Cars Designed To Kill You
Tuesday 12th January, 2010
Article by Jim Stack's REAL ELECTRIC VEHICLES - (Courtesy of EV World)
Right from the first motor cars they have made designs that can kill you. Here are a few I know about, please fel free to comment and add any others.
The first motor cars were called horseless carriages. The law requires a person on foot to go before your vehicle carrying a lamp. The first vehicles backfired quite often and caused horses to jump and throw the rider. After most of the horses were replaced that happened less often. I guess they firgued the fix was to get rid of the horses.
Then to start all the new motor cars you have to set the spark advance, and crank the engine over. If it kicked back you would break your hand, arm or thumb. I'm sure a few heart attacks also caused some to be killed.
Next there were more and more vehicles and some were only 2 seaters so they came up with the rumble seat. This was in the back area where we have trunks today. The seat unfolded toward the back of the car. The riders got in and sat in the open with no seat belts. If the car stopped suddenly, the riders in the rumble seat could be be-headed. At the least they slammed their heads into the back of the car. This caused many deaths.
About the same time they came up with convertibles. These sure looked like fun riding with the wind, dirt and weather running through your hair, blowing off your hat and anything loose in the vehicle. If you had an accident you would fly right out of the vehicle, even if you had a seat belt that wasn't invented until 1964. It was a great flight but the landing would kill you. If it didn't the other vehicles would be sure to make your suffering short, splat.
Now they were really pumping out the vehicles. Of course they had to make them look special. Some had fins and giant bumbers of heavy shinny chrome. A few had doors that opened opposite to each other. They were called suicide doors. You don't have to ask why. They were sure to kill you or anyone stepping in or out of them.
The exhaust coming out was so deadly that you can die in your garage if the car idles. Some people even commit suicide from their vehicles exhaust. Good thing we HAD a big open world. The build up of this exhaust is killing us all. Slowly like cigarettes so it's not clear to some. But global warming will get us all in the end.
The amount of gas to move these monster vehicles that gained weight faster than the economy now could carry 20-30 gallons. Who cares if gas is a volatile liquid, has the power of 2 sticks of TNT in each gallon. We have to have our freedom. Just don't get rear ended in a FORD Crown Vic or a Pinto. The gas tanks exploded. There was a fix but automaker decided it was not worth the cost since only 200-300 died. They put a dollar value of about 100K per life, not cost effective. Keep selling.
We also had the move to smaller more economic cars like the Corvair, Pinto, Mustang and Vega. Did anyone mention safety? Well my uncle Ralph Nader said the Corvair was unsafe at any speed. I'm not sure why he didn't say all cars, but he did have the extra points. The independant rear suspension on the Corvair made them flip over in corners very easy, The VW Beetle has a simlar design but they added a torsion bar to help handling. Corvairs didn't want to spend the extra 12 bucks.
Now we have great big SUV's that are very top heavy and unsafe. The rear visibility alone cause many to back over their own children and pets. But, hey we have to be free and have lots of room. Now many vehicle like that have stabling system for stability control. It cost each auto maker extra but they don't mind since they make so much on larger vehicles it was well worth it for them. You still get a vehicle with the worse MPG on any vehicle in the world, enough room to fly around inside in an accident and beat your head against the sides until you're, you guessed it, you're killed. Over 40,000 traffic deaths are reported each year in the US. It used to be 60,000 but air bags and seat belts helped.
Many worry the Electric and Hybrid vehicles are too quiet, gee I'm worried we may not hear that big Prius when a motor cycle goes by setting off all the alarm systems and breaking my ears with their straight pipes and no emmissions controls. But we worry about the quiet hybrids. Give me a break.
Then emergency groups worry about all that voltage that is fused and breaker protected hurting them. They never worry about the fumes and flames from gas fires. But those batteries may hurt their big gas chain metal saws that make millions of sparks from the saw into gas cars every second they cut.
We also have the new battery vehicles that have very stable low center of gravity. How much safer could you get? Many have top speeds of 80-100 Mph. P.S. the speed limit is 75 or less but some worry they won't go fast enough. The new Vette goes over 220 mph, why ? IS that safe when every owner will want to test it and be sure they can really go 200+ ?
So if you look at the very unsafe vehicles we have had for about 100 years you can see that electrics are improving the safety of vehicles while saving us from our oil addiction and pollution. Lithium is safe, light weight, uses American electricity and are non toxic. EV's love Renewable Energy but can even use old fossil fuel electric very efficiently. You could not ask for a better vehicle to make a better world than the lithium battery electric vehicle in an EV world.
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