A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.
Vehicles are getting way too heavy to be safe.
Hmm, these huge trucks are killing pedestrians, causing worse crashes due to crash incompatibility, destroying the climate, and now smashing through guard rails and flying off cliffs. We'd better change our entire country's infrastructure to accommodate them.
It's the good Christian thing to do
Amen
Isn't this just the road trying to solve the problem for us? I say we should have more ditches and guardrail barriers!
Lol you apparently didn't read the article... it's calling out EVs because they're usually heavier than the ICE counterparts. Small sedans are pushing 5k pounds now being EVs. Batteries are very very heavy.
It’s worth highlighting that this study isn’t really about the merits of EVs. After all, you can buy an EV that weighs less than 5,000 pounds. You just can’t electrify your favorite already-large car—or even buy a hulking gas-powered car—and expect guardrails to work as intended. “Weight is a universal problem; it is not unique to electric vehicles,” Stolle said. “We have similar concerns about the compatibility of the biggest gas-powered cars with our guardrail system.” The 6,700-pound Chevrolet Silverado 1500 already weighs too much, based on the result from this research, and the 8,500-pound Silverado EV weighs even more.
It doesn't help that the first EVs most manufacturers are focusing on are their large SUVs and trucks. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 both certainly aren't small cars in a general sense, but in the land of EVs they are. Both weigh under 4000 pounds which is less than the best selling vehicle in North America, the F150.
Tax the heavy cars much more, they cause more dammage in crashes and way more wear and tear in general.
Fuck that. The problem isnt that people want bigger cars. The problem is that NHTSA's CAFE standards favor manufacture of larger cars.
CAFE slowly reduces the amount of emissions that vehicles can have, but they fucked it up: the required reductions are greatest on the smallest, most efficient cars, and lowest on the largest vehicles. Manufacturers "comply" with these standards by dropping their smallest cars from their lineup, and increasing the sizes of everything left on the market.
Fix the fucking standards to favor smaller cars, and manufacturers will follow.
At least here in Cali we do. My HD truck gets an extra $500~ a year tax on top of the Gas guzzler tax I paid when new. Plus the fuel costs/taxes for that. Compared to my other cars I pay about $600 more for newal on it. The Average car is like $245 a year but the truck is like $840.
Definitely fine with paying the extra taxes though. I use more infrastructure and I also require additional strengthening of crash systems and cause road damage so I’m not opposed.
If only everyone was as reasonable as you!
Rather than tax them a bit more, which won't actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they're not allowed to sell them otherwise
The point is to use the tax to pay for upgrading the infrastucture. Also attempting to regulate car sizes like that would be political suicide in most states.
Or just ban them from certain roads.
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds
Seems like yet another case of a flawed study or a flawed article based on a misunderstanding of the study.
Statements like the quote above make no sense as "withstanding a 5,000lb vehicle" makes no sense. A 5k lb vehicle traveling at 70MPH is carrying several orders of magnitude more energy than a 5k lb vehicle traveling at 5MPH. Likewise a direct, perpendicular hit will impart more energy than a glancing parallel blow, so what are they really rated for?
In any case, these guardrails are used in places where 100k lb semis are traveling at highway speeds, and there have never been any other doom and gloom articles written about that. I don't think we need to completely rebuild our highway system simply because heavier cars exist.
And they're not meant to stop cars but rather redirect them
It would be 5k lb at high speed. I would say higher than the speed limit just to be safe. There would also be specs for height, etc.
Maybe heavier cars and vehicles should have a lower speed limit then.
Maybe we should make car accidents a felony crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
Maybe car sales taxes should scale by vehicle weight.
If you consume more of the road, you pay more
In the Netherlands you pay a road tax every 3 months. The amount is based on weight (because a heavier car does more damage to a road) but also on eco label. So an electric car that has the best eco label can have less tax than an old (but much lighter) diesel car.
They fundamentally do through taxes on emissions and fuel efficiency, plus fuel consumption taxes.
It's just written as explicitly as it being a weight tax
they do. or more appropriately the registration fees.
we obviously need to take money from Amtrak and public transport grants to rebuild the interstate system. Guardrails upgraded everywhere, new lanes would be added to reduce congestion
New lanes don't reduce congestion. When you add new lanes, drivers who had previously avoided those routes suddenly think "oh more lanes, it'll be less congested" and it just fills back up to capacity. Except it's worse because there's even more cars now in the extra lanes you just built. Adding lanes makes congestion worse, not better.
What we need to do is get people off the roads and onto public transportation. That's how you reduce congestion - get people off the roads. Unfortunately that means actually investing in public transportation, so that'll never happen in the US.
It's called induced demand
The guard rails are pretty good enough as is. When you hear of something like this it's very often caused by lack of maintenance/poor installation/assembly. There is a guy on youtube that has videos of a whole bunch of guardrails that are simply unsafe because they are missing bolts or were assembled incorrectly.
And remember - guard rails are meant to slow you down enough to try and prevent a worse situation rather than always turning you back into the roadway to create a larger accident with other traffic or stop you completely.
I know America has an obesity epidemic, but did it really have to be extended to our cars?
fuel eff requirements tied to weight
just another oil company + car company scam
The car companies (like basically all other corporations) successfully passed their externalities onto the Government and the Government has done nothing to try to recoup those costs.
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds, but many of today’s SUVs and trucks exceed that threshold.
MGS being what I've known as W beam guardrail.
Fun fact: In Spanish it's called 'quitamiedos', which literally means 'fear remover'. It's not supposed to stop you, just let you drive closer to the edge :)
But he noted that in the real world, a guardrail is much more likely to be placed next to a steep [drop-off] than a concrete barrier.
Thankfully it was a test, but there's probably already instances where an over-weight vehicle has smashed through safety devices.
There's a guard rail guy on YouTube who investigates how the guard rails have been fitted. They often have bolts and the tension wire incorrectly installed so much so that they don't even effectively stop small vehicles. That guy lost a family member to this type of accident and so is on a crusade kinda.
I'm willing to bet the super tall pickups and SUVs are more likely to hop over those steel guardrails, too. Related: Those sloped concrete dividers that have a slightly shallower slope at their wider bottom? Those are super effective, because that bottom slope deflects the vehicle's front wheel, causing it to turn slightly away from the barrier instead of continuing to smash through it.
It's called a Jersey barrier.
They have other issues though. They cost more to produce, cost more to install and cost more to maintain. They also accumulate snow, which would otherwise blow through an open W guard rail.
A third option are wire guards. They're cheaper on all accounts, don't get tagged with graffiti and statistically save more lifes. They work best on long straight stretches, but because of the flexibility, they are not ideal for inner city streets where it's best to avoid any lane breaches at all.
Those are called jersey barriers
Guardrails, much like the crumple zones of cars, are designed to give way to dissipate energy. This is a safety feature which saves lives. There isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all-traffic guardrail. It's about statistically improving outcomes, but unfortunately they aren't going to help in all cases. Maybe they need to be updated, but it's going to take time to adjust to changing average vehicle weights.
Velomobiles weight 35kg (77 pounds) and offer very good protection compared to normal bicycles. Theoretically you could design single seat cars not much heavier. Of course for higher speeds you'd want more protection and a little bit wider.
I imagine the ideal self driving car or robo-taxi to be two seats that face each other, so when you get one alone you have plenty of space to stretch your feet or put your groceries. It could be totally luxurious, simple to call and use and fast too. And the embodied energy would be very small and the "mpg" would be insane.
It's just sad how badly we are tackling climate change by just letting the free market run wild.
I wouldn't say that it's a free market when there are so many mega corporations and their lobbies in government, but I agree with the rest
Yeah. For example everyone thinks patents are great because they reward the little inventor for having the great idea. But they become commodities that can be acquired with capital and create hindrances to the free market. Effectively they protect large capital investments to prevent disruptions to change the market too quickly. Anything new takes 20 years at least to be fully utilized.
With climate change that basically means every single improvement to turn our thousands of industrial process towards sustainability or circular economy is being min-maxed for profit.
Eh, non-issue. Just slap a surgeon general warning that the car will go through guardrails if it is over 5k lbs. And put a big roadway improvement tax on pointless large SUVs, minivans, and massive trucks, which nobody actually needs. We've had smaller variants of vehicles for decades. Even kei vans can hold many grown ass adult men.
All this aside, we have ultra heavy truckers whose trucks already would and do go through guardrails. We should be de-emphasizing car and highway investment anyways, putting more funding towards rapid mass transit and rezoning metro areas to be walkable. Fuck $30 / hr street parking.
EVs are extremely heavy too.
Yes, but they wouldn't have to be, if not for people wanting a giant SUV with 400 miles of range. The weight goes up nonlinearly, because people aren't willing to compromise on lifestyle for the benefit of those around them. And then they expect us not just to tolerate their lifestyle, but actually subsidize it.
Without them necessarily being SUVs, in North America, distances between cities or municipalities are pretty big. Such a trip would be 2 hours in Europe, but in North America it can easily go up to 5 hours or more.
Either we find a way to charge a car in 2 minutes, or find an alternative, otherwise we need big batteries and they will inevitably increase the weight of the car.
I'm in Texas and will have to pay a $300 registration tax on my ev for it being "heavy and destructive and not paying fuel tax". My ev is a 2018 Fiat 500e and weighs 2900lbs. I'm tired of this argument especially when plenty of trucks weigh anywhere from 4500lbs (for the smallest examples) to quite literally 80k. Raise the fuel tax and you'll solve heavy vehicles virtually overnight.
Before anyone gets on my case I'm fully aware that not all evs are as light as mine, but plenty are lighter than an f150.
It's an interesting problem. We want people to ideally just drive less, and use EVs when they do, but EVs are heavier for the same vehicle and don't buy fuel that's usually taxed to help cover vehicle infrastructure costs. So they can cause extra wear and don't pay for it. I'm not sure how to solve that future problem other than tolls maybe?
Yes, as mentioned in the article they can be 30% heavier for the same vehicle
Electric cars often weigh around 30 percent more than a gas-powered counterpart, because big vehicles require enormous batteries to propel them hundreds of miles between charges.
They won't stay that way forever. Our battery tech is far from hitting theoretical limits of kwh per kg.
None of which will matter if all you can buy is big SUVs.
The sedans aren't that heavy though. They're under the 5,000lb limit
They should regulate the weight of cars. There's no reason passenger vehicles should be as heavy as they are. For EVs they honestly shouldn't have as much range as they do. 150 miles and improved charging infrastructure, make charging easier for folks who park on the street, is a better way to go. Folks who need to drive more than that a day should have a hybrid or ICE vehicle. Ideally a small fuel efficient one. Folks who need pickups for work should be able to buy the small European versions or work vans.
150miles is no where close to enough range for people who travel regularly. In a 3 hour trip I can do 150 miles. Depending on weather, battery degrading, and elevation that trip now requires charging multiple times which just isn't acceptable. Let alone if you were trying to do a real road trip where you drive 1000+ miles, the amount of charge time is insane. And I want an EV for those road trips, extremely convenient for car camping.
250mi is a good number. Enough to do a lot of errands and medium trips in a day and charge overnight.
Bolt EV/EUV has that and it's a compact.
Better to charge higher registration fees by weight.
The whole highway infrastructure tax structure will need revision as electric vehicles not paying gas taxes become more popular. Or we could just built more public transportation.
I can think of no better way to kill EV adoption than to intentionally make their usage less appealing than the alternative.
Folks who need a pickup truck for work should be required to file a permit request for pirchase of said truck.
Written by someone who owns a truck
Trucks haven't always been the fucking obnoxious beasts that they are now.
I'd love a truck... The size of a '93 ford ranger. I don't need or want a goddamn castle on wheels. I want a low vehicle, doesn't need two full rows of luxurious seats, with a box, with a footprint SMALLER than a fucking Nissan Altima. Yes, that is the '93 ford ranger.
The crime was artificially creating the false dichotomy.
Yeah, I love my truck but i don't need it and it is selfish for me to keep using it imo.
I am hoping to get away with not having a car when it eventually dies but I'll be buying an EV or a Hybrid sedan if I really need a car then.
I regularly haul 800 lbs of wood heating pellets in the back of my Subaru Baja. That'll get me through somewhere between a week and half to almost three weeks of heating, depending on how cold the weather is. Wash, rinse, repeat all winter long.
Then there's DYI work I'm doing on the house. I usually use my girlfriend's Tacoma for that. Plywood, lumber, gravel, and cement mix. All of it needs to be hauled, and delivery is prohibitively expensive.
None of that is required for my desk job work.
I could give up hauling the 19' sailboat, if need be, since that's a luxury. It'll make me an angry man come summer, though.
What's your plan on addressing my needs, or are you happy to let me hang?
250mi is around the right target. This pops out when you do some math on reasonable travel distances, battery charge times, and padding for cold weather.
You don't want to use the first 20% or the last 20% of the battery, so you get down to 60% right there. This improves battery lifetime and also charges faster.
Lop off another 20% for cold weather.
That brings us to 120mi between stops, which is about 2 hours of highway driving between charges. You should be able to charge that in about 20 minutes, which is about right for using the bathroom, stretching your legs, and getting something to eat. If you want to go three hours, then 375mi is the right maximum.
None of this requires changes in battery tech or charging speed.
In short, there's not much need for cars over 400mi range. Use any further advancement in battery tech for chopping off weight, not making them go further.
It is my understanding that you don't fully charge your EV battery typically either. You charge it to 80% of it's capacity and that is your "100% charged" state, for battery longevity. So you are down to %40 of your theoretical range before cold weather and the batteries wearing out over time anyhow.
new vehicle weight tax to fund the new guardrails
It's not like heavy work trucks didn't exist back then, was it just that there weren't enough of them to care?
NGL - my last car was pretty big, but Google assures me it was only 4,100 lbs. My current car is the same size and is just under 5,000 pounds.
Yeah, it's about reducing fatalities by engineering to the average, not engineering to the worst case.
If you mean pickup trucks they have massively increased in size and weight.
If you mean tractor trailers there's little stopping that.
I mean, my grand dad's GMC from the 70s wasn't SIGNIFICANTLY different from your F-150s today.
This looks about right... bench seats, no seatbelts, ashtray... yee haw!
https://www.streetsideclassics.com/vehicles/7277-cha/1972-gmc-c1500-sierra-super-custom
Sounds like a you problem -Car Ceo's
In a better world roads would be closed for cars which exceed the capacity of those guard rails. Just put up a sign, do some enforcement and people will start buying smaller cars when they can't use them.
Vehicles that weigh more than 4 tons make up a significant amount of road traffic right now.
Literally everything you purchase in a store, your food, your toiletries, your clothes, any consumer good you have every purchased traveled on a road at some point in a vehicle that far exceeds 8 tons.
Ambulances weigh more than 8 tons, fire trucks weigh more than 8 tons, mail is transported in vehicles that weigh more than 8 tons.
7,000lbs is an extremely low failure point for a guard rail given the number of vehicles that exceed that weight on the road today.
In an even better world, policies wouldn't be manipulative shitstains aimed at consumers and instead be regulation on those actually creating the thing that needs to change...
What would we do about semi trucks, delivery vans, busses, dump trucks, etc. etc. etc. Personally I've seen some pretty short busses but never a sport compact model.
Pretty much all of those vehicles require a CDL.
Seems like vehicles over a certain weight requiring a special license classification is a pretty straightforward and reasonable requirement.
But we can't do it without simultaneously addressing mass transit, bikeped, and our general absolute psychological fixation around designing all of our society around cars first and people second.
There are already road signs that limit vehicle weight or restrictions for these vehicles anyway.
That’s at least 500 stone.
Over $8800
Or like 1500 bricks.
For the trucks and land boats that weight more. Lol, that's is all.
The article literally says that the problem will just get worse as we move to electric cars since they’re heavier.
I dislike people having useless pickup trucks as much as the next guy, but I don’t think they deserve to die either. Or how about semi drivers? You know, a crucial part of our delivery infrastructure?
Maybe take the time to read next time and think with the smart part of your brain.
Yes, have you looked at the weights of actual electric cars and not electric SUV and trucks? The average weight of a electric car is between 3-6k in weight. Secondly, where was the outrage when people were complaining about semis and safety? NHTSA has been at the mercy of the semi industry regarding safety updates. How long have people been fighting regarding undercarriage protectors to protect car drivers from losing their lives to the semi industry? Where has the outage been about the weight protection of those guardrails for semis? I didn't know semis are so new to this country.
Again, SUVs and trucks drivers that just drive those for status... Boofuckinhoo.
Here a link for your average weight for electric cars.
Even a Tesla weighs less than the max weight allowed for the rails. But I guess my brain is useless.
Edit: a whole documentary for you about the undercarriage guards link.
Electric cars are not going to stay that heavy. There are plenty of battery advancements in the pipe to bring that down. There also isn't much reason to push range much over 400mi, and even that's probably unnecessary.
