Did you see it on the news? The car companies have been working on it for 10 years. A hood that bucks upward at the back when a pedestrian is struck by the front of the car. The hood jumps upward on springs (or something) loaded at the rear. The idea being that the person being throw onto the hood won't impact with the hood and then the engine and instead will hit a kind of compressible surface. So, how much will these pistons cost to replace when they (inevitably) fail or are used? $600 ea? $1000? Looks like accident preventatives (like air bags) have become the cash cows of the auto industry. And to think they used to turn up their noses at the idea of safety! Who KNEW it could be so lucrative??
What price is safety??? Crumple zones, Nader pins, SRS systems and God knows how many other improvements/changes have been made over the life of the automobile. The weak zones in a hood combined with the design of the hinges that keep you from being decapitated, redundancy in braking systems, seats designed to reduce the possibility of whiplash. Which of these safety improvement would you like to see deleted in order to save money that you might not get a chance to spend?
Each and every day, people abdicate their responsibility in their own actions, they defy common sense and we, as a society, need to be protected from them and from ourselves if we turn into them (some of us will).
Look at it this way... if you get jostled off a busy street corner. wouldn't you be happy to find out that the car that hit you was equipped with a "cash cow"?
FWIW, life safety has become de riguer in our daily lives.... I live and work in industries that are quite a bit more dangerous than you will find in Toronto. WCB, OSHA and NIOSH have each developed requirements to reduce the incidence of lost time injuries and fatalities. These added steps, checks and certifications have each added to the cost of consumer goods across the board.... We can't put a price on human life or suffering and it is shortsighted to complain about safety features when it may be that, someday, it may be us as individuals that benefit from them...
I saw a VW commercial today that had this. I thought I was seeing things. It was the dumbest ad I had ever seen. I thought the front bumper fell off or something after a guy chasing a soccer ball ran into the passat. Didn't get it at all.
My only thought was, I would never, in a hundred years buy a VW after seeing this stoopid ad. Not that I would have in the first place.
(The follow sarcasm about safety is intended......and Jim, this is not knocking your view on safety.... it's my view on the whole quagmire that safety has become. )
BM It's sorta like.....
10 zillion kids have grown up riding bikes, wagons, skateboards, scooters, roller skates and blades, and
half a mamaillion have been injured in all of modern history.
Of those injured; from road burn to broken heads, 237 have been permanently debilitated
so let's pass a law that mandates that every kid wear a helmet... and if your family can't afford a helmet... then you aren't allowed to ride, etc... leave that for the affluent families....
What about the kids who slide down hills on cardboard sheets? Ride sleds and toboggans? Play on the school yard equipment? Use a trampoline at home?
There is safety, and then there is idiocy. Let's make sure nobody is responsible for themselves and there own safety. Let's give people a false sense of security and fool them into thinking it's Ok if their kid rides a bike into the street without looking because he's got a helmet, and cars have this fancy safety hood.... except not all cars have them.
I recall the good ol' safety bumper. Know how many cops were injured when those things let go. A warning was sent out nation wide to warn cops not to stand between vehicles while copying a license plate number.
OSHA regulations are OK to a point, but even those go way over the top. (Then states and businesses add their own restrictions on top of that... like AFOSH, Cal OSHA, etc) Back in the day, you could bring your kid to the job site to learn the family business first hand. Locally, a contractor had his kid on the site operating a Bobcat to clean up debris. He got fined royally and the kid was prohibited from being on any site.
Next we'll have cars with capsules like hydroplanes. Each person wrapped in a cocoon. And why not an ejection system like an F-111... where the entire cockpit is an escape capsule. At the first point of impact, explosive bolts let go, and rocket motors propel the passenger compartment high into the air, where 'chuts deploy to gently lower it back to earth.
Just how far are we going to have the government regulate our daily lives?
I dunno.... like sprinklers in an office building, life jackets on a boat or any other number of safety devices. None of these are ever installed with the plan being to use them - rather we pray that we never have to use them.
So... we establish that few lives will be save by having these devices around. If we imagine human life as being expendable..... especially in the name of economy, we can abandon all manner of safety devices and checks.... It's a piffling detail that one of these devices *may* save our own sorry asses one day.
Now.... do we continue to allow people to die even though we have the technology to prevent these deaths? Would we feel the same if members of our own families became "fodder"?
Do I plan on using my airbag? No.... Is there a chance I might use my airbag? Yep...
All except seat belts. Make them mandatory in every state. Six demerit points if not worn, except for medical reasons. You'll save FAR more lives than the air bags, etc, simply by enforcing it better.
If you installed huge airbags surrounding the bottom of every building, you could save everyone threatened by fire, they'd simply have to jump. Just think of the lives you could save! At what point do we simply accept the "cost of doing business?" When cars cost $40,000ea and up?
I kind of wondered if it is one answer to road rage. How many people will think of it as an open invitation to go ahead and try it out.
The driver is all pissed off, the idiot saunters across the street in front of him/her, against the light, and giving him/her a kiss my ass grin. He/she loses it, floors it and run the pedestrian dumbass down.
Yup... I can see it now. "Well, I hit him becaue my hood was supposed to protect him!"
I'm not against all safety precautions. But i do think it goes way too far in some cases.
We're saving people. True. But at the same time, many of them are, by being saved, condemned to the worst levels of quality of life for whatever time they may have left. There should be some weight given as to whether this person is going to be better off saved, or better off let go.
I have relatives who lived into their 80s, 90s and 100s. Many of them spent their final years laying in a bed in a "convalescent hospital". But we have medicine and technology to keep them going even when they no longer know who we are. It may seem cold, but, I believe the quality of the life must be considered.
As Malcolm said in Jurassic Park...' they did it because they could and never stopped to consider whether they should....'
Some things are needed. But some things are in place simply because someone had a situation which drove them to push to protect everyone from a rare circumstance. Kids helmet laws are that way.
And I am really surprised they didn't push it to the point where kids have to wear helmets to use playground equipment like the slide. After all, kids are hurt on playgrounds every day, and some of them are very seriously injured; there have even been deaths. Perhaps they should just outlaw playgrounds in the name of safety and protecting people.
I see your point, but now we have an issue of discrimination. Unhealthy people don't have to wear seatbelts? maybe they are the ones who need them most. Now drunks... that's different. I've investigated accident where drunks have killed people and totaled out vehicles, and they are the ones who walk away. Maybe we should require everyone who is in a vehicle to be drunk.
Ermmmm.... some Detroit cars already cost close enough to $40,000 here in the west....
As for your airbag idea.... mayhaps you might back up a step and examine your words. Not only is the idea ludicrous but, if you had your way with it, the idea is fraught with it's own dangers. Only one body can occupy a particular space at one time... your idea would have several breathing projectiles vying for the same turf.
At what point does life safety (or the lack of it) become part of the "cost of doing business"? I'll bet my boss could have save a few hundred bucks on my hoist at work if he'd gotten it without safety dogs. Imagine how much cheaper an airliner would be without redundant hydraulics. Imagine how much lower your taxes would be without a fire department.... C'mon, Rich... You're trying to ascribe a finite price for a human life.... what is that price? Will there be employee discount days? How about frequent flier miles? You look in the mirror right now and tell yourself exactly how much money we can save if your ideas get you killed in some accident..... in this case, a car colliding with a pedestrian..... and we all know that cars never, ever collide with pedestrians, right?
We're getting into apples and oranges, here, Spike. Allowing old folks to die a natural death has little to do with the subject at hand... and that is preventing injury, no matter what the age. One one hand we have an extrordinary medical technique, on the other we have a simple design change...
When I was a kid, my folks supervised my activities.... I wasn't dumped in front of a TV set to fend for myself nor was I allowed to roam the streets. If I was bad, our neighbour was allowed to give my rump a reminder.... a reminder that would be repeated at home for embarrassing my folks. I fell down, I got cuts, I got scrapes and I broke bones..... Not only was this part of growing up, but my system wasn't conditioned by hour after hour of sedntary television supervision and my youthful self had some innate healing power.
Now to give our heads a real good shake and get back to the reality of it all..... what pissed Rich off was a hood designed to crumple... a hood that absorbed shock instead of transferring it to an unwary pedestrian. Has this hood been suddenly been made of s super-precious metal like "unobtanium"? Does this hood have some mystical power that requires us to sacrifice bales of money in the full moons light? Is this hood made of millions of hand crafted little parts joined by a watchmakers touch? I don't think so.....
In the grand scheme of things, vehicle prices have been spiraling upwards steadily.... I an recall a time when a "full load" car had power steering and brakes and a radio. Consumer demands have added a host of toys... premium sound systems, GPS, satelltie radio, entertainment systems, AC, power seats, sunroof, moonroof, heated seats, climate control seats,.. I can keep on going.... The biggest, single cost in the prouction of each and every automobile is.... .... employee benefits...
Redesigning the hood structure to absorb impact may have cost several hundred thousand dollars to achieve...An expense like this can be amortized over how many units? Dealers order in units with a "decent"load of toys.... more than most consumers would consider ordering. Faced with a buying decision, a consumer will likely take an "off the shelf" unit with more toys than he/she wanted rather than wait 3 or 4 months for a "stripped down" version. After they get a taste for the toys, you can almost guarranty that they will be included in the next purchase.
Rich has a history of going off half cocked.... for my own sanity, I have to draw the line at any thought that we can put a dollar value to a human life (FWIW, I hope euthanasia is acceptable when I get to "that" point). As far as "the hood" is concerned, let us remeber that there will be more than one victim.... The "bouncee" will survive nearly unscathed ... the "bouncer" (and his passengers) wont have to feel the remorse over causing dire harm or death.... whether the incident would be deemed preventable or not.
The world has changed a LOT since I was a young'un.... technology has surpassed even the dreams of Popular Science and Popular Mechanix of the late 50s/early 60s. Society itself, however, is going to hell in a handbasket.....
Actually, Rich does make a good point here.... my loving bride has suffered the ravages of Crohns Disease for over 30 years. The same seatbelt that would save your life or mine, could cause enough internal damage to make the result unthinkable. Now that we have a vehicle with SRS, the chances are much smaller... but he chances remain.
For those unfamiliar with CD, I suggest
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starters. So many dollars are pledged for a lifestyle disease such asAIDS... while so little is pledge for a disease that afflicts people muchlike the rest of us. There are those dangers that we cannot mitigate, no matter how we try. That is not to say that we shouldn't change those that we can....
Yea Jim, I know. I was just being a smart ass. Thinking of it though, if a someone IS hit and the hood doesn't protect them, do they sue the auto manufacturer or the driver or both?
Not really. death is death. Quality of life applies whether it's someone who is the victim of an accident, global conflict, or the infirmaries of old age.
My point. When you were a kid, this was fairly common. Government, thanks in large measure to liberal thought, has decreed that neither parents nor neighbors can so punish a child without the risk of being charged with abuse. There also used to be a stigma attached to a wide range of "anti-social" behaviors... like divorce, teen pregnancy, etc. By removing, or alleviating them by transferring responsibility for one's own actions to "society", we give people reasons not to look out for their own safety. Why worry about anything. The government will take care of it seems to have become the average viewpoint.
agreed. As I recall from umpteen years ago, that actual cost of the vehicle materials was around $600. The balance of the price was for labor (including benefits)
I recognize that some of Rich's views are "different", but, there are times when I agree with him on point. In this case, my problem is less with the design change, than it would be with mandating such change and thus giving people (both "bouncees" and "bouncors") the false sense of security that the idea this hood imparts.
And missed by a mile on many other predictions....
I totally agree about society. While I see it as a combination of many aspects, from the internet which some people seem to believe is as truthful as God speaking in their ear, to the war on terror, it seems that the greatest majority of it can be traced back to the literalist thinking of the 60s. When the university eggheads held forth new thought. Like people are not responsible for their actions, society is. What happened to knowing right from wrong, and that if you crossed that line, there was a price to be paid.
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