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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.
The most detailed story I've read about this was in The Kitchener-Waterloo Record, which unfortunately is subscription-only. From a Google News search, I don't see the article duplicated anywhere, so I am copying and pasting the article here. (There were also two photos, which unfortunately can't be linked to. Perhaps someone else with a subscription can set up a mirror.) Andrew Frow, RIP. :-(
U of T student dies in solar car; Vehicle out of control near Waterloo Regulations being followed, police say
A University of Toronto student is dead after the solar car he was driving veered out of control on a highway just west of Waterloo Region yesterday afternoon.
Andrew Frow, 21, of Toronto was driving the university's team car east along Highway 7 and 8, from Stratford to Waterloo, as part of a Canadian solar car tour. The small low-riding car suddenly went out of control at about 4 30 p.m., veering across the centre line of the two-lane highway, said Constable Glen Childerley of Perth County Ontario Provincial Police.
The car then swerved back into its lane, hitting the right shoulder. It then plowed across the highway into the path of a minivan in the westbound lane.
"It zoomed right across the road and was T-boned by the van," said Childerley, adding the driver was alone in the solar car.
The impact destroyed the car. Its solar-panelled roof was flung off and its shell ended up in the ditch on the north side of the highway.
The driver's teammates rushed to his aid. The students were in two minivans, one driving in front of the solar car, one behind, when the crash occurred.
Two of his teammates frantically performed CPR on the young man as he lay in the wreckage, said truck driver David Hackett, who pulled up at the scene moments after the accident.
Hackett, a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Maryhill, offered to take over from the visibly upset woman doing mouth-to- mouth.
"I'm just sorry we couldn't do more," said Hackett, who was delivering groceries to Stratford when he came across the crash.
"I am grateful for the training that I had and that I could respond."
Paramedics, Stratford firefighters and OPP soon arrived on the scene and took the driver by ambulance to another ambulance with a doctor and waiting medical team.
The crew took the young man to a Kitchener hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
After he was rushed away, police began inspecting the mangled wreckage in the ditch to determine why the crash occurred. That section of the highway was closed for hours as they worked.
Hunks of metal, some bearing the University of Toronto logo, were strewn across the grassy ditch.
As police worked, students on the U of T team huddled across the street, many hugging each other.
They did not want to talk to the news media last night.
Rudy Schoenhoeffer, who was driving the minivan that hit the solar car, was also there.
"I'm just saying a prayer for him," the Stratford man said quietly as he stood by his van, its front end dented.
He was on his way home from work in Cambridge when the crash occurred.
Jessica Whiteside, U of T's acting associate director of news services, said it was too early last night for anyone at the university to comment.
Childerley said solar cars have to get a special permit from the Ministry of Transportation to drive on roads and highways, and must travel with a regular vehicle in front and behind. Those vehicles must have flashing yellow lights on their roofs.
The U of T car was following these regulations.
Kitchener-Waterloo Record
[Photo] The U of T solar car drives along Western Rd. toward the University of Western Ontario in London yesterday. Later, near Waterloo, another driver lost control.
[Photo] OPP investigate the scene of the fatal solar car accident on Highway 7 and 8 near the town of Shakespeare, Ont., yesterday.
nope it is a set back for them. Why are solar powered cars designed like that in the first place? Because there isn't enough power to move a normal car for any reasonable distance. Frankly that car was not street legal, it shouldn't have been allowed on the highway
did you forget to take your meds?
After all, many of the most popular ones are banned from many roads in California and other states. Since its a MSN article, I''ll elaborate - they are popular because they are big enough to get the large truck for commercial use tax discount... which also happens to be the weight limit for restrictions on most residential streets in Californial (and other places).
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Well obviously:
more sturdy == heavier
heavier == more energy needed
more engergy needed == more solar panels
more solar panels == bigger car
bigger car == heavier
repeat until the car is too big to fit on the road
Solar cars don't have a particularly good power/surface area ratio.
The Volvo XC90 SUV has a specially designed bumper for just this purpose.
The convoy was supposed to stop here at our company this afternoon because we helped the McMaster University team build "Fireball II." I just found out this morning that today's stop, along with the rest of the tour had been called off due to the accident. Looks like it was a mechanical failure of some kind in U of T's vehicle, and what a tragedy. The engineering student who died was only 21.
The tour was planned to coincide with the one year anniversary of the 2003 blackout, to remind people that we ought to be looking into alternative energy sources. These young engineers are really passionate about these projects and our thoughts are with them at what must be a really tough time.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
This is exactly what I was going to say. In certain classes of racing (NASCAR in the post-earnhardt-sr. era, I believe) you are required to use a specified carbon fiber crash bumper which is multicellular and will dissipate truly insane amounts of energy. Of course, they're intensely expensive, but I'd say they're well worth it. When it becomes reasonably inexpensive to build such structures I think it will be both reasonable and expected for many light vehicles to be built of such things in perhaps three or four pieces, and when a piece is damaged to any degree it will have to be replaced. It might even be cheaper to give the car one big body and replace the whole thing if the car is in a collision, swapping the entire contents into a new car with a preinstalled wiring harness and fuel lines.
Such a vehicle will likely have plastic body panels on the outside, to protect from damage by rocks and such.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well yes and no. You can't make a general statement that any car that is solar powered is only fit for competition. Right now the efficiency of photovoltaic cells makes it impractical to, for example, line your car roof with them. But solar cells with efficiencies in the 90% range are deffinately coming up soon. As the efficiency increases, then maybe we can start researching solar cars that will be more adapted for street driving.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
Cars are held to higher crash standards in the US than probably any other nation. Vehicles which have to be modified to be imported to this country are legal even in other countries with lots of large powerful vehicles - For example the Nissan Skyline was sold in Germany in the same trim as in Japan (except left hand drive) until its recent termination as a Nissan product, but the result of crash testing of several imported test vehicles resulted in retrofits being necessary to import them here and make them street legal.
I don't know of ANY car that can get in a full-speed head on with a humvee and have the passenger (or the driver, who is actually in more danger, what with the steering wheel being right there and all) survive, at least in terms of passenger cars. Someone in a semi would have a fairly decent shot at it, if they were actually wearing their safety belts.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Think about hills for a minute. The energy needed to climb a hill is mgh. Double the mass, and you need double the energy to get over the hill.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Cars like this are allowed on the highway, you just have to get a special permit. Typically it's for an "experimental" car, there are limitations on what roads you can go on, and usually requires a lead and or chase car.
Frankly that car was not street legal, it shouldn't have been allowed on the highway
"solar cars have to get a special permit from the Ministry of Transportation to drive on roads and highways, and must travel with a regular vehicle in front and behind. Those vehicles must have flashing yellow lights on their roofs.
The U of T car was following these regulations."
Quoted from a copy-paste post above...
You can't take the sky from me...
At one point in my past I built and roadraced GT cars. The combination of slick race-compound tires (9" wide on a 2000 pound car), and the steering axis offset required to allow their use, meant that the steering effort was OK when the front tires weren't sliding, and the caster would re-center the steering. But under conditions where the car was going sideways beyond a certain limit, the steering would drive itself to lock unless you manually wrestled it back to center. Not for the faint of heart or puny forearm development.
Less is more.
SPeaking as a Michigan resident, I can tell you this does not change anything. They let monster carrier semis roam the Michigan roads, tearing them into rubble at a high tax rate. The trucking companies just raise their rates, raising the prices for the consumer. Try driving in Michigan. It's like trying to negotiate an artillery field.
Higher taxes won't solve anything. What we need is incentives for companies to develop more efficient vehicles, from the haulers all the way down to passenger vehicles. If the technology that this poor young man was working on becomes adopted, it would be a fitting legacy for him and others with his vision.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
And just how is this a big setback for solar power advocates? Is every automobile accident with a regular car a setback for gasoline advocates? Are solar cars supposed to be accident free? Or all 21-year-olds excellent drivers (I know they think they are)?
This is just an example of muddy thinking that doesn't belong on Slashdot.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
1) US car companies DO get funding for research into fule effeciency. (Read a news paper once and a while)
2) Big Oil DOES NOT fund car companines, they fund their own lobbyist in Washington.
Fully agree. The problem is now this get presented to polititians who feel the need to 'do something' just to show people they 'do things'. Lets hope legislation isn't presented on not allowing these types of vehicles on the roads.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Not really...note from the story that there was a support minivan in front of him, and another behind him. That's pretty good protection.
He lost control, and crossed the lane into oncoming traffic. That would likely have been fatal on a motorcycle, or even many smaller regular cars.
Actually hummer pruchases get you HUGE tax breaks. Basically it is a perversion of an old law to make it easier to buy farm equipment, it has now been applied to large SUVs. The tax break nearly pays for the Hummer. Pretty silly huh?
As a builder of 2 solar racers and having competed against Toronto twice I can say that no matter what sort of solar car you build, an accident such as this one is almost impossible to design around. The Toronto car I remember (maybe a previous generation) was an aluminum space frame, as are many solar cars. These frames are designed well, and even though they weigh less than 30 lbs they can take quite an impact. What injurs drivers is not so much a weak structure but a strong structure- no crush space and a rigid frame can transfer most of the crash's energy to the driver's body. Without airbags and a specified crush space, there is no way a 600lb car can survive a head-on at highway speeds. No way. That said, these are experimental vehicles that are built to strict safety guidelines. See the actual rules this car was built by at http://www.americansolarchallenge.org/event/asc200 5/tech/asc2005Nov03.pdf
Event organizers go to every length to keep the cars out of accidents, requiring chase and lead vehicles (already mentioned), crash tests, rollbars, body crush space, helmets, minimum visibility, and safety training.
My heart goes out to the Toronto team, and I hope that a tragedy like this one does not destroy their team or its message.
And some are preventable.
However, this one *seems* to be human error at this point. In x days, it may turn out to be otherwise.
Either way, it sux that the kid died.
All that aside, I remember from the early Trans-Australia or whatever the solar race was, they made sure that the cars showed some chance of surviving being passed by the road-trains. And they were still worried that the air displaced by these semis would cause problems for the tiny solar cars.
As to the wonderful world of hybrid cars, why are they charging 20+k$ for a car that gets worse fuel mileage than a 1980 Volkswagen diesel Rabbit???
Hummers(schoolbus)? I think owning one must be punishment enough. Maint costs on those things are horrific and I can imagine what it costs to insure one here in New Jersey.
I'd rather have my late lamented 1991 Mistubishi pickup than a Hummer(schoolbus) or for *REAL* impractical offroading http://www.unimog.net/
Please note that at this point, a detailed investigation into the causes of the crash has not been completed yet. To say that "the design of the car was bad..." is out of line. Many, or one, different cause(s) may have contributed to the crash. As with all solar car teams, the University of Toronto engineering students involved in the building of their solar car did their best to design the car and protect the driver from as many situations as possible. Unfortunately, as many engineers realize, despite the fact that you put all your effort into ensuring the safety of your design, something may invevitably go wrong. My sympathy goes out to the U of T team, families, and all those involved in the crash. -- Ron Yeung (Queen's University Solar Vehicle Team Alumni)
Generally a T-bone (side impact) collision is deadly because the vehicle is not designed for nearly as much protection for the occupants for such collisions. Seat belts, most airbags, and crumple zones are all designed primarily to protect against collisions with the front of the vehicle. In a side impact collision, however, the occupants are sitting much closer to the thing that kills them (the doors and side supports of the car).
The collision being talked about in the article, on the other hand, was a head-on collision, which is deadly because the effective speed of collision is roughly the sum of the speeds of each vehicle (in this case, about 110 MPH). The solar car was also likely not designed with the same safety features in mind (such as crumple zones). Because of the difference in mass, the momentum transfer was also much more severe to the solar car.