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Rescuers Prep for Hybrid Car Accidents
mykepredko writes "I've driven a Toyota Prius for two years now and found this CNN article regarding the training required to rescue people trapped in hybrid cars to be slightly alarming. As an EE, I would expect that the electrical system is designed to be as well protected and fail-safe as possible in an accident, but if I'm ever in an accident, I'll make sure that any responders are wearing rubber gloves and boots and if any cutting is done, the roof is the only area they touch." Toyota has an accident guide indicating that if the airbags deploy, the hybrid battery pack should be automatically isolated.
If you are in an accident bad enough to need "responders" to get you out, odds are not great that you'll be conscious.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Yeah well ... appearently sarcasm is lost on the moderators.
"I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance" - Isaac Asimov
if any cutting is done, the roof is the only area they touch.
And if the car is upside down?
Racing cars have a standard placed cut off for the motor/fuel line inside the drivers door for rescuers, why not something like that for the hybrids?
Trolling is a art,
My dad has a Civic Hybrid. All the necessary cabling runs under the car next to the frame rails. If rescuers are haveing to cut that deep, you're SOL anyways. Normally rescuers have to use the jaws of life on doors, and the associated A,B,C pillars. No electricals go thru there, other than side airbag sensors.
Sounds like another internet scare article put out by a 'reputible' source...
Judging by the size of the hybrids that I've seen, I doubt that after being hit by any of the overly large gas guzzling SUV's on the road today, there will be much car to actually cut.
The problem with these things isn't the danger of electricity, it's the danger of being under my suburban!
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
Yes, but the people tend to be alive after these accidents. Anyone can yank a corpse out of a mangled Honda. Believe me, anyone!
You see a lot of panicy stuff about how dangerous
all that electrical energy in the batteries is,
but when it comes down to it if the car has the
same range as a similar normal car then there is
exactly the same amount of energy in the batteries
as there would normally be in a car's fuel tank.
But these aren't pure electric cars. They only
have a few km of range on the batteries and most
of the energy is in the fuel tank just like any
other car.
Hybrids have gas tanks and lubricants too. They have twice as many hazardous substances to leak out and burn or electrocute.
Toyota say that the hybrid battery is supposed to be isolated if the airbag activates. So it's fuss over nothing.
"Also, there are no high voltage components in the doors."
That one caught my surprise, too. Considering that the doors are pretty much a dead end, I couldn't fathom why there would be. Power doors and windows don't need any more juice in a hybrid than any other car.
G
Never mind you electric car drivers, what about we poor bicyclists and pedestrians who can't hear you coming?
I'd like to suggest...
I'd like to suggest that mothers starting telling their children to look both ways before crossing the street.
-- dR.fuZZo
"Concerns about hybrids are increasing in large part because of their growing popularity."
Obviously, somebody in the industry hasn't done his homework preparing for the new millenium and is trying to save himself through using his connection in the cable networks. What really bothers me is how they are using the innermost concerns of people to plant them in a world of fear. They almost make it unpatriotic to buy hybrids as thus you are endangering the heroic rescuers besides yourself. Not that CNN really surprises me with this move. I've lost all faith in their capability as any kind of source of information.
On the face of it, that's a good assumption. But in REALITY, you need to do whatever you have to to get basic information like WHERE ARE YOU? Sometimes people need a jolt to calm down.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
dumb... voltage isn't what kills you, current is. Otherwise everytime you shocked someone with static electricity (thousands of volts) you'd kill them. I'm sure there's enough current in the hybrid cars to kill you but still, saying the high voltage will is just not right.
Don't cut into the gas tank, don't cut into the battery either.
If only it was completely electric, then the greatest danger of all (gasoline spilling and igniting or exploding) would be eliminated. And an impact switch can isolate the battery pack in case of collision. But, they just keep making foreign-oil-dependent bombs on wheels for us to drive around in. (as well as deploying other kinds of bombs in other places to maintain our oil supply)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The "Giant Battery" in the original Prius was pretty small, not much bigger than two or three standard car batteries (depends on what you drive). I believe the battery in the new Prius is even smaller. And it's not a micro-car-- it's roughly the same size as the new honda accords. Small battery, average-sized sedan.
It wouldn't be a big deal for a rescue crew to just pull it out before they cut anywhere else, making sure the power is cut. Probably a good idea with a normal battery in a wreck that bad, on the off chance that a spark would ignite any gas vapour.
I would suggest that the government standardize a location for a cutoff switch, though, making this sort of thing easy and painless for rescue crews. No such thing exists for fuel lines (except in race cars) but that hasn't stopped us from driving.
By the same token, high-pressure hydrogen is not as big of a deal as most people are assuming, either. Crack the tank, and where does the hydrogen go? Up, quickly. It doesn't linger around at ground level, or pool under or inside the car like gasoline.
In general, cars are large, dangerous machines. They involve hundreds of thousands of watts of power, and nothing you can ever do will make handling that sort of power perfectly safe, whether the power is sitting still in a gasoline tank, a large battery, or a hydrogen cannister; or converted to kinetic and thermal energy in the form of a two-ton metal box moving at high velocity and a large steel engine block filled with blistering-hot oil and coolant. Better driver training standards and enforcement (why so many speeding tickets, but so few tickets for unsignalled lane changes?) in America would go farther than anything else.
For those of the redneck persuasion an old amusement around the gas station is a coffee can full of gas. Throw lit cigarettes into it to put them out. Which it does. Without an explosion. Potenitally of more immediate interest is the airbags now in every car, and also the seat belt pre-tensioners that fire a few milliseconds before the airbag mostly in more expensive models so far. The pre-tensioners pull your lap belt in about 2 inches to sit you in the seat more firmly. All these things are known as pyrotechnic devices. Actually, you could look at an airbag as a piece of ordnance pointed at your face, with a really smart trigger. Airbag factories all have patches over the the holes in the roof. Although the airbags are far better now than the early models in resisting inadvertent firing, still it does happen occasionally. There are two results. One result is the module was sitting the right way with the airbag opening facing up or at least facing away from anything. In that case it deploys with great force, but doesn't move much. The other condition is that the airbag opening is facing something, like sitting on a table with the airbag opening down (pretty typical), and in that case the airbag opens with great force and launches itself with great force away from any surface the airbag hits. In the case of the table, probably through the roof. So undeployed airbags are potentially really dangerous, and make getting someone out of a wreck much more complicated. Usually, they go off as designed. Thank goodness.
In nice weather, I roll the windows down. I can hear a bycycle aproach and not slow down for the stop sign while riding on the left side of the road. Making extra noise at the stop sign would keep me from hearing the cyclists that don't stop for stop signs assuming that I saw them before pulling out in front of them. They need to add the noise and bright lights to bycycles (like a harley) so they can be seen and heard. I usualy do see a bicycle at at an intersection IF they come up to the intersection in the proper lane and stop for the stop sign. That's not the cyclist I pull out in front of because I didn't see them. It's the ones on the other side of the road that didn't stop that don't get seen. A pedesterian gets seen because he is at the corner when the driver looks checking trafic, not 35 feet back from the corner traveling 30 MPH into the intersection.
The truth shall set you free!