Tesla Cybertruck’s stiff structure, sharp design raise safety concerns - experts::The angular design of Tesla’s Cybertruck has safety experts concerned that the electric pickup truck’s stiff stainless-steel exoskeleton could hurt pedestrians and cyclists.
I don’t like Teslas, Musk or the cyber truck but it can’t be any more dangerous than the 4 ft wall of radiator traditional pickups have now. Not saying this isn’t a concern but I am way more concerned about the millions of pedestrian crushing rolling walls already on the road.
I’m pretty sure it actually is significantly more dangerous. The front end of traditional pickups will still crumple and absorb a great deal of force. If the cybertruck is more rigid and the sharp edges have a potential to gash pedestrians on impact, that’s two factors that don’t apply to current pickups.
So are we really contemplating pickup trucks as more safe in a pedestrian collision because they have crumple zones?
When a truck hits a pedestrian and the front of the truck crumples, is that pedestrian okay?
There’s a difference between a shattered pelvis and being impaled because someone thought sharp corners are cool and safety standards are oppression.
No one is getting impaled on a forty degree corner lol
I don’t actually know the ride height but it looks like the cyber truck has a much lower nose when driving on normal roads compared to a lot of trucks, so while it may be very stiff, maybe it’ll just launch you over the hood.
The shorter and lower nose should improve visibility too. Regular pickups have a blind spot as large as an entire daycare center.
Your wording makes it sound like the existence of even more dangerous trucks somehow excuses this dangerous truck. Both the 4 ft wall and the sharp metal blade edges are dangerous and irresponsible designs.
I’m not excusing it at all, I think it’s one of the worst vehicles ever made, too big, heavy and fast. People are for sure gonna crash these beasts.
What I meant was I’d like to see traditional truck designs that have millions of vehicles on the road be scrutinized before the 10 cyber trucks. You’re way more likely to be hit by a regular truck which has a deadly design than a cyber truck just because of how many more are on the road.
“I don’t like x but it can’t be worse than y” is a construction which serves to minimize how bad something is. Instead, let’s scrutinize both: “This cyber truck is ridiculously dangerous. While we’re at it, let’s also regulate the 4 feet tall wall of grill on other trucks.”
is a construction that leads to nothing getting done as a result of failing to acknowledge there are limited resources.
The concept of “first” is absolutely key to accomplishing anything.
Criticism is not a scarce quantity to be preserved. It spreads, like a fire. Take literally any social movement, like #metoo or BLM. People don’t suppress smaller stories to “save” criticism for bigger stories. The small stories add up. Right now, the F150 is one of the best selling cars in the US. The average American is no where close to criticizing it. But everyone already makes fun of the cyber truck. We can use that.
“Let’s not criticize this dangerous truck design because we should save our criticism!” is the worst way to get people to criticize dangerous truck design.
… Doesn’t “limited resources” basically just mean here ones ability to consider more than one thought at a time? Surely a species capable of collaborative efforts like space travel can handle the complexity of generalizing to say “no, sorry, none of the human-bulldozer designs are okay actually”?
And those are largely banned from the EU as well. The issue is the lack of regulation in the US, it’s killing pedestrians daily.
Tesla seem confident it’ll be safer in part because of that.
I’m wondering if they’ve done some something that can lower the front further if an imminent crash is about to happen with a pedestrian to lower the nose even more. Maybe it won’t work if you’re already at lowest setting, but if you’re raised at all maybe.
You think they’d have advertised a feature like that though by now, so maybe not, but I bet they could.
Would be a good feature for any vehicle with air suspension that can detect an imminent crash with a pedestrian
I’m pretty sure Tesla is devoid of any technology that detects pedestrians.
It definitely detects pedestrians: the live on-screen image shows them when they are nearby. They also claim to have automatic emergency braking when it detects pedestrians being in danger. I haven’t seen this in action, but then again, I don’t drive where pedestrians walk, so… But I can tell that my Tesla does weird short brakings on a motorway when nobody is close. Detects my future ghost, probably.
Their own claim is that their cars are quite a lot safer than USA average: https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport – but I have heard it being rumoured that sometimes companies lie.
I hope you never drive where there are patches of ice on the road.
I do, weekly. These don’t happen incredibly often, and they happen only when the cruise control is switched on. Not once have they caused a dangerous situation.
Detecting that collision is on the same order of difficulty as self-driving cars.
This is not true.
Anti collision systems of various sorts have been around for over a decade. The problem space is minuscule compared to self driving, and almost all car manufacturers offer both forward and reverse collision detection at this point.
In fact I think EU is making it a requirement soon.
Detecting a pedestrian where you would want to lower the front vs say a deer or moose (or other vehicle for that matter) where you don’t want to lower it is more complicated.
Better to just not build the vehicle out of sharp polygons like it needs to be rendered on a Super Nintendo with FX chip.
You could only enable the lowering in pedestrian heavy areas (city) assuming they legit can’t tell a moose apart.
You aren’t going to find many moose in downtown NYC ;)
Again, nothing to do with shape, this would be a good feature for any air suspension vehicle that can detect a pedestrian.
Edit: And I’m not sure we need to worry as much about city deer, they are small enough.
Edit: Also if they CAN detect a moose, they should do the opposite and raise the front.
Any car with AEB has this capability which is a lot of cars ya.
I don’t know how fast they can lower the vehicle though? There isn’t a lot of time between when AEB kicks off to slow you down and the accident.