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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.
Some people seem more concerned about the car.
Fairly tough to make a sturdy car that is also lightweight enough to be driven by low-power solar generation...
It wouldn't matter if it hit the road with Yugos, it would still get crushed. An unsafe, feather-weight car will lose to anything -- not just a hummer. Nice attempt to jab at large vehicles.
"the vehicle lost control"
What was the steering mechanism in that experimental car? Drive by wire? What failed? The story would more accurately have specified a collision of an "experimental steering" car, than a solar car, unless the steering was conventional.
--
make install -not war
He may not have been returning from orbit, or travelled at supersonic speed. But his shadow will always be a mile long.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
this will be a problem as more efficient, lighter cars share the road with Hummers.
Sure, lets blame the big, bad, SUV because your car is unsafe. I realize that the Hummer is the mortal enemy of solar car advoates everywhere but how is this possibly relevant? If you follow that logic we should ban Semi-trucks from the road as well. We've got to make it safe for experimental solar car vehicles, right?
Gimme a break. This is a tragedy, and you're trying to spin in into an anti-SUV infomercial.
I vote let's not view this as a broader issue at all. A young researcher was killed in a tragic accident while driving an experimental vehicle. Why can't we just be bummed about it instead of speculating about what it means for solar power, or debating whether somebody should be sued.
strong, fast, cheap. Pick two.
Really we ought to require people who want to get a commercial use tax discount to have a commercial license. People driving with a commercial license are (supposedly) held to a higher standard than others, and can easily lose their license (or at least their commercial certification) if pulled over and cited for a traffic violation while driving anything, commercial or not.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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This was a 2-lane highway (with typical speeds around 55mph, if I remember that area right?), and the solar car was hit when it swerved into the oncoming lane. That could be a fatal even for someone driving a larger vehicle.
So the more interesting question to me would be what caused the driver lost control.
--Bruce Fields
As an out of control vehicle it could have has easily been hit by a truck as a Hummer and had the same outcome, perhaps even an impact with a small hybrid Prius would have had the same outcome (but been far more ironic).
The need to sacrifice weight to gain performance obviously led to some bad design choices. That said, solar power contests should probably be split into 2 categories:
1. No minimum weight, but only on closed courses.
2. Well-defined minimum crash worthiness, minimum weight for vehicle, still require lead and chaser vehicles on public roads. Some well established roadworthiness test by some officiating board before vehicles are taken on public roads.
Breakthroughs in Solar efficiency and conversion to actual horsepower are what this competition should motivate, not design of balsa wood enclosures to hurl down public highways.
I feel for the team and student who lost his life. I'm sure they didn't think they were taking undue risks, but they probably were.
I doubt this will have real long-term negative impact on Solar Power development. It's not like this out of control vehicle also took out a sideline of spectator Nuns. Nor is it hard to imagine the corrective action to keep this safe (as outlined above).
Letter To Iran
Japan allows far lighter cars on the road and yet, has only 60% of the fatal accidents per 10,000 vehicles.
In the US, poeple believe that SUVs are the safest, but the fatality record of SUVs is only about as good as that of a mid-sized car. While a heavier vehicle may be more "survivable", the mid-sized car, with its better braking, lower center of gravity (less roll-over potential) and better handling can better avoid getting into an accident in the first place.
Solar Cars, due to the extremely low amount of energy available to them, have to be extraordinarily light. When I was in the 2001 American Solar Challenge, there were cars that only weighed 2 1/2 times their driver. This is with metal roll cages on the inside. I know people are experimenting with full-chassis composite construction, which will make the cars even lighter. While it's true that F1 cars all have composite roll bars because of their strength, the problem is simply a matter of inertia. When a 1000 kg car hits a 2000 kg truck head-on, it's bad for the car, but when a 160 kg car with an 80 kg driver hits a 2000 kg truck head on, it's absolutely devastating, no matter how strong the material is holding it together.
I'm curious to see how this will affect solar racing rules. It's not like they're going to require crash testing of your half million dollar prototype that you bring to the race. Personally, I think there's probably a lot more room to be stricter with accident avoidance stuff, like making sure your steering and suspension is REALLY secure. My team nearly lost its car to a suspension failure, while going 65 on an interstate down a hill towards a bridge over a very deep chasm. The driver kept it kinda under control, but we got lucky. Turns out there was nothing inherently wrong with our design, aside from the fact that it wasn't sufficiently redundant to resist the force of miniscule human error in construction, followed by 1000 miles of road wear. Point is, wheels just don't fall off of modern production automobiles, but things like that happen with experimental prototypes.
On a personal note, driving a solar car that I built myself was one of the greatest thrills of my life. I was too big to drive our team's car with the top on, but even taking it around the parking lot on battery power was a great thrill. I can't imagine how taking that out on the road feels, but I imagine it compensates somewhat for the very real danger that exists whenever people strap themselves into unorthodox moving objects for the sake of enhancing the body of human knowledge. Whether it's a solar car developed and built by college students or a multi-billion dollar space shuttle designed by one of the largest engineering teams ever assembled, there is no substitute for experience, as NASA has tragically learned twice.
If anyone who knew Andrew is reading this, I hope you realize that he took a risk in pursuit of something greater than himself, for the benefit of everything on Earth.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Anyone who reads the record knows that they rarely add any value to [blah blah blah blah].
Doesn't change the fact that it's infringement.
Had the poster taken a couple of minutes to read, understand and restate the facts in his own words, it would have been perfectly legal.
Copyright law may be all out of whack, but this is clearly infringement under even the mildest copyright regime. We who want our copyrights to be respected should have more respect for others'.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No, the thinking is crystal clear. When a massive vehicle collides with a puny, composite solar car, death is a certain result.
Therefore, these massive vehicles will, in fact, deter the acceptance of solar technology. Solar cars by nature must be extremely lightweight, and nobody in their right mind would drive one on the same road as trucks and SUVs.
This won't be the end of solar racing, although it will be a significant setback for the Toronto team. They have lost a friend, a teammate and many, many, many hours of work, spent not only building their car but also convincing people that their cause is worth supporting. The team has a solid history--they placed 11th in the 2003 American Solar Challenge (and won the saftey award), 12th in ASC2001, 14th in WSC2001, and they were the top rookie team in SunRayce 1999 (info from their website).
I imagine that the future will see a serious review of solar car saftey rules, which will result in changes to the specifications for solar cars as well as the conditions under which they should be driven. Even though solar powered cars are not the way of the future, the sport has led to the develompent of new technologies that are nevertheless important (the world's most effiecient electric motors and maximum power point trackers), and it teaches young engineers far more about engineering than they could possibly learn in any other way.
A public show of support (and /. counts as these days) is really what the BlueSky team needs right now. Then, after the incident has been properly observed, a respectful review of the causes and solutions should get underway.
Jeff Thompson
Yale Solar Racing
Not to mention saving a lot of fuel, since a 1/2 HP engine would be plenty for the largest car.
Look, it very much sucks that he died. However, the goal that he was working for -- solar powered automobiles -- probably has more potential impact on humanity than his direct living.
To get a slightly more extreme example: If a doctor announced that he had discovered a cure for influenza or a way to purify water cheaply without engergy requirements, and then was promptly killed be a mugger, I'm sure that everyone would feel bad about his death, but I think that it's more than excusable to place as a higher priority finding out what happened to his work than making noises to make his family feel good. They *know* that his dying sucked already. And, honestly, I've never met or heard of the guy. If every person in the world was told "this guy died", should they all be obligated to lay down their tools and bow their heads for a moment? Of course not. The cost would be phenomenal.
If you want grief, let it be the grief from those who can grieve, the people that knew him. Not random, anonymous strangers on Slashdot.
As another example, every day CNN prints up stories about Iraqis dying. Should I stop and express a list of sympathetic things for an hour? No. People die. The fact that this guy had his name printed instead of just being a statistic, increasing a fatality count by one somewhere does not change that fact.
May we never see th
Nonetheless, large heavy vehicles on the road should be last resort, not a standard. And it is equally true that as long as big heavy vehicles are on the road smaller light-weight vehicles are going to be dangerous to drive- THIS IS OBVIOUS, and it annoys me to all hell that advocates of big vehicles think the solution is to drive bigger "safer" vehicles. The road need not be the spot for our national Darwinian drama. The road is not a place for an arms-race.
Let's face it: the reasons people want bigger vehicles (for the most part) is because a)They think they're cool b)they think they're safer, or at least they think they make themselves feel safer, c)having an expensive SUV broadcasts their financial success (a mating call, no? -for the males of the species, primarily), d)because the SUV is an attractive option because it is largely functional (if wasteful) because of its size AND because it carries an attractive image of independence, ruggedness, sportiness, etc. (look at those SUV commercials of vehicles driving through the wilderness (a morally dubious thing to do (the destruction caused is more than negligible), but hella fun).
The thing that we tree-huggers need to realize is that SUV's and other large vehicles actually serve a function in society, and the individuals who own/use them are acting rationally in the sphere of things that they think are important. HOWEVER, those things are the wrong things, the things that really aren't that important.
Unfortunately, our human species is not well equipped to take the long view of things. In fact, we are exceedingly poor at doing so- and this makes evolutionary sense- although taking a limited long view is evolutionarily adaptive, focusing on the long view is not because our powers of prediction were/are still exceedingly poor- more important to see the tiger about to eat you than to wonder how we could set up the environment so that there wasn't any conflict between humans and tigers, so to speak.
This is essentially a problem of "The Tragedy of the Commons", but in this case the Commons is not some field, but all of our planetary resources (including good air to breathe and fair weather), and each person's taking away of from the Commons, no matter how ridiculously abusive, is only a miniscule portion of that Commons. We, in fact, have a difficult time seeing the impact of our behaviour, or the scope of the situation. And because we do not see so clearly (and I mean see individually in everyday life) the impact of our behaviour, we do not feel compelled to act to change how things work- certainly not as compelled as we may feel to have the glorious feeling of bringing home that gorgeous SUV (I, like others, think that SUV's (minus the HUMMER) are often designed in a pleasing way). And because some of us are so enamoured with that vision of the good life, of independence, of manliness, of success, of Big Americanness (I am a proud American), and perhaps enamoured of actually having that good life (and I believe that it is probably true that a lot of anti-advocates of the SUV are simply suffering from jealousy because they cannot afford such a vehicle), yes, because of all these things, that many of us refuse to believe, sometimes consciously, but often unconsciously, what our scientists continue to tell us about the destruction we are causing, and the deep problems we are getting ourselves into. It is, in fact, a deep rabbit hole- and it is easier to fall than to climb
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You, sir, are a fucking idiot.
You are placing human life above everything else, assigning infinite value to human life (and not even human life, but the direct life that you can see being lost). You don't know how many lives solar power would *save*. More lives have been lost over oil wars in the last *year*, and more men have died working on undersea oil rigs than will probably ever die working on solar power.
What are you doing right now? Posting on Slashdot. If you really, truly believed in what you were saying, that human life comes above all else, you wouldn't be posting on Slashdot. You'd be out volunteering to help consel suicidal people on a hotline. Or any number of other things that might save a life. But you know what? You aren't -- you're placing a bit of your short-term *enjoyment* (not even an advancement of human knowledge) over someone else's life. I'll bet you speed too, to get where you want to go five minutes faster by gambling with other people's lives. By your standards, you are one sick fuck. Instead, you are quite comfortable criticizing *other* people because they didn't place human lifes (including *their own*) above all else. Yes, they had to try out new designs. Yes, probably they will make a mistake or learn that something doesn't work when they were sure that it did. You are probably sitting in an air-conditioned house with all the food you want handy. It was shipped to you on trucks, which countless lives were lost in perfecting, running internal combustion engines, the development of which cost more lives. Your AC is powered by electrical power produced (if you live in the United States) almost entirely by coal. Do you have the remotest concept of how many people have been killed in coal mines?
But instead, you jab at anyone who is pushing the envelope, every time something goes wrong. It's comfortable for you to attack them. "Safety first". Christ. There is research going on. The people that blazed trails across America, Madam Curie inducing radiation burns on herself, the men that built bridges (and died doing so, as better techniques were learned), they didn't have soft rubberized surfaces and rounded-off corners. People *died*, you ass. But you can ignore them now, because they're in the past and you can just enjoy the fruits of their labor. You can sit supreme in your self-superiority ("If *I* was running that project, not only would nobody die, but we'd get just as much research done"). You don't have any idea what you're talking about. You haven't worked on any of the systems, or have the faintest grounds to talk about the risk factors involved. If you think that this guy's fellow researchers didn't give a damn about him and sacrificed him because they just didn't care about safety, you're a complete idiot. It's armchair quarterbacking of the worst kind, the kind that damages our advancement of knowledge to make you feel a little more warm and fuzzy inside.
May we never see th