Posts: 953
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2015 4:07 pm
Location: Eastern Time Zone, USA
Cars: I, being poor, have only my dreams
Two-Component Safety Calculation
I'm guessing Der Bayer's answer from last year will still apply (apologies - I have not watched the video), but I was thinking about the dynamics of accidents and it gave me a bit of an idea.
A car has two objectives to accomplish in a collision:
I think this would make optimizing for safety a more interesting and realistic process:
A car has two objectives to accomplish in a collision:
- It has to maintain the integrity of the passenger compartment. (It doesn't matter how good your airbags are if the front seats are wrapped around the tree.)
- It has to protect the passengers within the passenger compartment. (It doesn't matter how solid the passenger compartment is if the driver is impaled on the steering column.)
I think this would make optimizing for safety a more interesting and realistic process:
- While better safety tech would still be a big help to making crashworthy city cars, the quality sliders would be a lot more important.
- While size would still be a big help to crashworthiness of large vehicles, a minimum level of safety technology would still be required to meet standards.