injuries. And I think those are the situations that the article was referring to.
I’m guessing you’ve never seen a person hit by a car before. They don’t deflect away like video game characters. A person hit roughly in the middle of their body will be “folded” over the car, smashing their head into the body of it. Then they’re either flung away, roll over the top, or get pulled under, depends on what the driver does, how hard the hit was, and how big the vehicle is.
In a car with a molded plastic body, the head bounces back off and the plastic is dented. With a plate of solid steel, the person’s head is splattered like a melon all of the “bulletproof” windows. Then the sharp edge slices them in half. Sounds very metal until it starts happening to children several times a week.
Want to make a wager about how long it is before someone is sliced in half by a cyber truck?
I’d put money on it doesn’t happen in the next ten years.
I may be wrong, but I’m pretty sure they were being facetious.
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When you hit a pedestrian, their body doesn’t stay straight. The force causes their torso to fold downward, and their head will likely impact the panel above where you struck them.