Student Killed Driving Solar Car

Lev13than writes "Tragedy struck the University of Toronto's Blue Sky Solar Racing Team on Thursday when 21-year old student Andrew Frow was killed in a car accident. It appears that Frow lost control of the low-riding experimental car and was struck by a minivan head-on. The team was driving from Stratford to Waterloo (about an hour west of Toronto) as part of a tour of universities in Ontario and Quebec to mark the one-year anniversary of the 2003 Blackout. This is a big setback for solar power advocates, especially as the blackout anniversary will pass with remedial legislation stranded in Congress. More information on the accident is available here." The vehicle's design is not really street-safe - this will be a problem as more efficient, lighter cars share the road with Hummers.

Comments

A sad lesson learned

[poison_reverse]

this only goes to prove that soccer mom's are indeed evil.....

Re:bad design, not the power

[Rude Turnip]

"For you hummer drivers out there..."

Let me fix that typo for you:

"hummer drivers" s/b "poseurs driving a Chevy Tahoe in drag"

OK, you may carry on now.

Re:Hummers

[XavierItzmann]

Maybe bulky, horribly inefficient vehicles like Hummers shouldn't be allowed on the road.

What part of "minivan t-boned the solar vehicle" did you not understand?

Are you going to outlaw soccer-moms?
Seems to me you are looking for excuses to infringe on other people's freedom to choose in order to advance your personal preference. That makes you a fascist.

Re:bad design, not the power

[bobbozzo]

So the more interesting question to me would be what caused the driver lost control.

Perhaps he fell asleep at the wheel?

Re:So?

[2short]

He has not paid for the right to endanger my life unnecessarily without my trying to take steps (legislative if possible) to stop him. And in terms of wear-and-tear on the roads, the hummer driver is getting a bargain.

"The anti-hummer rant sounds more like typical anti-wealthy rants than any sane reasoning."

Well, I don't have any problem with people who want to buy expensive luxury sedans. But Hummers are stupid, dangerous (to the owners and others) toys for people with serious inferiority complexes. Anyone who drives one regularly on entirely on-road trips is an a-hole.

Good that he died...

[greymond]

Sky Blue "Lets see how many accidents a year we can have" Racing Team are notorious for making these paperweights non-street legal cars and setting them loose on public roads. Since no action has been taken in the past with the near fatalities and various other car crashes they've had - now that someone has actually died maybe they can lose their funding and get disbanded or at least replace all the team members with people who have at least half a brain and can think of the drivers safety and oh maybe have the car ON A CLOSED COURSE and not drive their tinfoilmobiles on the highway....fucking morons...

Also Michael - you're a fucking jackass - I hate hummers more than most, but this doesn't have anything to do with that fact. Their car was on a highway and if someones MINI Cooper had nailed it the same damn thing would have happened. Lets put the focus back where it belongs - A solar power car team keeps building cars that are EXTREMEMELY UNSAFE and have injured their previous drivers and now killed one, the team needs to be restructured
or give their funding to someone else with half a brain.

Re:should have been an SUV

[schemanista]

Until the SUV rolled over.

carma to burn....

[mcmonkey]

Sure, the liberal media will tell you about an accident involving a solar-powered car.

What they won't tell you is at the time of the accident the driver was talking on his cell phone watching pr0n on a dashboard DVD reading /. on his laptop applying make-up while balancing a cup of coffee.

Thank you michael & co.

[Gothmolly]

for revealing yourselves to be the freedom-hating liberals that you are. This highly charged article, with an editorial that ITSELF was a "-1, Troll", and proves that the editors don't even RTFA, has provided so many new foes to my list, its been an excellent culling exercise. So many of you rose to michael's bait, that you exposed yourselves for what you are, and thus can now be Foe-moderated off the page.
Cheers!

Re:Perspective from another solar car team

[tompaulco]

You want insensitive? How about this:
Did he have a waiver to drive a non-street legal vehicle on public thoroughfares or not? In other words, was he endangering his own life and the lives of others with the consent of public authorities, or at his his own discretion?