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Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

independent.co.uk

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Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#61

Post by WalterBright »

culturestate wrote: post #40
WalterBright wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length. There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.

I'm an amateur racer, and I can tell you that seat belts are only a small part of the equation that makes racing crashes survivable. Racing seats are built to fit individual drivers, for instance, and the cocoon -- the portion of the frame where the driver sits -- is designed to protect the seat. Additionally, race cars are designed to essentially disintegrate in hard wrecks -- the cocoon stays intact, but the rest b…

There are certainly a lot of other things in racing that contribute to safety. But the biggie is always the harness.

A roll cage won't do jack for you if you're flying around in the cockpit smashing into the roll cage. Crumple zones are also ineffective if you're not strapped in.

Race cars don't have air bags. If you're strapped in tightly, the air bag adds nothing.

I've been in a crash where the belt saved my life, or at least prevented a crippling injury. I walked away with a broken nose. A roll cage or a HANS without belts would not have helped.

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#62

Post by mcv »

AmirS2 wrote: post #27
alkonaut wrote: post #8

I don't understand the issue here, cars sold in Europe already include many US cars obviously, and cars that sell in Europe are usually safety tested, for example by Euro NCAP. Here is a US car available in Europe, that has an excellent five star safety score in NCAP http://www.euroncap.com/en/results/jeep/cherokee/8871 Now if "research actually established that American models are much less safe when it comes to fro…

Sounds like the EU versions of US cars are currently re-engineered to meet EU standards, and that costs manufacturers money. They're trying to save that cost by saying all rules are equivalent. From the article: > under current rules cars sold globally, such as the Ford Focus or Volkswagen Golf, must still be re-engineered multiple times - at considerable expense to manufacturers - to satisfy crash-test standards aro…

I'm totally fine with homogenizing safety standards across the world. But it has to be done by lifting the lower standards up to the higher level, not the other way around.

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#63

Post by Already__Taken »

rplst8 wrote: post #56
bruceboughton wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also know of instances where Boeing produced safer designs and had to lobby the FAA to get them to accept them. One example is using twin engines on overwater flights, rather than 3 or 4. The twin engines are statistically safer. Interesting. Why do you think it is that twin engines are statistically safer? I thought redundancy was a normal part of the safety toolkit for planes.

I think it's even true for single vs. twin engine planes. A lot of it has to do with - are the systems redundant, or are they both needed to properly fly the plane. Also whether the probability adds up in a serial or parallel fashion. I know a friend that pilots a single engine Cessna. Obviously one engine, but it also has no electronic ignition and four magnetos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_magneto The en…

I'm interested in how these redundancies have accumulated over the life of building aircraft. They're obviously for good reason. However the recent news pieces comparing electric aircraft, I wonder if there's a lot of efficiencies on the table for conventional aircraft if they could just drop in a modern engine like you might find in a race car.

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#64

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #28
sixQuarks wrote: post #21

Another reason why Tesla is so far ahead of the game. Elon Musk had the engineers design the vehicle to be as safe as possible, period. They didn't design the safety of the car with the crash tests in mind. They passed all the crash tests with flying colors as a side-effect of actually designing for safety.

A lot of people think that airliner safety comes from the FAA hammering on Boeing. That's not true at all. It's the attitude of Boeing and Boeing engineers that make it safe. (I used to be a Boeing engineer on flight critical systems.) The worst nightmare of a Boeing engineer is an accident resulting from his design mistake. The worst for me was when the Alaska 717 went down because the stabilizer jackscrew failed. I…

[deleted]

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#65

Post by happyscrappy »

masklinn wrote: post #16
the-dude wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the timing is very interesting with regard to dieselgate.

Yes it's really fun all around, with EU manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent US emission regulations and US manufacturers trying to bypass/fudge more stringent EU safety regulations.

EU cars will be recalled all over the globe for cheating, there are no US recalls because they did not cheat. The EU cars violate EU regulations by cheating. It should be fun for them as it appears to be industry wide and state sanctioned. Maybe they can raise their pollution limits enough that they are not recalled in the EU.

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#66

Post by [deleted] »

Already__Taken wrote: post #63
rplst8 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's even true for single vs. twin engine planes. A lot of it has to do with - are the systems redundant, or are they both needed to properly fly the plane. Also whether the probability adds up in a serial or parallel fashion. I know a friend that pilots a single engine Cessna. Obviously one engine, but it also has no electronic ignition and four magnetos. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignition_magneto The en…

I'm interested in how these redundancies have accumulated over the life of building aircraft. They're obviously for good reason. However the recent news pieces comparing electric aircraft, I wonder if there's a lot of efficiencies on the table for conventional aircraft if they could just drop in a modern engine like you might find in a race car.

[deleted]

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#67

Post by [deleted] »

gambiting wrote: post #49
rplst8 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before the HANS device was used in NASCAR, I witnessed some serious wrecks during auto-racing that drivers got out of the car under their own power and were fine. I wonder if the percentage of fatalities from wrecks in auto racing is better or worse that high speed accidents on public highways. It would be an interesting statistic to compare.

Nascar cars use roll cages, so as long as you are strapped into your seat safely you will survive most crashes, if the car doesn't catch fire. Most regular cars don't have roll cages.

[deleted]

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#68

Post by eatmyshorts »

WalterBright wrote: post #25
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!

I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length. There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.

iirc, Volvo did a lot of testing to find the optimum setup in an ordinary passenger car. The 3-point belts worked best, as they were the easiest to get out of after an accident. Remember that race cars typically have people waiting in the event of an accident to assist in removing the person from the car. In a more typical accident, it can be much longer before help arrives. As a result, seat belt setups must be easy for the user to get out of by themselves. While 5-point systems fared better in the actual accidents, 3-point systems more than compensated by allowing individuals to free themselves from the car and preventing further injuries.

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#69

Post by 7952 »

Maarten88 wrote: post #3

So the report was published normally, and this "burying" consists of lobyists not talking about it much? And therefore the press not writing about it much? Press and politics seem to be depending on lobyists to determine the agenda, and even do their work sometimes, which I think is a problem that has gotten out of hand, and not only in the car industry.

It is also a lack of civic society. There are not enough mainstream organisations fighting these issues.

Re: Car industry 'buried report revealing US car safety flaws over fears for TTIP'

#70

Post by yarper »

WalterBright wrote: post #25
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> designed to require an airbag to be able to stop an adult male not wearing a seatbelt, What? To me it seems obivous that the right thing to do is have the seatbelt be part of the switch for the airbag -- no seatbelt, no detonation!

I'd rather have racing-style belts and no air bag. Racing style go over both shoulders, are wider, and are fixed length. There are some horrific crashes in auto racing and the drivers walk away. That convinces me.

If this is your logic, you should be riding a motorcycle!

https://www.quora.com/Motorsports/Is-MotoGP-more-dangerous-t...

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