How Death-Proof Cars Work

Could high-end digital auto systems such as blind-spot detection and collision prevention overcome the errors of human drivers? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the death-proof cars of the future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from house stuff works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, as staff writer here at
how stuff works dot Com. With me is my trustee

(00:22):
and double jointed edit tricks, Candice Gibson. How are you, Candice? So, Candice,
you want to join me? And given a shout out
to our favorite listener. Okay, so, hey Billy, thanks for listening.
We hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as the others. Um,
And what we're talking about this week is Deathproof cars,
which is just super cool. Candice. Have you ever seen

(00:43):
the movie Deathproof? Candice? Have you ever seen the movie Ghostbusters? No? Okay,
well you need to see both. Well, we'll just talk
about death Proof now. I'll tell you about Ghostbusters later. So. Um,
in the movie, uh, there's a guy named stuntman Mike,
and he's got this car. But I know a really
cool car when I see one, And something in Mike's

(01:03):
car is cool in aces. It's a nineteen seventy Chevy
Nova and it has like a skull with lightning bolts
for crossbones on the hood and he has a reinforced
with steel beams, shadow proof glass, five points seatbelt, all
this other stuff. Um. And the reason he has gone
to the trouble of death proofing his car is because
he loves to ram it into other people's cars at

(01:25):
high speeds and kill him. So he just generally reeks
havoc on the highway. And something in Mike's car is
death proof. He walks away from it several times. Uh.
And it turns out that they're in real life and
this is just a movie as far as we know.
It's not based on any real life events hopefully. Um.
But in real life there are some people who are

(01:45):
thinking about death proof cars, but they're kind of taking
it in another direction. You know much about that, Candice.
I do, and I'll redeem myself since I lack movie knowledge.
This is a European commission called they Prevent Safety Research Group,
and they're very lofty goal is to reduce auto accidents
in Europe by fifty cent by the year. And to

(02:08):
this end, a very well renowned European automaker Revolvo. Volvo
I used to have one to I have one, and
actually our producer Jerry admitted that she had one as well.
So Volvos are very popular around the office. I'll love
those bees. Um, they have a vowed to make an
injury proof car by and it's not going to be

(02:28):
injury proof. And the way that stuntman Mikes is it's
actually going to rely on digital features to reinforce it.
And that's a that's a pretty good thing actually because
stuntman Mike, he's a hard driver. But for the most part,
we humans tend to fold like card tables under pressure,
especially when it comes to collisions. Yeah, well they're pretty scary.

(02:50):
And the way that our our brain works just a
short little lesson for you. You can read more about
it and healthier works on how stuff works dot com. Essentially,
when you perceive something that's kind of harry, your brain
interpret systemulus and start sending chemicals through your body to
help with your reaction to that. Your fight or flight syndrome,
and some things that happen are like your breathing speeds

(03:11):
up and your heart starts racing, and your muscles tense
up and you can't always react. And in the case
of auto accidents, that's pretty scary because in fifty of
rare end collisions, people don't even apply the brakes because
they're too frozen in fear and actually a big whopping
one point one seconds path before drivers in the phase
of an impending collision do anything at all. Yeah, which

(03:34):
which goes to lending creams to my theory that humans
are useless and I'm not the only one who thinks
to see that these engineers that prevent are basically taking
humans out of the equation when it comes to facing
a collision. Right. Um, there's already a lot of features
on the digital car that you mentioned, which is another
article on how stuff works dot com um, and there

(03:54):
are there are all sorts of like safety features that
are popping up on high end luxury ours, uh, like
the blind spot detection system, which uses sensors to detect
when a car is in your blind spot and you
can't see it, or um collision prevention systems, which also
use sensors to tell when you're coming up really fast

(04:15):
on another obstacle at stakes self tightening seat belts, breaks
that can adjust pressure for your foot and all of
these features like combined to gather are going to be
a part of this injury proof car. And what's more,
you know we mentioned breaks that increase pressure for you
if you can't quite break as hard as you like
to you before you hit something there you like myself,

(04:36):
um but this car could actually break for you. So
completely removing humans from the equation, taking out emotionality and
replacing it with hardcore rationality and the hardcore rationalities what
you want in the face of a collision. And it's
not just breaking for you. Some some cars will be
steering out of the way for you, and the the

(04:57):
the injury proof car most likely will be so set
with sensors it will be aware of everything that's going
on around it and ahead of it and behind it.
And um so in the future, when you have to
swerve one way or another in the face of a collision,
your car may say, okay, well, we've got a baby
in a stroller being pushed by a mom to the

(05:17):
right and a squirrel the left, and the car will
swerve to the left and goodbye squirrel. So there's a
lot more information on this in the article I wrote
in Candice edited Can a car Really be Death Proof?
You can read it on how Stuff Works dot com
dot com for moral this and thousands of other topics.
Is that how stuff works dot com. Let us know

(05:38):
what you think. Send an email to podcast at how
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