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External Airbag Designed to Protect Pedestrians
Thanks to researchers at Cranfield University, you don't have to feel bad when you plow into a group of pedestrians who are crossing the street too slowly. They have designed an external airbag that mounts to your hood at the base of the windshield. Research shows that this is the area where a pedestrian's head is most likely to hit in an accident. "Test results indicate that the system works extremely well. When fitted to a demonstrator vehicle not originally designed with pedestrian protection in mind, the results were well inside all current legal criteria for pedestrian protection currently in force in Europe," Roger Hardy of the university's Cranfield Impact Centre said.
I really want to bounce off a car with this!
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
What we really need are cowcatchers, like on trains, so that the pedestrians don't get stuck under the wheels and jam them. :-)
Bruce Perens.
I can see someone changing the windshield wipers and all the sudden............
Sig? No thanks. I don't smoke.
In the ongoing spirit of computer/car comparisons, I suggest we install an airbag on computers to deploy when inept users approach in the hope of repelling them.
Actually, maybe I'll just put one of these on the entrance to my cubicle to keep the salesmen away.
I guess this means I can start going back to farmers markets that don't already have protection from being massacred by elderly drivers.
Just put a cowcatcher on SUVs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
What is this going to do to our Death Race 2000 scores?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
he might die permanently Yeah, I hate it when they just die temporarily... damn zombies!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Since an airbag isn't any of those things
Sir, I applaud your engineering genius. I must build a reactive armor airbag: the car, upon being assaulted by a pedestrian, cushions the pedestrian's impact...just as it throws him 30 feet into the air.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
. . . button "C" on the cartoon Speed Racer's original Mach 5 activated rotating saws at the front, that were able to clear the way of *anything*.
We might need to adjust the regulations for pedestrian protection for this to be offered as standard equipment.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hey man, let's see you design an air bag that isn't actually a spinning axe wheel of death or a mountain lion and see if you think it's that easy. And if you do, then let me know what I'm doing wrong?!
The enemies of Democracy are
Lock up your daughters! A pillow on the hood of the car? As if they needed any MORE encouragement...
Like most attempts to coddle the clueless, won't widespread adoption of this just result in even more careless pedestrians?
Yeah, those damn pedestrians keep walking on that sidewalk I use for my shortcuts!
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Actually, it pales in comparison to the #1 advance for "pedestrian protection", DON'T F-ING HIT THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Sorry, but the idea that ricocheting a pedestrian from my hood into something else (presumably something without an airbag) seems absurd.
And I find your suggestion to not plow into pedestrians equally absurd. How else am I going to rack up combo bonus points?
Also, obviously the goal is to have as many cars as possible with these air bags on them, so the pedestrian won't just bounce off my car into another air-bagless car and die, but instead will be bounced again and again from car to car until harmlessly tossed onto the grass, where they will doubtless jump up and shout in child-like glee "Again! Again!" And I'll get like 10,000 points for a 40-bounce combo. Looks like a win-win scenario to me. Why Luddites like you are against using technology to make life more awesome, I'll never know.
The enemies of Democracy are
I say we mount spikes on the grills of our vehicles, so pedestrians will know to get the hell out of our way! Like most attempts to coddle the clueless, won't widespread adoption of this just result in even more careless pedestrians?
Agreed. Why not let evolution take care of this? By making cars more deadly, eventually humans will evolve to be impervious to cars crashing into them (and by extension, impervious to crashing while riding in cars). The problem will solve itself!
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't they have parks in your city? The drivers would probably start passing the pedestrian along, like a game of vehicular hackey sack, towards the city park. Bonus points if they land in the fountain!
The enemies of Democracy are
In any scary movie when the good guys get on the car and then try to mow down the bad guys with the car they have some measure of success. With this external airbag I'm not sure this is going to work very well... We must provide more anti-zombie (and anti-raptor) features in cars. I mean... give me a car advertised as "20% more likely to survive a zombie attack" and I'm right there.
The other problem is, does this truly cushion the blow, taking the energy into the crashbag and causing the pedestrian to be more likely to remain on the stopped vehicle, or is it more elastic, imparting acceleration back into the poor pedestrian in time for them to slide off the car
I'd be interested in hearing what the force threshold for such a device is. Right now I see this as yet another expensive thing to replace when you accidentally bump the front of your car while moving your trash can, a football hitting the front of your car, etc.
Realistically, I think that if they set it high enough so that an unintentional bump won't set it off, if you, as a pedestrian, get hit by said car, you're pretty much done for anyway.
Actually, it pales in comparison to the #1 advance for "pedestrian protection", DON'T F-ING HIT THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Are you kidding, that little old lady with the walker was practically begging for it.
Wow. Never even thought about this sort of thing.
The world is a big place. I just thought everybody played with Thermite when they were kids.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
A good handbrake slide will catch the pedestrian better as you'll have more surface area Sure, but that requires a certain amount of skill that those not practiced in the art of "drifting" don't possess. Plus, the tire screeching it produces serves as an advance warning that gives the pedestrian more time to run away. Nope, I'll stick with the tried and true good ol' American method of "point the car in the general direction of what you want to hit", thank you very much!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I knew safety standards had been increased, but I never realized armchairs had to be crash tested.
"Also, if I'm protecting the pedestrian, do I lose my entire field of view, and end up running down other pedestrians?"
I think after you hit the first one you are supposed to stop. Hell you could even try slowing down before you hit him.
What? This is Slashdot, news for nerds. You need to stay inside more often.
Sir how dare you. Everyday I worry about my unintelligent 16 year old daughter driving. I owed it to myself to make sure that she has the biggest vehicle that I can afford so that she can stay safe on the road. We all have feelings sir. And you sir are a bigot. And probably a republican too since you like to tell people how to live. Communist.
Wait, remind me again: which is worth more points, hitting clowns or mimes? This is gonna be fun!
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
SUV's are, in fact, safer. Simple physics. You think I'm gonna take government tests over what I -know- to be true?
The easiest way to make a care safer is to add 100 lbs. Period. End of story. SUV's are inherently safer because they weigh more and will therefore fare better in collisions. As my father used to say: tie goes to the truck.
One of the hidden costs of pushing society into cheaper, smaller, lighter cars will be an increased loss of life, like it or not.
I don't have even a single internal airbag!
The best planning can be done after the project completes.