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.
could hurt pedestrians and cyclists
I dare you to convince me that anyone still buying Tesla would not see that as a benefit. That’s going to be the number one selling point of this thing after articles like this make their rounds.
Did you buy your Tesla since Elmo when full fash, and would you buy one now if you didn’t have one already?
Why the fuck do people hate on the one class of people using the most efficient form of transportation that also provides exercise in a world that can’t stop spewing greenhouse gasses (For electric cars, those greenhouse gasses are being spewed at the power plant instead of from the car itself) and people don’t get enough exercise?
Fucking. Madness. Cyclists should be applauded and not targeted.
I’ll give you an honest answer. I live in a rualish area. There’s a 2 lane highway that’s roughly 50 miles from my city to another one. 55 and a lot of blind curves. Farmers in semi trucks use that road all the time for hauling stuff.
Every summer there’s a pack of cyclists that try that route. They barely do 25. Every summer one of them does on one of the corners. You simply can’t stop a semi fast enough when something is doing half the speed limit, especially on a sharp corner.
They’re a fucking menace. There literally hundreds of miles of trails to ride in my area, but they have to be on that one particular road. They’re simply the most self centered assholes in the universe IMO.
Most efficient?
Human bodies are god awful at converting fuel to useful mechanical energy.
I don’t know about other cities, but locally we have a very nice and well paved city-spanning network of bicycle paths that are parallel to, but separate from, the city streets. And we have a group of guys on their $10k bikes who ignore these paths to ride three across in a lane during rush hour on roads that will beat their wheels square, ignoring all red lights and stop signs. They make it hard for me to ride, because I get associated with these people by virtue of riding a bike.
People don’t hate cyclists. They hate those cyclists.
This is of course excluding those who hate everything which isn’t horrible for the planet. They hate bikes, electric cars, smaller cars that don’t burn much gas, vegetables, and any woman with a spine.
You have serious issues and world view problems to even begin to think things like that about people.
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.
If anyone actually cared about this they’d be going after Ford and Chevy, not a vehicle that isn’t even available to the public yet.
While Chevy and Ford have giant trucks too, they also crumple where the stainless steel Tesla doesn’t. Crumpling makes the vehicle dissipate the force of a crash in case you weren’t aware.
Regardless, no one needs this Tesla monstrosity just like no one needs the giant vehicles Americans seem to be obsessed with.
Unless I’m mistaken, crumpling is meant to protect the driver and passengers. Not pedestrians, cyclists, or anyone else outside the vehicle.
To an extent it’s both. I mean intent-wise it’s all about the occupants of the car, but as a side effect it also slightly reduces the impact on the pedestrian. The way I would think about it is that crumple zones on their own aren’t nearly enough to protect pedestrians, but removing them would be going completely in the wrong direction
A bit of a straw man argument, but also based. They should go after all production vehicles and require that they meet pedestrian safety standards or that ownership requires additional licensing/training.
In the EU they do, and the Cybertruck has already failed the pedestrian safety requirements there.
The NHTSA is just now starting to talk about “rating” vehicles for pedestrian safety in the US, but to my knowledge there is no actual rule or mandate yet. We just inherit whatever is designed into vehicles that are also sold in the EU, if those vehicles happen to be sold here.
why not both?
Although being fair, the other day just out of curiosity I was taking a look at electric cars in my country and almost every single one of them was a needlessly huge SUV.
There were a few exceptions, but I was not expecting that maybe 25 out of 30 cars were in the bigger size.
why not both?
Because cyber trucks aren’t killing people. Trucks made by Ford and Chevy are. Why put effort into solving a problem that doesn’t exist yet when there is a real problem right now, and if you solve that one it will also solve the cyber-truck problem.
I don’t like Teslas, Musk or the cyber truck but it can’t be any more dangerous than the 4 ft wall of radiator traditional pickups have now. Not saying this isn’t a concern but I am way more concerned about the millions of pedestrian crushing rolling walls already on the road.
I’m pretty sure it actually is significantly more dangerous. The front end of traditional pickups will still crumple and absorb a great deal of force. If the cybertruck is more rigid and the sharp edges have a potential to gash pedestrians on impact, that’s two factors that don’t apply to current pickups.
So are we really contemplating pickup trucks as more safe in a pedestrian collision because they have crumple zones?
When a truck hits a pedestrian and the front of the truck crumples, is that pedestrian okay?
There’s a difference between a shattered pelvis and being impaled because someone thought sharp corners are cool and safety standards are oppression.
I don’t actually know the ride height but it looks like the cyber truck has a much lower nose when driving on normal roads compared to a lot of trucks, so while it may be very stiff, maybe it’ll just launch you over the hood.
Tesla seem confident it’ll be safer in part because of that.
I’m wondering if they’ve done some something that can lower the front further if an imminent crash is about to happen with a pedestrian to lower the nose even more. Maybe it won’t work if you’re already at lowest setting, but if you’re raised at all maybe.
You think they’d have advertised a feature like that though by now, so maybe not, but I bet they could.
Would be a good feature for any vehicle with air suspension that can detect an imminent crash with a pedestrian
I’m pretty sure Tesla is devoid of any technology that detects pedestrians.
Detecting that collision is on the same order of difficulty as self-driving cars.
This is not true.
Anti collision systems of various sorts have been around for over a decade. The problem space is minuscule compared to self driving, and almost all car manufacturers offer both forward and reverse collision detection at this point.
In fact I think EU is making it a requirement soon.
Your wording makes it sound like the existence of even more dangerous trucks somehow excuses this dangerous truck. Both the 4 ft wall and the sharp metal blade edges are dangerous and irresponsible designs.
I’m not excusing it at all, I think it’s one of the worst vehicles ever made, too big, heavy and fast. People are for sure gonna crash these beasts.
What I meant was I’d like to see traditional truck designs that have millions of vehicles on the road be scrutinized before the 10 cyber trucks. You’re way more likely to be hit by a regular truck which has a deadly design than a cyber truck just because of how many more are on the road.
“I don’t like x but it can’t be worse than y” is a construction which serves to minimize how bad something is. Instead, let’s scrutinize both: “This cyber truck is ridiculously dangerous. While we’re at it, let’s also regulate the 4 feet tall wall of grill on other trucks.”
People are going to be pissed when they find out cyclists lose in collisions against any vehicle, not just prototype electric trucks.
Hell, motorcyclists lose, even with 1000lbs of bike.
Something called physics can’t be bypassed. Worrying about making cars less dangerous for pedestrians is a foolish endeavor at this point. I really don’t see it making that much difference when you look at the mass differential.
Deforming plastic bumpers aren’t going to make much difference when they just compress with so little pressure that hard parts of the car are still impacting human bodies.
This is a uniquely American problem, and therefore something we’re doing is wrong. Why just accept that our streets are so dangerous? Don’t you want safer streets?
And using it.
There are certain streets in my city that are multi-lane, paired one-ways, they’re major routes with a LOT of traffic.
There are parallel streets that make the same connections, that only see local traffic, people who live on those blocks.
Where do the cyclists like to ride, with the cars doing 25 at most, or with the cars on the 45 mph street where people speed up to 60 at times?
Cyclists (as a group) love to shout about the rules of the road saying they can be there, but so many disregard those same rules when it’s convenient.
Running red lights/stop signs (because it takes effort to start again! Wait, I thought one of the arguments was it’s good exercise?), riding against traffic, (bad in the city, but I think is the better approach for rural areas), etc.
You (the royal “you”) wanna ride a bike? Good for you. I’ll do my best to make the road safe for you, but it’s a two-way street. Work with me, not against me.
And I’ve been a motorcyclist for 30+ years now, dealing with some similar issues (especially that we’re not visible to drivers). People in cars will make mistakes, it’s up to me to ensure they see me, that they know what my intentions are. Most drivers really have no idea what to expect out of a two-wheeler, with or without an engine. That needs to be acknowledged and considered with every interaction.
Edit: aww I offended a bunch of cyclists who do these things, but don’t have the balls to comment because they know this is all true.
“The big problem there is if they really make the skin of the vehicle very stiff by using thick stainless steel, then when people hit their heads on it, it’s going to cause more damage to them,”
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
