December 20, 2017 • 39 mins
In crowded city streets, where people and cars share the same space, pedestrian-automobile accidents are simply unavoidable. But did you know those collisions, many of them fatal, have influenced the way your entire car is designed?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I had
Welcome to Car Stuff. I'm Scott and I've been we
were joined with our super producer Tyler Crash claim Uh
and I've got to ask. I usually start with a
(00:23):
with a question for you, Scott. Okay, what's the question.
Do you remember our earlier episode we did pretty recently
about why cars look boring? Oh? Yeah, yeah, sure we did. Yeah.
I've been thinking about that for a while because there
was so much to the world of auto design that
(00:44):
we're getting I didn't really consider until we started delving
into that episode. Oh that's both of us, buddy. We
didn't realize that, you know, real estate was at such
a premium in an automobile, right, I mean, every little
inches is uh is pondered over for a long long time.
I mean it really gets down to, you know, a
game of millimeters inside the car. You know, what can
(01:05):
fit what can't fit outside? Outside is really no different. Um,
They're continually stripping away things on the outside of the car.
I mean it may be part of it, you know.
You know, one thing when we were digging into today's topic,
and we'll jump into this in just a moment. But um,
I was thinking, you know, we get a lot of
email from people that say, you know, why are you
not only is why they're boring? Whey are they born looking?
Why do all cars kind of look the same now?
(01:27):
You know, why do they have that that same shape?
Why do they all look you know so um kind
of plane? Right, new car is kind of plane. I
mean there's a few standouts among them, you know, every
year there's something that stands out. But um, for the
most part, they do have the same general shape and
there's there's some very good reasons for that. And uh,
and some of that comes down to, believe it or not,
(01:48):
pedestrian safety. The exterior design of the car, the interior
design of the car, this the dimensions of the car,
the I mean everything. A lot of this comes down
to pedestrian safety. It's really surprising, right, And this could
be considered a sequel if you have checked out our
previous episode, which I think we just released, about the
(02:09):
history of jaywalking. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, deals with
pedestrians in the road when they're not supposed to be
in the road in a very very strange marketing war
it's it's it's an interesting, fascinating piece of history, and
you're absolutely right, Scott, it continues today when automotive designers
do their their first sketches. I don't know if you've
(02:29):
probably seen quite a few of these. I love looking
at the initial sketches. Yeah, and then what actually rolls
off the line. Well, you know what, the sketches are beautiful, right,
just gorgeous sketches, and even the concept cars that they
build for the shows are beautiful in a lot of cases, right.
I mean they come out and they show you this,
this sleek, you know, just credible looking machine that you
just you're you're practically drooling to get behind the wheel.
(02:52):
You're ready for it, right, you want to buy this car.
But then when it arrives in the showroom, you know,
a year and a half later, a year later, it's
not the same are that you saw on the on
the show floor. What what happened? There's there's something that
happens in between, right, Yeah, And what we have what
we have found is that there is more to this
story than you might imagine. Yeah, yeah, now this is
(03:13):
kind of crazy, but I had a hard time believing
this number. This is a really high number. Alright, So
one factor that helps to determine the shape of cars,
which a lot of I guess it's fair to say
that Americans are less aware of this than a lot
of the rest of the world, and will describe why
that is. But it's it's true, um, and not that's
not everybody, of course, But each year, over two hundred
(03:35):
and seventy thousand cars slamming the pedestrians that killed them,
every single year, somewhere in the United not in the
United States, in the world. Two hundred and seventy thousand.
Doesn't that sound like that's that's an incredible number. That
that's um, seven hundred and forty per day if you
break that down to three days, so that's seven forty
somewhere in the world, every day, all year long. And
(03:57):
so to combat this, in the first decade of the
two thousands, governments in Asia and Europe began passing laws
requiring auto manufacturers to design cars with the explicit purpose
of increasing the survival rate for a pedestrian. Yeah, for
a struct pedestrian. They wanted them to have a better chance,
(04:20):
I guess, you know, and and to investigate why it
is that, you know, so many of these pedestrians are
are dying even at low speeds. Because if you think
about this, and we'll talk about this several times as
we go through here, but um, cars and pedestrians are
often in the same uh, they share the same space
in big cities, in small cities, big cities. You know
that the it goes back to what we're talking about
(04:40):
Ben crossing at the crosswalks in our previous episode. But
but a lot of these, um, these collisions that are
happening between pedestrians and cars are relatively slow accidents. They're
not they're not necessarily you know, traveling at fifty miles
an hour, sixty miles an hour. We're talking about people
getting hit, you know, between ten and forty miles per hour.
Maybe at the most forty would be a top speed
(05:01):
accident in a big city. And you can see some
chilling simulations entirely based on the math and the physics
of the event. Yeah, I don't know how common it is,
but I've been hit by a car before, really, Yeah,
and it was at a low speed, thank goodness, So
I guess so, yeah, you're still around to talk about it. Well,
I wasn't doing I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was
(05:22):
walking through a parking lot and somebody zipped around a
corner in the parking lot and popped me. Where did
you get? Hit in the back of the legs or
the side? Hit on my right side? And um, but
I had no idea this happened. Put me, put me
in a spin, and then I'm like face up, uh,
(05:42):
looking at the looking at the sky, you know. Yeah,
you're on the ground right, Yeah, and uh, it knocked
me on the ground and the person drove away. No really, no, no,
it was pretty low impact. Yeah, I guess so left. Yeah,
Oh my gosh, maybe I wasn't the first person they
(06:03):
hit in that parking lot. We're gonna talk about this
more later, that's for sure, because I'm I was looking
at these, uh, the simulations, you know, the ones that
you're talking about. They can do these with, you know,
different weight models. And I don't know why they chose
this car that this video that we've been looking at.
I guess this car that looks like a Saturn. I
think they're using a Saturn. Yeah, not sure why that
was chosen as the vehicle, but it has a relatively
(06:24):
low hoodline. Um, but they showed different different accident scenarios
between ten miles per hour and forty miles per hour,
and I'll tell you that, you know, ten miles per hour,
it still looks pretty severe. I mean, you get you
get struck. The Here here's what happens to the pedestrian
um and it shows this pretty graphically. I guess it's
struck in the Yeah, they the head hits the hits
(06:45):
the hood of the car, and the person kind of
just flops down right in front of the car, in
front of the bumper, ends up in a sitting you know,
sitting position in front of the car. But they're not
really thrown any distance by this accident, you know, ten
miles per hour, but that changes dramatically as you go
up to twenty miles per hour. The you know, the
pedestrian gets struck and they go up to the windshield. Yeah,
(07:06):
the headhoods HiT's the hood and the windshield and then
they do kind of like this half flip in the
air and then land upside down on their head on
the concrete, you know, several feet away at this point.
And then when you go up to thirty miles an hour,
and this is there's only two more here, but thirty
miles an hour again, the same thing happens. You know,
that the head strikes the windshield, the person does a
full flip in the in the air. It's almost like
(07:26):
a cart wheel that happens, and then they land on
their back and they've flown a long way at this point,
I mean a long way away from the car. It
looks like several meters. I guess is how they've got
to measure it out here um on the on the
graft that they've got um at forty miles an hour,
I don't know looking at this simulation, I don't know
how a pedestrian gets struck at forty miles per hour
(07:47):
and survives. And it's that it's that horrific. It's that
it's that violent of an action. So they're struck, they
do two and a half flips in the air above
the windshield of the car as the car is traveling
trying to slow down and stop. And then at this
point they flown a long long way and the impact
on the ground is extremely severe. As you can imagine. Uh,
not only is the car skitting to a stop at
(08:08):
the body is sliding to a stop as well. It's
a very violent thing, violent action that happens at forty
And you know, when you're in your car, forty doesn't
really feel like you're going that fast. I mean, it
feels like a slow speed, doesn't it. Right. But the
impact on someone who is not encased in a shell
of fiberglass and metal, well, yeah, different exactly. Yeah. I
(08:30):
mean humans are soft, right, cars cars are pretty hard,
if you want to put it that way. But the
thing is that there are two phases of a pedestrian
car accident. And there's a couple of things we'll tell
you about the different phases. One, the first phases the
you know, the impact itself, the you know, the the
the pedestrian hits the car. Yeah, the saturn pops you
(08:51):
on the pops you on the legs or your side
as you say, yeah, and then you hit the hood
of the car or the wind shield of the car.
And then and then the second phase is when you
impact the ground. You know, it's it's the um impact
that the pedestrian makes several feet later, you know, whether
the throne from the from the vehicle because in you know,
(09:12):
after about twenty miles per hour, uh, the pedestrian, the
human is thrown a long distance and you go up
to forty miles an hour. It's a really long distance, right,
and my thing was probably more like under under ten miles. Now,
I mean that's really severe. So you think that's uh
under ten I think I think so because I was
just bruised up, but I didn't break anything. Okay, yeah, man,
(09:36):
this is this is all new to me. I'm just surprised.
I don't know why I live in I I live
a colorful life. It seems like something that would have
come up before, you know, ten years. You know, we've
been talking for ten years. I didn't know this. There's
a jeep Cherokee. I was working at a bookstore in Atlanta,
Georgia during college. Okay, all right, so long before you
worked here at how stuff works? Oh yeah, okay, oh yeah, alright, um,
(09:59):
anyhow again, more later on this, but all right, but
here's the interesting part. Then. You would think that, you know,
getting thrown such a long distance and landing in a heap,
you know, somewhere down the road, would be the worst
part of this whole thing, right, right, That's not necessarily
the case, because in eight percent of these of these situations,
the deaths came from the very first phase of that impact,
(10:21):
the contact with the car, right, and let's let's parse
that into that initial impact into uh, initial impact A
and initial impact B. Initial impact A is going to
be when the bumper hits the legs. That's not what
makes it fatal. No, I mean, you can live with
(10:42):
a broken leg. But what did percent of the people
in was when they slam their head into the hood
of the car or the windshield right right, So you
get that, you get that mechanical shin kick in, your
feet are knocked from under you, and then boom, the
most one of the most sensitive parts of your body
(11:03):
has a I almost said head on collision, but it does.
It does collide with the hood. And so this is
what automakers started to focus on. Yeah, and you know
might wonder why legislation, why is that even necessary right
at this point? Why why can't it just kind of
be something that the automakers naturally do. But we'll talk
about that after the first word from our sponsor. So
(11:27):
we were going to talk about legislation at this point,
right then, right, all right, So, so why do you
think I think I might have an answer for this?
Why why do you think that legislation for uh, something
like this might be necessary. I think I have an answer,
at least a guess pretty basic guests, wouldn't it be
because auto design is already so internally competitive for real
(11:52):
estate and an organization, uh that this sort of consideration
would have to be a forced priority by an outside
and to Okay, that's that's kind of onlong the lines
of what I'm talking about. I think I have a
different slant on this, a different angle on this whole thing.
So my my thought is that, um, and it's not
my own thought. I've read this somewhere and I don't
remember where it came from, but it seemed to strike
(12:13):
a chord with me. And this is from some different source,
you know, some somewhere else. Um. My my thought is
that if I'll try to try to put this in
a distinct way here, But it's hard enough to get
people to pay extra for a safety device in the
car that saves their own life or the life of
a passenger. Like let's say that you can buy you
can buy a package with extra airbags. You think you know,
(12:36):
people would do that because that might prevent you know,
a death in the near future of them or one
of their family members, right, But it's extra money. If
if we start try to start adapting cars and the
way we're talking about, you know, to create pedestrian safety
UM devices on cars, you know, on the outside of cars,
for people that we don't even know. Really, you don't
know that pedestrian that you're gonna strike, You don't know
(12:58):
who you're gonna hit. Are people that are buying the
car gonna pay extra for pedestrian safety features for someone
they don't even know when they won't even buy extra
air bags for themselves in the car sometimes, or not
just air bags, but you know, seat anchors or whatever,
you know, whatever the safety device might be. It's it's
just a thought. And I again I read that somewhere else.
It's not my own original thought, but I thought that's
(13:20):
that maybe the answer there. That's why UM external safety
devices not not necessarily internal stuff, but the external stuff
might have to be legislated into action. Otherwise it's probably
never gonna happen because people just aren't gonna pay the
extra for someone they don't know to survive a potential
crash years from now that you know, they don't even
(13:40):
know if they're going to be in or not. Yeah,
it's kind of like the idea of opting out versus
opting in with organ donation. Do you remember when they
change that. I used to have to opt in, and
then they several places changed it, at least here in
the States, so that people have to opt out. Yeah,
because it's easier to do it that way. They get
more donors that way, and you get a discount. But
(14:04):
so anyway, I know that's a very cynical way to
look at it. But I mean, I don't think I
think I think that this in this case. And I'm
not really one for for lots of legislation obviously, I
like the market to determine what happens. But I think that, um,
in this case, I do think that legislation, if if,
if this has to go, if if it has to pass,
I think the only way it's going to pass is
through you know this happening, you know, from an outside
(14:26):
force making this happen. So let's look at the nuts
and bolts of this as well, what actually happens. So,
if you've seen a lot of the recent, god the
past few decades of cars, you know the sheet metal
that's on most car hoods is going to be kind
of soft. You know, you can push in, it's gotta
(14:49):
give so you can dent it. Pretty pretty flimsy, pretty flimsy.
So you would think, well, Scott, then why does how
do people die from that impact? Because you know, twenty
miles an hour, it sounds like it could break a leg,
but it doesn't sound like it could lead to a
fatal head injury. The problem is not that soft ish
(15:13):
sheet metal over the hood. The problems what lurks under
the hood, sort of like that shark and Jaws. Yeah,
there's a big engine under there and that is not soft. Now,
that's not moving anywhere. And in fact, it's not just
the engine. There's also uh, you know, a motor for
the windshield wipers there. There's all kinds of stuff that's
underneath there that is hard. I mean the batteries underneath
there too. And unless automakers design a cushion area, you know,
(15:37):
like a gap, I guess, a def an area that
it can deform without striking that you know, someplace to
slow down that motion. Um, A crumple zone, I guess
that's really what it is. It's a very narrow crumple
zone for a pedestrian head to hit the hood. Um,
if they don't design that, you know, and there's just
the engine right immediately underneath there, there's gonna be trouble. Right.
(15:58):
So that's why we see automakers making specific design decisions.
And there's a cool article on Car and Driver about
this too, wherein they they mentioned the trend toward building
higher hoods and taller noses because just that little bit
of air over the engine, uh changes everything regarding the
(16:20):
shape of the car. Yeah, and we can walk this
through from the front bumper to the back end if
you like. And because that one change, I mean, we
just said what it was, right, and we're just trying
to add I think in this case, they said that
there's a minimum of about twenty millimeters of clearance that's
required between the underside of the hood and the highest
part of the engine, so about point eight inches. Yeah, right,
So we're talking very very slight, you know, increase in
(16:41):
size here. It's not really that much, but what that
does to the design of the car is amazing. I
mean it starts right at the very front bumper. I mean,
of course you're gonna have a more upright front end.
I guess on it. You know, to begin with, it's
gonna have to be higher up. It's not gonna be um,
you know, the uh, the super low sleek lines of
I'm gonna have a bad example. Like think about like
an Irock Camaro or something like that. Think about how
(17:03):
low and and kind of flat and lean that front
end was. It was, It was pointed, it was, it
was very low down right. It's not that way anymore.
If you look at sedans and cars and even even
sports cars to some degree, they have more of an
upright front end than they did in the past. Yes,
and and it doesn't you know, it's not just the
the the front of the hood that has to come
up a little bit, you know, it's the entire hood.
(17:24):
And you know, if you want to keep the design
of the car true to the way that the as
we said earlier, the way that the designers sketched it originally,
you also have to raise the back in order to
keep that look exactly the same. Otherwise the angles all
change and everything looks goofy. Right, So the entire cowl
has to be raised by a similar amount or maybe
a little more. If the designers want a wedge shape
(17:44):
look and when the cow comes up, what else comes up? Yeah,
this moves the windshield base and makes the dash higher. Yeah,
the dash has to come up to it. And because
the dash is higher, that means that the front seats
have to be raised accordingly. You know, just while we're
going on this, I want to tell you you remember
where that children's book if you give them mouse a
cookie and I don't think I do. Oh, well, it's
(18:05):
about how if you do one thing for this mouse
in the book, then you have to do these other
things as well. So we're seeing this domino effect. If
you move the dash higher, what what do you have
to move after that? If you do okay, so you
have to move the seat. You have to raise the
seats right, so the seats come up. And then once
you raise the seats up, that means that the roof
(18:25):
of the car has to be moved up as well.
So you can see that this is just growing exponentially, right,
I mean it started with that one little eight tenths
of an inch at the front end of the car,
and now suddenly you're raising the seats in the hood
of the I mean the roof of the car, right,
And now that the roof is higher. The base of
the side windows has to be lifted to keep the
car from looking you know, stupid. Yeah, that's right. So
(18:47):
the belt line, right, the belt line has to come up.
And you know, the higher belt line means that above
the rear wheel arches, it means there's gonna be more
sheet metal back there. So that means that what that
does is that throws off the proportion of the um
the wheel to body ratio that the original sketch head.
And I know it sounds minor, but what it would
mean was that your your tires would look a little
(19:08):
tiny on the vehicle compared to the way that the
initial sketch look right. Look, it probably had really cool
looking proportions and everything looked just right. So from this,
you know, eight tents of an inch at the front,
you know, just over the over the hood, the twenty millimeter,
you know that we raised the hood. All of that stuff,
even some interior components have to be changed around all
the way back to the rear wheel arches. And and
(19:29):
to fill those rear wheel arches which now look like
they've got tiny little tires in them, they've had to
add larger tires. They've had they that's why we've shifted
in a lot of cases. It's not it's not every reason.
But let's say that, like on the BMW's they've gone
from you know, having eighteen inch wheels, they've gone up
to nineteen or even twenty inch wheels now because it
seems to fit the wheel opening a lot better than
(19:51):
it did, you know, prior to when these these regulations
were in place. So again, this is all starting from
just having to have a little bit of clearance between
the hood of the car and the engine of the car,
just for pedestrian safety. So pedestrian safety in a way
is making you have making you it's it's it's uh
creating a need for larger wheels on cars. Belie that
(20:15):
I believe that or not. I mean, it's that ripple effect, right,
it ripples all the way to the back end of
the car. And this is not a conspiracy theory. I
mean pictures Scott nine front of one of those uh
cold case walls where we have all these newspaper clippings
and red string I like those, Yeah, I love those things.
We have want to hear in the office, don't we Yes,
we have one for stuff they don't want you to know,
(20:36):
and I used to have one at my house, but
a real one different shows was I on that wall?
Of course I'm onto you man, right, But isn't it?
Is it strange? I mean, is this this effect goes
right from the very front bumper all the way to
the back and again it's all over just a tiny
little thing at twenty millimeter change in the front end.
(20:56):
But it all comes down to and I know you
could you could adjustice so that, you know, we'll just
make the hood higher and raise the seats little bit,
and that's good enough. You don't have to do all
that other stuff. But if you want to keep the
attractive proportions that the designer initially intended for that automobile,
then that's what you have to do. You have to
make all those changes. So um, it's you know, auto
design is terribly complex. We've learned that over the years,
(21:18):
but especially in the last year or so, we've been
talking about some things that just blow your mind as
far as yeah, it really is, like exactly what goes
into it. It's very difficult. And this is this is
just one example, but we'd like to show you another example.
After a word from our sponsor, So in addition to
(21:41):
this issue of having even just a little bit extra
air between the man of the intake manifold in the hood, uh,
we have another issue which is that a lot of
cars have shorter hoods nowadays, right, yeah, sure, And some
of that comes from, um the idea of decreasing a
(22:04):
car's footprints so it's easier to drive and park in
densely populated area. City cars, city cars exactly. I think
the Honda Fit that's got a tiny little hood right right,
and the different distance between the front bumper and the
start of the windshield the base of the windshield very
short distance, incredibly so yeah, especially you know I drive
money Carlos, Well, you've got a long, big hood on that,
(22:26):
so you can take a road trip on the hood. Yeah,
yes you could. But with a shorter hood we see
a different kind of problem when there's a taller pedestrian. Yeah,
I think about this. What if it what if someone
you know, six and a half footer, you know, is
walking in front of a Honda Fit and they're struck
in the legs or the shin I guess by that vehicle.
Where do you think that their head is gonna end
up it's not on the hood of that tiny little car.
(22:48):
Their heads gonna end up in the middle of the
windshield or possibly on the a pillar and that is
really bad when it happens. And that's not all that
infrequent because I mean, you think about where the pillars
are position there at the edge the car. It's it's
not all that often. I mean, you know what, I
can't even say for sure, but doesn't it seem that
when a pedestrians hit a lot of times it's the
edge of the car that gets them. It's like they
(23:09):
just either they either just got hit or they just
missed being right, you know, just missed by by just
a fraction. But it seems like they're at one corner
or the other of the car. Typically, it seems a
lot of times it's not it's usually not right dead center. No,
it feels like it's usually gonna be kind of a sideswipe. Yeah.
I mean, if you think about it, the driver is
gonna try to swing the wheel and you know, avert
(23:30):
that accident and uh, you know, likely a lot of
times you end up clipping the pedestrian inadvertently. But um, anyways,
we're getting off the track here. But that could be
a fatality. As you said, I mean, that's a serious situation.
But you can't make one car, one one car safer
for everybody. I mean, it could be dangerous to children,
It could be dangerous to um, you know, the average
(23:52):
percentile person that's out there walking around. UM. It could
be safer for taller people. You know what. You just
have to determine, um kind what this the median is,
I guess, And that's probably how they do it. They
just decide that, you know, here's our average that we're
gonna shoot for. That You're absolutely right, there is a
balance in the calculation, and you can't knowingly sacrifice the
(24:13):
driver passengers of a car for hypothetical pedestrians. Now see,
that's the thing. You can't make the a pillars any
software because those are there for rollover. You can't make
the windshield any software because they're there for you know, well,
I guess, anything that might come up from the roadway
during you know, well and when blockage, you know that
kind of thing. But but I mean, they're supposed to
protect the occupants of the car if a rock word
to fly up, or you know, anything like that, something
(24:35):
some debris on the road. Um, So, I guess the
there is an option, there's a solution, but it's something
again that that people would have to pay extra for.
And there is one company that's doing it. They've already
already done this. It's Volvo of course. Yeah, there are
other companies that are kind of in the in the water,
I guess with them on this is renowned as of
course the vanguard of safety. Yeah, and they've jumped in,
(24:58):
you know, feet first. They're they're really on all in
on this and this has been for a while. They've
done this on one of their one of their cars.
I want to say that it's the oh shoot, it's
the the V forty I think is the one. And
they've created something called a pedestrian air bag. And I
know other companies have kind of toyed around with this idea,
but this one's in This one's in production and it
has been for a while, the V forty air bag,
(25:19):
and it's it's essentially it's a it's a car really
that's I guess made for um city driving really, I mean,
if you want to want to think of it that way,
because you know, it's a city traffic because that's where
cars and people share the same space. It makes perfect
sense that it would be on this vehicle. The way
that it happens is that there's a a bunch of
sensors on the front bumper and when they strike something
(25:42):
that they determined to be a human like leg, which
I know it's it's funny to say it that way,
but that's how they had to test it, right. They
had to hit something that had a certain um give
to it, a certain flexibility to it, and it determined
these censer sensors actually determined that they've hit a human
leg versus like a you know, a parking uh poll
or you know, whatever you want to call it. That's
(26:04):
really important because we have to keep in mind, this
is an air bag, so you can't just like roll
it up and take it back down. Yeah, I mean
you have to, you know, determine that because if you
bump something into the parking lot, you don't want this
this airbag to deploy, right, because that can be extremely costly.
Because there's another actually that happens with it. When you
know that that that from bumper bumper sensor senses this
(26:25):
leg contact um, it raises the back. There's an explosive
charge that raises the back end of the hood or
the I guess the trailing edge of the end of
the hood. Yeah, up a certain certain amount. I don't
know if it's a couple inches or whatever it is,
but it allows the air bag then a U shaped
bag to unfurl. That protects the um, the pedestrian that
was struck from contacting the windshield and the A pillar
(26:48):
on both sides. So it's a great big U shape
inflatable bag and um. You can imagine that if you
know that thing went off unexpectedly. You know, when you're
bump a tree, you're parking somewhere like some festival something,
you bump a tree and it goes off, they would
be a drag. But if you hit a pedestrian, you
for sure want that thing to go off because they'll
protect them and hopefully protect you against some future lawsuit maybe.
(27:09):
And it's a pretty smart design. Other other automakers are
taking a cue from Volvo as per normal, and places
like Jaguar, Lexis and so on have similar systems, and
they're all they're all using charges to raise a hood
in a crash. But I think at this point Volvo
(27:29):
is the only one with an air bag. Yeah, I
think they are too, um and they've been doing that
for a while again on that V forty, and they
might even have it on another vehicle. I'm not exactly
sure right now. But you know what the best solution
to this would be overall is if there never were
any pedestrian accidents to begin with. Yeah, agreed, And that's
kind of the hope is with you know, some of
these autonomous vehicles, is that that may be taken out
(27:52):
of the picture altogether. Now. I don't know. I don't
have a whole lot of confidence that it will completely
be removed. I mean, I don't think you can ever
say that. I don't think so, just because even in
even in a smart city or whatever, several years from now,
a place, a place where all vehicles are autonomous and
(28:12):
all traffic lines are are clearly delineated, things will still
go wrong. There's no there's no way to prepare for
an unknown unknown. No. But even even the man systems,
you know, the ones that you know, like newer cars
that have full stop systems, you know, for with pedestrian
sensing technology, those are great. I mean, I'm sure that
(28:34):
those are saving lives. I'm positive of it. And you
know they watch out for cyclists, they watch out for
um other things as well. It's not just it's you know,
dogs and cats and whatever it's in the in the way.
I'm sure that that those things are saving lives at
this Okay, it has to be, I agree, but hear
me out on this not to be too pessimistic. I
(28:57):
believe there's still problems with that. You're right, of course, Scott,
that everybody realizes it would be better if pedestrians were
just never hit in the first place. Volvo gets that
as well. They've got this thing called city Safety Technology,
and it's doing exactly what you're describing. It uses sensors
to detect pedestrians, cyclists, what have you, a guy with
(29:19):
a hot dog cart, etcetera, and automatically slams the brakes
if these uh, if these pedestrians are cyclists are stepping
or swerving in front of you. That's great, that is great,
and hopefully it does save lives, but hopefully it doesn't
do it at the expense of the lives of the
(29:41):
people in the car with that technology, because if your
car slams on the brakes and someone else is right
behind you when they're doing you know, sixty or fifty
or something. This we have to be like, um, somebody
on the interstate, like a pedestrian on the interstate running Now,
which is really danger is it happens more often than
you might think. Deer collision, A deer collision, that's another
(30:05):
graded sir. So then what happens is sure the Volvo
is full stop, but now it's being slammed like fifty
miles an hour from the rear. The answer is everybody
has to drive a Volvo with full stop. That's the answer.
That's you know, you're joking, but that's usually the answer.
Autonomous car buffs give well, you know what they do.
(30:26):
They say that if everybody's driving this, there's gonna be
no problem at all. Right, That's that's always the situation
if you if you mix it up, though, if you've
got you know, autonomous vehicles and and the human element
involved as well, Uh, there's gonna be some problems. There's
there's gonna be some inherent issues with that. Now, one
thing that we haven't mentioned here along the way, and
you know what I'm going to tell you right now,
I'm probably not gonna get to one of the one
(30:47):
thing that I wanted to mention here, and I bet
people are wanting to hear about this. I would guess, Um,
we're talking about the external design of cars and how
you know they've kind of been smoothed out for safety, right,
you know, softened up and and shaped in different way
for for pedestrian safety. We haven't talked yet about, you know,
the complete loss of hood ornaments on cars. I mean
(31:08):
they're almost completely gone, and the ones that still are
out there sometimes even yeah, they have technologies. Some have
technology in them that prevent damage to pedestrians when they's
when they're struck, and others have just real simple mechanical
things built into them. There are still hood ornaments out there,
but there are very few cars that have it, and
it's tend they tend to be high end luxury v
(31:29):
like Rolls or something, yeah, or the MACI the Mac
truck has that as well, you know the great big
blue collar you know, um dump trucks and stuff like
that in the semis. But um, I wish we could
get to that. I've got I've got a bunch of
hood hood ornaments stuff. And you're like when they kind
of went away and what happened to them and how
they kind of made they kind of slipped from the
(31:49):
top of the hood standing up to down on the
hood lane down and then down onto the grill, so
like they've kind of like made this slump down the vehicle. Um. Anyways,
it's it's a whole part of brand recognition that we're
not going to really get to. But alright, one thing
that we need to cover here before we wrapped this
whole thing up is is about a group that we
haven't really talked about here, and that is the American
auto manufacturers. We've been primarily talking about European manufacturers, Asian
(32:12):
manufacturers and uh. And they have been pushed you know
that they've been um, uh, they've been made to come
about with this. You know, they've been made to uh.
I guess it's probably not the best way to say
that they've been made to care about this, right. They
have been incentivized, Yeah, they've been incentivized to to care
about pedestrians safe. Of course, they want to care about
pedestrians safety, of course, but um, they've been pushed into
(32:36):
that by agencies, by by national agencies, and we here
in the United States have not We've kind of followed
suit with a lot of some of the stuff. You know,
we've as we mentioned, you know, lost the hod ornaments
and that kind of stuff, but and made hoods a
little bit softer and you know, flexible that kind of thing. Um.
But really, I mean, we haven't been pushed to the
same pedestrian safety design features or standards that the European
(32:58):
you know, Japan markets again, all of the Asian markets
pushed into and America's UM National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
in n h t S a UM, believe it or not,
has been a little bit evasive about what they feel
about this, about why they haven't really pressed for pedestrian
safety standards in modern cars. Absolutely, And the closest thing
(33:19):
we have to an official line regarding that is that
the mix of cars on US interstates or roadways isn't
as um easily fixed with a one size fits all
sort of solution or mandate. And to me, Scott, this
argument does have some sand to it. Yeah, I guess,
(33:41):
so we have more trucks, we have more SUVs, we
have more um, I guess, larger vehicles, you know, sharing
space alongside smaller vehicles. We're in Europe, it seems to
be that you know, those are those tend to be
more of the commercial vehicles, right. So one of the
arguments is that, let's say we had these sorts of
(34:01):
safety requirements on a pickup that sits higher than the
average sedan. So let's just say one most popular by
a long shot. So their argument at the n h
T s A is that you could make some mandates
that would make the F one fifty less lethal to
(34:24):
a child in the street, but that might make it
more dangerous for an adult in the street. So maybe
the solution then is just best officity on the category
of vehicle. I don't know, well, you know we talked
about this with the Honda Fit earlier, right, I mean,
it's probably less deadly for a child to be struck
by Honda Fit at a slow speed than it is
(34:46):
for a you know, a six and a half foot
tall person or seven foot tall person to be struck
by a Honda Fit at a slow speed. I mean,
they're gonna they're gonna contact different parts of that car
when they when they uh through phase one of the
kind of the crash, I guess. So it's it's what
it's all. It all comes down to that phase one
phase two, Phase one, again being the most fatal part
of this whole thing. Um, how do automakers play that balance?
(35:09):
How do they How do they make sure that it's
safe for everybody and and not make it extremely deadly
for some some other group? And can such a solution
be possible? It's a question that no automaker has managed
to no automaker, and no incredibly smart, handsome and somewhat
funny auto podcasters have been able to answer. You know,
(35:33):
they play around with these numbers all the time, even
with um, you know, like when when should they turn
on the on the passenger airbags? You know, like what
weight and you know what I mean, they're getting pretty
good at that, but they have, um, you know, these
these standards that they have to hear too, Like it's
you know, the the I don't know what the tenth
percentile male and female and they take the average weight
and you know, whatever the number is. It's something like that.
(35:55):
They have to determine on average, who is going to
be in that car, and that's gonna be on douably
hard for them to do. Yeah, that's pretty difficult stuff
to say the least. Um, it's it's not one size
fits all for anybody and on anything in any car. Really,
let's have a custom and we want to hear what
you know. I was thinking what a good question would
be to ask everybody in this episode, and it's tangentially related.
(36:19):
Let me tell let me see what you think about
this guy. Uh, we'd we'd like to hear from you, folks,
friends and neighbors, fellow car fans. What do you think
is the most I guess controversial change or trend that
you've seen in auto design recently, recently being the past
(36:40):
let's say fifteen years. You know what, what do you
think is the coolest thing? What do you think is
the worst thing? What do you think is like the strangest?
Why is everyone doing it? Do you know the reason
behind a change? I mean that might be interesting too.
I mean a lot of the stuff is pedestrian safety.
As we talked about, that changed a huge amount of uh,
exterior ornamentation on cars. I mean it used to be
(37:02):
the cars were they had a lot of stuff sticking
off of them, you know, like protrusions, uh, you know,
with with chrome bumpers and you know, ornamental things. Those
are all gone. Now cars are really slick and it's
not all about aerodynamics, it's also about pedestrian safety. So
that's that's one example. But what else can you come
up with? I mean that's a great question, man, Like,
what what else? What what's controversial? I guess we'd love
(37:23):
to hear it. Also, I learned a new word while
we were researching this. Are you ready protextrians? Protextrians? Yeah,
like pedestrian with the word text inserted. These are the
people who are texting while they're walking, not looking across
you know, four lanes of traffic. Oh yeah, they just
they're they're they're going on the fact that they know
(37:43):
that that light is still green for them, so they're
able to walk across that that crosswalk, right. I mean
they're not even putting their head up for a second.
So protextrian, apparently going back on an earlier conversation guarding jaywalking.
Protextrian also comes from the auto industry, done on thumb.
Will there will there be a push? Will there be
a campaign? Is there a conspiracy of foot? Yeah? Will
(38:06):
the first lady come on television and talk about texts?
The pretextrian menace? Oh, at least they're at list they're
moving past jay walkers. But yeah, we do want to
know what you think about auto design, because it appears
there's a lot more under the surface of every auto
design decision, and the average car buyer is not going
(38:29):
to know it through uh. In the meantime, you can
find Scott and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. You can check
out every episode we've ever done on our website car
Stuff Show dot com. And you might be thinking, I
know exactly what's going on with this weird auto design. Yes,
I can tell you why so many minivans have a
(38:53):
cartoonish number of cup holders. But how do I get
in touch with you guys? Well, the answer is simple,
my friends. You can write to us directly. We are
car stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, this is at
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
(39:15):
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Hmm,
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from how Stuff Works dot Com. I had
Welcome to Car Stuff. I'm Scott and I've been we
were joined with our super producer Tyler Crash claim Uh
and I've got to ask. I usually start with a
(00:23):
with a question for you, Scott. Okay, what's the question.
Do you remember our earlier episode we did pretty recently
about why cars look boring? Oh? Yeah, yeah, sure we did. Yeah.
I've been thinking about that for a while because there
was so much to the world of auto design that
(00:44):
we're getting I didn't really consider until we started delving
into that episode. Oh that's both of us, buddy. We
didn't realize that, you know, real estate was at such
a premium in an automobile, right, I mean, every little
inches is uh is pondered over for a long long time.
I mean it really gets down to, you know, a
game of millimeters inside the car. You know, what can
(01:05):
fit what can't fit outside? Outside is really no different. Um,
They're continually stripping away things on the outside of the car.
I mean it may be part of it, you know.
You know, one thing when we were digging into today's topic,
and we'll jump into this in just a moment. But um,
I was thinking, you know, we get a lot of
email from people that say, you know, why are you
not only is why they're boring? Whey are they born looking?
Why do all cars kind of look the same now?
(01:27):
You know, why do they have that that same shape?
Why do they all look you know so um kind
of plane? Right, new car is kind of plane. I
mean there's a few standouts among them, you know, every
year there's something that stands out. But um, for the
most part, they do have the same general shape and
there's there's some very good reasons for that. And uh,
and some of that comes down to, believe it or not,
(01:48):
pedestrian safety. The exterior design of the car, the interior
design of the car, this the dimensions of the car,
the I mean everything. A lot of this comes down
to pedestrian safety. It's really surprising, right, And this could
be considered a sequel if you have checked out our
previous episode, which I think we just released, about the
(02:09):
history of jaywalking. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, deals with
pedestrians in the road when they're not supposed to be
in the road in a very very strange marketing war
it's it's it's an interesting, fascinating piece of history, and
you're absolutely right, Scott, it continues today when automotive designers
do their their first sketches. I don't know if you've
(02:29):
probably seen quite a few of these. I love looking
at the initial sketches. Yeah, and then what actually rolls
off the line. Well, you know what, the sketches are beautiful, right,
just gorgeous sketches, and even the concept cars that they
build for the shows are beautiful in a lot of cases, right.
I mean they come out and they show you this,
this sleek, you know, just credible looking machine that you
just you're you're practically drooling to get behind the wheel.
(02:52):
You're ready for it, right, you want to buy this car.
But then when it arrives in the showroom, you know,
a year and a half later, a year later, it's
not the same are that you saw on the on
the show floor. What what happened? There's there's something that
happens in between, right, Yeah, And what we have what
we have found is that there is more to this
story than you might imagine. Yeah, yeah, now this is
(03:13):
kind of crazy, but I had a hard time believing
this number. This is a really high number. Alright, So
one factor that helps to determine the shape of cars,
which a lot of I guess it's fair to say
that Americans are less aware of this than a lot
of the rest of the world, and will describe why
that is. But it's it's true, um, and not that's
not everybody, of course, But each year, over two hundred
(03:35):
and seventy thousand cars slamming the pedestrians that killed them,
every single year, somewhere in the United not in the
United States, in the world. Two hundred and seventy thousand.
Doesn't that sound like that's that's an incredible number. That
that's um, seven hundred and forty per day if you
break that down to three days, so that's seven forty
somewhere in the world, every day, all year long. And
(03:57):
so to combat this, in the first decade of the
two thousands, governments in Asia and Europe began passing laws
requiring auto manufacturers to design cars with the explicit purpose
of increasing the survival rate for a pedestrian. Yeah, for
a struct pedestrian. They wanted them to have a better chance,
(04:20):
I guess, you know, and and to investigate why it
is that, you know, so many of these pedestrians are
are dying even at low speeds. Because if you think
about this, and we'll talk about this several times as
we go through here, but um, cars and pedestrians are
often in the same uh, they share the same space
in big cities, in small cities, big cities. You know
that the it goes back to what we're talking about
(04:40):
Ben crossing at the crosswalks in our previous episode. But
but a lot of these, um, these collisions that are
happening between pedestrians and cars are relatively slow accidents. They're
not they're not necessarily you know, traveling at fifty miles
an hour, sixty miles an hour. We're talking about people
getting hit, you know, between ten and forty miles per hour.
Maybe at the most forty would be a top speed
(05:01):
accident in a big city. And you can see some
chilling simulations entirely based on the math and the physics
of the event. Yeah, I don't know how common it is,
but I've been hit by a car before, really, Yeah,
and it was at a low speed, thank goodness, So
I guess so, yeah, you're still around to talk about it. Well,
I wasn't doing I wasn't doing anything wrong. I was
(05:22):
walking through a parking lot and somebody zipped around a
corner in the parking lot and popped me. Where did
you get? Hit in the back of the legs or
the side? Hit on my right side? And um, but
I had no idea this happened. Put me, put me
in a spin, and then I'm like face up, uh,
(05:42):
looking at the looking at the sky, you know. Yeah,
you're on the ground right, Yeah, and uh, it knocked
me on the ground and the person drove away. No really, no, no,
it was pretty low impact. Yeah, I guess so left. Yeah,
Oh my gosh, maybe I wasn't the first person they
(06:03):
hit in that parking lot. We're gonna talk about this
more later, that's for sure, because I'm I was looking
at these, uh, the simulations, you know, the ones that
you're talking about. They can do these with, you know,
different weight models. And I don't know why they chose
this car that this video that we've been looking at.
I guess this car that looks like a Saturn. I
think they're using a Saturn. Yeah, not sure why that
was chosen as the vehicle, but it has a relatively
(06:24):
low hoodline. Um, but they showed different different accident scenarios
between ten miles per hour and forty miles per hour,
and I'll tell you that, you know, ten miles per hour,
it still looks pretty severe. I mean, you get you
get struck. The Here here's what happens to the pedestrian
um and it shows this pretty graphically. I guess it's
struck in the Yeah, they the head hits the hits
(06:45):
the hood of the car, and the person kind of
just flops down right in front of the car, in
front of the bumper, ends up in a sitting you know,
sitting position in front of the car. But they're not
really thrown any distance by this accident, you know, ten
miles per hour, but that changes dramatically as you go
up to twenty miles per hour. The you know, the
pedestrian gets struck and they go up to the windshield. Yeah,
(07:06):
the headhoods HiT's the hood and the windshield and then
they do kind of like this half flip in the
air and then land upside down on their head on
the concrete, you know, several feet away at this point.
And then when you go up to thirty miles an hour,
and this is there's only two more here, but thirty
miles an hour again, the same thing happens. You know,
that the head strikes the windshield, the person does a
full flip in the in the air. It's almost like
(07:26):
a cart wheel that happens, and then they land on
their back and they've flown a long way at this point,
I mean a long way away from the car. It
looks like several meters. I guess is how they've got
to measure it out here um on the on the
graft that they've got um at forty miles an hour,
I don't know looking at this simulation, I don't know
how a pedestrian gets struck at forty miles per hour
(07:47):
and survives. And it's that it's that horrific. It's that
it's that violent of an action. So they're struck, they
do two and a half flips in the air above
the windshield of the car as the car is traveling
trying to slow down and stop. And then at this
point they flown a long long way and the impact
on the ground is extremely severe. As you can imagine. Uh,
not only is the car skitting to a stop at
(08:08):
the body is sliding to a stop as well. It's
a very violent thing, violent action that happens at forty
And you know, when you're in your car, forty doesn't
really feel like you're going that fast. I mean, it
feels like a slow speed, doesn't it. Right. But the
impact on someone who is not encased in a shell
of fiberglass and metal, well, yeah, different exactly. Yeah. I
(08:30):
mean humans are soft, right, cars cars are pretty hard,
if you want to put it that way. But the
thing is that there are two phases of a pedestrian
car accident. And there's a couple of things we'll tell
you about the different phases. One, the first phases the
you know, the impact itself, the you know, the the
the pedestrian hits the car. Yeah, the saturn pops you
(08:51):
on the pops you on the legs or your side
as you say, yeah, and then you hit the hood
of the car or the wind shield of the car.
And then and then the second phase is when you
impact the ground. You know, it's it's the um impact
that the pedestrian makes several feet later, you know, whether
the throne from the from the vehicle because in you know,
(09:12):
after about twenty miles per hour, uh, the pedestrian, the
human is thrown a long distance and you go up
to forty miles an hour. It's a really long distance, right,
and my thing was probably more like under under ten miles. Now,
I mean that's really severe. So you think that's uh
under ten I think I think so because I was
just bruised up, but I didn't break anything. Okay, yeah, man,
(09:36):
this is this is all new to me. I'm just surprised.
I don't know why I live in I I live
a colorful life. It seems like something that would have
come up before, you know, ten years. You know, we've
been talking for ten years. I didn't know this. There's
a jeep Cherokee. I was working at a bookstore in Atlanta,
Georgia during college. Okay, all right, so long before you
worked here at how stuff works? Oh yeah, okay, oh yeah, alright, um,
(09:59):
anyhow again, more later on this, but all right, but
here's the interesting part. Then. You would think that, you know,
getting thrown such a long distance and landing in a heap,
you know, somewhere down the road, would be the worst
part of this whole thing, right, right, That's not necessarily
the case, because in eight percent of these of these situations,
the deaths came from the very first phase of that impact,
(10:21):
the contact with the car, right, and let's let's parse
that into that initial impact into uh, initial impact A
and initial impact B. Initial impact A is going to
be when the bumper hits the legs. That's not what
makes it fatal. No, I mean, you can live with
(10:42):
a broken leg. But what did percent of the people
in was when they slam their head into the hood
of the car or the windshield right right, So you
get that, you get that mechanical shin kick in, your
feet are knocked from under you, and then boom, the
most one of the most sensitive parts of your body
(11:03):
has a I almost said head on collision, but it does.
It does collide with the hood. And so this is
what automakers started to focus on. Yeah, and you know
might wonder why legislation, why is that even necessary right
at this point? Why why can't it just kind of
be something that the automakers naturally do. But we'll talk
about that after the first word from our sponsor. So
(11:27):
we were going to talk about legislation at this point,
right then, right, all right, So, so why do you
think I think I might have an answer for this?
Why why do you think that legislation for uh, something
like this might be necessary. I think I have an answer,
at least a guess pretty basic guests, wouldn't it be
because auto design is already so internally competitive for real
(11:52):
estate and an organization, uh that this sort of consideration
would have to be a forced priority by an outside
and to Okay, that's that's kind of onlong the lines
of what I'm talking about. I think I have a
different slant on this, a different angle on this whole thing.
So my my thought is that, um, and it's not
my own thought. I've read this somewhere and I don't
remember where it came from, but it seemed to strike
(12:13):
a chord with me. And this is from some different source,
you know, some somewhere else. Um. My my thought is
that if I'll try to try to put this in
a distinct way here, But it's hard enough to get
people to pay extra for a safety device in the
car that saves their own life or the life of
a passenger. Like let's say that you can buy you
can buy a package with extra airbags. You think you know,
(12:36):
people would do that because that might prevent you know,
a death in the near future of them or one
of their family members, right, But it's extra money. If
if we start try to start adapting cars and the
way we're talking about, you know, to create pedestrian safety
UM devices on cars, you know, on the outside of cars,
for people that we don't even know. Really, you don't
know that pedestrian that you're gonna strike, You don't know
(12:58):
who you're gonna hit. Are people that are buying the
car gonna pay extra for pedestrian safety features for someone
they don't even know when they won't even buy extra
air bags for themselves in the car sometimes, or not
just air bags, but you know, seat anchors or whatever,
you know, whatever the safety device might be. It's it's
just a thought. And I again I read that somewhere else.
It's not my own original thought, but I thought that's
(13:20):
that maybe the answer there. That's why UM external safety
devices not not necessarily internal stuff, but the external stuff
might have to be legislated into action. Otherwise it's probably
never gonna happen because people just aren't gonna pay the
extra for someone they don't know to survive a potential
crash years from now that you know, they don't even
(13:40):
know if they're going to be in or not. Yeah,
it's kind of like the idea of opting out versus
opting in with organ donation. Do you remember when they
change that. I used to have to opt in, and
then they several places changed it, at least here in
the States, so that people have to opt out. Yeah,
because it's easier to do it that way. They get
more donors that way, and you get a discount. But
(14:04):
so anyway, I know that's a very cynical way to
look at it. But I mean, I don't think I
think I think that this in this case. And I'm
not really one for for lots of legislation obviously, I
like the market to determine what happens. But I think that, um,
in this case, I do think that legislation, if if,
if this has to go, if if it has to pass,
I think the only way it's going to pass is
through you know this happening, you know, from an outside
(14:26):
force making this happen. So let's look at the nuts
and bolts of this as well, what actually happens. So,
if you've seen a lot of the recent, god the
past few decades of cars, you know the sheet metal
that's on most car hoods is going to be kind
of soft. You know, you can push in, it's gotta
(14:49):
give so you can dent it. Pretty pretty flimsy, pretty flimsy.
So you would think, well, Scott, then why does how
do people die from that impact? Because you know, twenty
miles an hour, it sounds like it could break a leg,
but it doesn't sound like it could lead to a
fatal head injury. The problem is not that soft ish
(15:13):
sheet metal over the hood. The problems what lurks under
the hood, sort of like that shark and Jaws. Yeah,
there's a big engine under there and that is not soft. Now,
that's not moving anywhere. And in fact, it's not just
the engine. There's also uh, you know, a motor for
the windshield wipers there. There's all kinds of stuff that's
underneath there that is hard. I mean the batteries underneath
there too. And unless automakers design a cushion area, you know,
(15:37):
like a gap, I guess, a def an area that
it can deform without striking that you know, someplace to
slow down that motion. Um, A crumple zone, I guess
that's really what it is. It's a very narrow crumple
zone for a pedestrian head to hit the hood. Um,
if they don't design that, you know, and there's just
the engine right immediately underneath there, there's gonna be trouble. Right.
(15:58):
So that's why we see automakers making specific design decisions.
And there's a cool article on Car and Driver about
this too, wherein they they mentioned the trend toward building
higher hoods and taller noses because just that little bit
of air over the engine, uh changes everything regarding the
(16:20):
shape of the car. Yeah, and we can walk this
through from the front bumper to the back end if
you like. And because that one change, I mean, we
just said what it was, right, and we're just trying
to add I think in this case, they said that
there's a minimum of about twenty millimeters of clearance that's
required between the underside of the hood and the highest
part of the engine, so about point eight inches. Yeah, right,
So we're talking very very slight, you know, increase in
(16:41):
size here. It's not really that much, but what that
does to the design of the car is amazing. I
mean it starts right at the very front bumper. I mean,
of course you're gonna have a more upright front end.
I guess on it. You know, to begin with, it's
gonna have to be higher up. It's not gonna be um,
you know, the uh, the super low sleek lines of
I'm gonna have a bad example. Like think about like
an Irock Camaro or something like that. Think about how
(17:03):
low and and kind of flat and lean that front
end was. It was, It was pointed, it was, it
was very low down right. It's not that way anymore.
If you look at sedans and cars and even even
sports cars to some degree, they have more of an
upright front end than they did in the past. Yes,
and and it doesn't you know, it's not just the
the the front of the hood that has to come
up a little bit, you know, it's the entire hood.
(17:24):
And you know, if you want to keep the design
of the car true to the way that the as
we said earlier, the way that the designers sketched it originally,
you also have to raise the back in order to
keep that look exactly the same. Otherwise the angles all
change and everything looks goofy. Right, So the entire cowl
has to be raised by a similar amount or maybe
a little more. If the designers want a wedge shape
(17:44):
look and when the cow comes up, what else comes up? Yeah,
this moves the windshield base and makes the dash higher. Yeah,
the dash has to come up to it. And because
the dash is higher, that means that the front seats
have to be raised accordingly. You know, just while we're
going on this, I want to tell you you remember
where that children's book if you give them mouse a
cookie and I don't think I do. Oh, well, it's
(18:05):
about how if you do one thing for this mouse
in the book, then you have to do these other
things as well. So we're seeing this domino effect. If
you move the dash higher, what what do you have
to move after that? If you do okay, so you
have to move the seat. You have to raise the
seats right, so the seats come up. And then once
you raise the seats up, that means that the roof
(18:25):
of the car has to be moved up as well.
So you can see that this is just growing exponentially, right,
I mean it started with that one little eight tenths
of an inch at the front end of the car,
and now suddenly you're raising the seats in the hood
of the I mean the roof of the car, right,
And now that the roof is higher. The base of
the side windows has to be lifted to keep the
car from looking you know, stupid. Yeah, that's right. So
(18:47):
the belt line, right, the belt line has to come up.
And you know, the higher belt line means that above
the rear wheel arches, it means there's gonna be more
sheet metal back there. So that means that what that
does is that throws off the proportion of the um
the wheel to body ratio that the original sketch head.
And I know it sounds minor, but what it would
mean was that your your tires would look a little
(19:08):
tiny on the vehicle compared to the way that the
initial sketch look right. Look, it probably had really cool
looking proportions and everything looked just right. So from this,
you know, eight tents of an inch at the front,
you know, just over the over the hood, the twenty millimeter,
you know that we raised the hood. All of that stuff,
even some interior components have to be changed around all
the way back to the rear wheel arches. And and
(19:29):
to fill those rear wheel arches which now look like
they've got tiny little tires in them, they've had to
add larger tires. They've had they that's why we've shifted
in a lot of cases. It's not it's not every reason.
But let's say that, like on the BMW's they've gone
from you know, having eighteen inch wheels, they've gone up
to nineteen or even twenty inch wheels now because it
seems to fit the wheel opening a lot better than
(19:51):
it did, you know, prior to when these these regulations
were in place. So again, this is all starting from
just having to have a little bit of clearance between
the hood of the car and the engine of the car,
just for pedestrian safety. So pedestrian safety in a way
is making you have making you it's it's it's uh
creating a need for larger wheels on cars. Belie that
(20:15):
I believe that or not. I mean, it's that ripple effect, right,
it ripples all the way to the back end of
the car. And this is not a conspiracy theory. I
mean pictures Scott nine front of one of those uh
cold case walls where we have all these newspaper clippings
and red string I like those, Yeah, I love those things.
We have want to hear in the office, don't we Yes,
we have one for stuff they don't want you to know,
(20:36):
and I used to have one at my house, but
a real one different shows was I on that wall?
Of course I'm onto you man, right, But isn't it?
Is it strange? I mean, is this this effect goes
right from the very front bumper all the way to
the back and again it's all over just a tiny
little thing at twenty millimeter change in the front end.
(20:56):
But it all comes down to and I know you
could you could adjustice so that, you know, we'll just
make the hood higher and raise the seats little bit,
and that's good enough. You don't have to do all
that other stuff. But if you want to keep the
attractive proportions that the designer initially intended for that automobile,
then that's what you have to do. You have to
make all those changes. So um, it's you know, auto
design is terribly complex. We've learned that over the years,
(21:18):
but especially in the last year or so, we've been
talking about some things that just blow your mind as
far as yeah, it really is, like exactly what goes
into it. It's very difficult. And this is this is
just one example, but we'd like to show you another example.
After a word from our sponsor, So in addition to
(21:41):
this issue of having even just a little bit extra
air between the man of the intake manifold in the hood, uh,
we have another issue which is that a lot of
cars have shorter hoods nowadays, right, yeah, sure, And some
of that comes from, um the idea of decreasing a
(22:04):
car's footprints so it's easier to drive and park in
densely populated area. City cars, city cars exactly. I think
the Honda Fit that's got a tiny little hood right right,
and the different distance between the front bumper and the
start of the windshield the base of the windshield very
short distance, incredibly so yeah, especially you know I drive
money Carlos, Well, you've got a long, big hood on that,
(22:26):
so you can take a road trip on the hood. Yeah,
yes you could. But with a shorter hood we see
a different kind of problem when there's a taller pedestrian. Yeah,
I think about this. What if it what if someone
you know, six and a half footer, you know, is
walking in front of a Honda Fit and they're struck
in the legs or the shin I guess by that vehicle.
Where do you think that their head is gonna end
up it's not on the hood of that tiny little car.
(22:48):
Their heads gonna end up in the middle of the
windshield or possibly on the a pillar and that is
really bad when it happens. And that's not all that
infrequent because I mean, you think about where the pillars
are position there at the edge the car. It's it's
not all that often. I mean, you know what, I
can't even say for sure, but doesn't it seem that
when a pedestrians hit a lot of times it's the
edge of the car that gets them. It's like they
(23:09):
just either they either just got hit or they just
missed being right, you know, just missed by by just
a fraction. But it seems like they're at one corner
or the other of the car. Typically, it seems a
lot of times it's not it's usually not right dead center. No,
it feels like it's usually gonna be kind of a sideswipe. Yeah.
I mean, if you think about it, the driver is
gonna try to swing the wheel and you know, avert
(23:30):
that accident and uh, you know, likely a lot of
times you end up clipping the pedestrian inadvertently. But um, anyways,
we're getting off the track here. But that could be
a fatality. As you said, I mean, that's a serious situation.
But you can't make one car, one one car safer
for everybody. I mean, it could be dangerous to children,
It could be dangerous to um, you know, the average
(23:52):
percentile person that's out there walking around. UM. It could
be safer for taller people. You know what. You just
have to determine, um kind what this the median is,
I guess, And that's probably how they do it. They
just decide that, you know, here's our average that we're
gonna shoot for. That You're absolutely right, there is a
balance in the calculation, and you can't knowingly sacrifice the
(24:13):
driver passengers of a car for hypothetical pedestrians. Now see,
that's the thing. You can't make the a pillars any
software because those are there for rollover. You can't make
the windshield any software because they're there for you know, well,
I guess, anything that might come up from the roadway
during you know, well and when blockage, you know that
kind of thing. But but I mean, they're supposed to
protect the occupants of the car if a rock word
to fly up, or you know, anything like that, something
(24:35):
some debris on the road. Um, So, I guess the
there is an option, there's a solution, but it's something
again that that people would have to pay extra for.
And there is one company that's doing it. They've already
already done this. It's Volvo of course. Yeah, there are
other companies that are kind of in the in the water,
I guess with them on this is renowned as of
course the vanguard of safety. Yeah, and they've jumped in,
(24:58):
you know, feet first. They're they're really on all in
on this and this has been for a while. They've
done this on one of their one of their cars.
I want to say that it's the oh shoot, it's
the the V forty I think is the one. And
they've created something called a pedestrian air bag. And I
know other companies have kind of toyed around with this idea,
but this one's in This one's in production and it
has been for a while, the V forty air bag,
(25:19):
and it's it's essentially it's a it's a car really
that's I guess made for um city driving really, I mean,
if you want to want to think of it that way,
because you know, it's a city traffic because that's where
cars and people share the same space. It makes perfect
sense that it would be on this vehicle. The way
that it happens is that there's a a bunch of
sensors on the front bumper and when they strike something
(25:42):
that they determined to be a human like leg, which
I know it's it's funny to say it that way,
but that's how they had to test it, right. They
had to hit something that had a certain um give
to it, a certain flexibility to it, and it determined
these censer sensors actually determined that they've hit a human
leg versus like a you know, a parking uh poll
or you know, whatever you want to call it. That's
(26:04):
really important because we have to keep in mind, this
is an air bag, so you can't just like roll
it up and take it back down. Yeah, I mean
you have to, you know, determine that because if you
bump something into the parking lot, you don't want this
this airbag to deploy, right, because that can be extremely costly.
Because there's another actually that happens with it. When you
know that that that from bumper bumper sensor senses this
(26:25):
leg contact um, it raises the back. There's an explosive
charge that raises the back end of the hood or
the I guess the trailing edge of the end of
the hood. Yeah, up a certain certain amount. I don't
know if it's a couple inches or whatever it is,
but it allows the air bag then a U shaped
bag to unfurl. That protects the um, the pedestrian that
was struck from contacting the windshield and the A pillar
(26:48):
on both sides. So it's a great big U shape
inflatable bag and um. You can imagine that if you
know that thing went off unexpectedly. You know, when you're
bump a tree, you're parking somewhere like some festival something,
you bump a tree and it goes off, they would
be a drag. But if you hit a pedestrian, you
for sure want that thing to go off because they'll
protect them and hopefully protect you against some future lawsuit maybe.
(27:09):
And it's a pretty smart design. Other other automakers are
taking a cue from Volvo as per normal, and places
like Jaguar, Lexis and so on have similar systems, and
they're all they're all using charges to raise a hood
in a crash. But I think at this point Volvo
(27:29):
is the only one with an air bag. Yeah, I
think they are too, um and they've been doing that
for a while again on that V forty, and they
might even have it on another vehicle. I'm not exactly
sure right now. But you know what the best solution
to this would be overall is if there never were
any pedestrian accidents to begin with. Yeah, agreed, And that's
kind of the hope is with you know, some of
these autonomous vehicles, is that that may be taken out
(27:52):
of the picture altogether. Now. I don't know. I don't
have a whole lot of confidence that it will completely
be removed. I mean, I don't think you can ever
say that. I don't think so, just because even in
even in a smart city or whatever, several years from now,
a place, a place where all vehicles are autonomous and
(28:12):
all traffic lines are are clearly delineated, things will still
go wrong. There's no there's no way to prepare for
an unknown unknown. No. But even even the man systems,
you know, the ones that you know, like newer cars
that have full stop systems, you know, for with pedestrian
sensing technology, those are great. I mean, I'm sure that
(28:34):
those are saving lives. I'm positive of it. And you
know they watch out for cyclists, they watch out for
um other things as well. It's not just it's you know,
dogs and cats and whatever it's in the in the way.
I'm sure that that those things are saving lives at
this Okay, it has to be, I agree, but hear
me out on this not to be too pessimistic. I
(28:57):
believe there's still problems with that. You're right, of course, Scott,
that everybody realizes it would be better if pedestrians were
just never hit in the first place. Volvo gets that
as well. They've got this thing called city Safety Technology,
and it's doing exactly what you're describing. It uses sensors
to detect pedestrians, cyclists, what have you, a guy with
(29:19):
a hot dog cart, etcetera, and automatically slams the brakes
if these uh, if these pedestrians are cyclists are stepping
or swerving in front of you. That's great, that is great,
and hopefully it does save lives, but hopefully it doesn't
do it at the expense of the lives of the
(29:41):
people in the car with that technology, because if your
car slams on the brakes and someone else is right
behind you when they're doing you know, sixty or fifty
or something. This we have to be like, um, somebody
on the interstate, like a pedestrian on the interstate running Now,
which is really danger is it happens more often than
you might think. Deer collision, A deer collision, that's another
(30:05):
graded sir. So then what happens is sure the Volvo
is full stop, but now it's being slammed like fifty
miles an hour from the rear. The answer is everybody
has to drive a Volvo with full stop. That's the answer.
That's you know, you're joking, but that's usually the answer.
Autonomous car buffs give well, you know what they do.
(30:26):
They say that if everybody's driving this, there's gonna be
no problem at all. Right, That's that's always the situation
if you if you mix it up, though, if you've
got you know, autonomous vehicles and and the human element
involved as well, Uh, there's gonna be some problems. There's
there's gonna be some inherent issues with that. Now, one
thing that we haven't mentioned here along the way, and
you know what I'm going to tell you right now,
I'm probably not gonna get to one of the one
(30:47):
thing that I wanted to mention here, and I bet
people are wanting to hear about this. I would guess, Um,
we're talking about the external design of cars and how
you know they've kind of been smoothed out for safety, right,
you know, softened up and and shaped in different way
for for pedestrian safety. We haven't talked yet about, you know,
the complete loss of hood ornaments on cars. I mean
(31:08):
they're almost completely gone, and the ones that still are
out there sometimes even yeah, they have technologies. Some have
technology in them that prevent damage to pedestrians when they's
when they're struck, and others have just real simple mechanical
things built into them. There are still hood ornaments out there,
but there are very few cars that have it, and
it's tend they tend to be high end luxury v
(31:29):
like Rolls or something, yeah, or the MACI the Mac
truck has that as well, you know the great big
blue collar you know, um dump trucks and stuff like
that in the semis. But um, I wish we could
get to that. I've got I've got a bunch of
hood hood ornaments stuff. And you're like when they kind
of went away and what happened to them and how
they kind of made they kind of slipped from the
(31:49):
top of the hood standing up to down on the
hood lane down and then down onto the grill, so
like they've kind of like made this slump down the vehicle. Um. Anyways,
it's it's a whole part of brand recognition that we're
not going to really get to. But alright, one thing
that we need to cover here before we wrapped this
whole thing up is is about a group that we
haven't really talked about here, and that is the American
auto manufacturers. We've been primarily talking about European manufacturers, Asian
(32:12):
manufacturers and uh. And they have been pushed you know
that they've been um, uh, they've been made to come
about with this. You know, they've been made to uh.
I guess it's probably not the best way to say
that they've been made to care about this, right. They
have been incentivized, Yeah, they've been incentivized to to care
about pedestrians safe. Of course, they want to care about
pedestrians safety, of course, but um, they've been pushed into
(32:36):
that by agencies, by by national agencies, and we here
in the United States have not We've kind of followed
suit with a lot of some of the stuff. You know,
we've as we mentioned, you know, lost the hod ornaments
and that kind of stuff, but and made hoods a
little bit softer and you know, flexible that kind of thing. Um.
But really, I mean, we haven't been pushed to the
same pedestrian safety design features or standards that the European
(32:58):
you know, Japan markets again, all of the Asian markets
pushed into and America's UM National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
in n h t S a UM, believe it or not,
has been a little bit evasive about what they feel
about this, about why they haven't really pressed for pedestrian
safety standards in modern cars. Absolutely, And the closest thing
(33:19):
we have to an official line regarding that is that
the mix of cars on US interstates or roadways isn't
as um easily fixed with a one size fits all
sort of solution or mandate. And to me, Scott, this
argument does have some sand to it. Yeah, I guess,
(33:41):
so we have more trucks, we have more SUVs, we
have more um, I guess, larger vehicles, you know, sharing
space alongside smaller vehicles. We're in Europe, it seems to
be that you know, those are those tend to be
more of the commercial vehicles, right. So one of the
arguments is that, let's say we had these sorts of
(34:01):
safety requirements on a pickup that sits higher than the
average sedan. So let's just say one most popular by
a long shot. So their argument at the n h
T s A is that you could make some mandates
that would make the F one fifty less lethal to
(34:24):
a child in the street, but that might make it
more dangerous for an adult in the street. So maybe
the solution then is just best officity on the category
of vehicle. I don't know, well, you know we talked
about this with the Honda Fit earlier, right, I mean,
it's probably less deadly for a child to be struck
by Honda Fit at a slow speed than it is
(34:46):
for a you know, a six and a half foot
tall person or seven foot tall person to be struck
by a Honda Fit at a slow speed. I mean,
they're gonna they're gonna contact different parts of that car
when they when they uh through phase one of the
kind of the crash, I guess. So it's it's what
it's all. It all comes down to that phase one
phase two, Phase one, again being the most fatal part
of this whole thing. Um, how do automakers play that balance?
(35:09):
How do they How do they make sure that it's
safe for everybody and and not make it extremely deadly
for some some other group? And can such a solution
be possible? It's a question that no automaker has managed
to no automaker, and no incredibly smart, handsome and somewhat
funny auto podcasters have been able to answer. You know,
(35:33):
they play around with these numbers all the time, even
with um, you know, like when when should they turn
on the on the passenger airbags? You know, like what
weight and you know what I mean, they're getting pretty
good at that, but they have, um, you know, these
these standards that they have to hear too, Like it's
you know, the the I don't know what the tenth
percentile male and female and they take the average weight
and you know, whatever the number is. It's something like that.
(35:55):
They have to determine on average, who is going to
be in that car, and that's gonna be on douably
hard for them to do. Yeah, that's pretty difficult stuff
to say the least. Um, it's it's not one size
fits all for anybody and on anything in any car. Really,
let's have a custom and we want to hear what
you know. I was thinking what a good question would
be to ask everybody in this episode, and it's tangentially related.
(36:19):
Let me tell let me see what you think about
this guy. Uh, we'd we'd like to hear from you, folks,
friends and neighbors, fellow car fans. What do you think
is the most I guess controversial change or trend that
you've seen in auto design recently, recently being the past
(36:40):
let's say fifteen years. You know what, what do you
think is the coolest thing? What do you think is
the worst thing? What do you think is like the strangest?
Why is everyone doing it? Do you know the reason
behind a change? I mean that might be interesting too.
I mean a lot of the stuff is pedestrian safety.
As we talked about, that changed a huge amount of uh,
exterior ornamentation on cars. I mean it used to be
(37:02):
the cars were they had a lot of stuff sticking
off of them, you know, like protrusions, uh, you know,
with with chrome bumpers and you know, ornamental things. Those
are all gone. Now cars are really slick and it's
not all about aerodynamics, it's also about pedestrian safety. So
that's that's one example. But what else can you come
up with? I mean that's a great question, man, Like,
what what else? What what's controversial? I guess we'd love
(37:23):
to hear it. Also, I learned a new word while
we were researching this. Are you ready protextrians? Protextrians? Yeah,
like pedestrian with the word text inserted. These are the
people who are texting while they're walking, not looking across
you know, four lanes of traffic. Oh yeah, they just
they're they're they're going on the fact that they know
(37:43):
that that light is still green for them, so they're
able to walk across that that crosswalk, right. I mean
they're not even putting their head up for a second.
So protextrian, apparently going back on an earlier conversation guarding jaywalking.
Protextrian also comes from the auto industry, done on thumb.
Will there will there be a push? Will there be
a campaign? Is there a conspiracy of foot? Yeah? Will
(38:06):
the first lady come on television and talk about texts?
The pretextrian menace? Oh, at least they're at list they're
moving past jay walkers. But yeah, we do want to
know what you think about auto design, because it appears
there's a lot more under the surface of every auto
design decision, and the average car buyer is not going
(38:29):
to know it through uh. In the meantime, you can
find Scott and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. You can check
out every episode we've ever done on our website car
Stuff Show dot com. And you might be thinking, I
know exactly what's going on with this weird auto design. Yes,
I can tell you why so many minivans have a
(38:53):
cartoonish number of cup holders. But how do I get
in touch with you guys? Well, the answer is simple,
my friends. You can write to us directly. We are
car stuff at how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, this is at
how stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
(39:15):
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Hmm,
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.