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

Re:Hummers

[shawn(at)fsu]

Got to love the moderation here....

Re:SUV Tax Breaks

[XavierItzmann]

owners of SUVs have it both ways -- they get tax breaks because they are "over 6k" and hence are trucks

That's why such tax breaks must be eliminated.
And the answer is called flat tax.
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/PRESSWEBSITE/FlatTa x/contents.html

Re:R E S P E C T?

[the_mad_poster]

SUVs. Are. Not. Street. Vehicles.

The way they are built, they are an excessive road hazard to most other vehicle types on the road. They are built the way they are built because they are not meant to be driven at highway speeds on a regular basis. The majority of SUV owners do not care about this little inconvenient fact, and they drive them - often well in excess of highway speeds like so many other drivers - on the highway all the time.

Granted, a solar car could probably get ripped to shreds by a Toyota Echo, but the fact remains that vehicles on the road NOW are highly susceptible to devastating impacts because of some stupid trend, and solar powered vehicles getting hit by stupid soccer moms preening over themselves in their big old Expedition as they rip through the parking lot will have a very high fatality rate.

Given all that, I think that alluding to the irresponsibility of a large number of yuppie morons and their lack of respect for their chosen mode of transportation is perfectly valid.

Re:It's not that sad

[servognome]

When it's Bus vs. Bicycle, the bus ALWAYS wins.
We have also learned that "Solar Powered Car" vs "Chrysler Minivan" the minivan wins.

Re:Kitchener-Waterloo Record Story

[Quasar1999]

You have to ask the question, "should adults be able to engage in behavior that might place their life or health at risk?" If the answer is "no," then for starters we should ban motorcycles and bicycles and lower the speed limit to ten MPH. I think you'd find these measures would save on the order of 40,000 lives per year in the United States.

Not to mention saving a lot of fuel, since a 1/2 HP engine would be plenty for the largest car.

Why ban bikes and leave cars? That's just stupid... How about we ban cars... they are way more dangerous than a bicycle. Hell, the only time I've ever been injured on my bike is when a car hasn't followed the highway traffic act and nailed me while I was biking. If people were to get rid of cars, and have everyone on bikes, there wouldn't be the mess of accidents that there are today... Get rid of the cars, and you don't need speed limits... if someone can go fast on a bike, so be it... but it's a physical limit, not some imposed limit that everyone ignores. And I don't know of anytime that you are on a bike going any reasonably fast speed (say 40kph+) and are not damned alert... you are physically active, you can't be snoozing... in a car, you can sleep at speeds over 100kph... and you're in a huge 3 ton chunk of metal... bloody safe that is...