#vehicle safety and

[gwydionmisha]

US says it will drop immigration case against SpaceX

DOGE cuts nearly half of unit overseeing autonomous vehicles safety, Washington Post reports

No safety oversight on his self-driving cars means lots of dead people.

[littlepawz]

In Churchill, Manitoba (Northern Canada), one of the few towns where polar bears roam freely, it is common (and strongly encouraged) for residents to leave their car doors unlocked. This practice is not due to negligence but is instead a crucial safety measure - in the event of an unexpected encounter with one of these massive predators, the person can quickly seek shelter in a nearby vehicle. Known as the "Polar Bear Capital of the World," Churchill faces unique challenges in coexisting with wildlife, prompting the community to adopt unusual strategies in effort to ensure the safety of people, as well as of wildlife.

[unbfacts]

In South Korea, some highways utilize rolling barrier systems with plastic rotating barrels. These barriers absorb impact energy and guide vehicles safely during collisions, reducing the risk of flipping.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Mercedes Benz ESF 22, 1973. The third of Mercedes’ experimental safety cars was closely based on the W116 S-class. Pictured with Prof. Dr. Hans Scherenberg during its presentation at the 4th ESV Conference in Tokyo in March 1973. The vehicle’s front end is characterised by large expanses of plastic to improve pedestrian protection and it included many safety features that are now commonplace like ABS and airbags.

[neversetyoufree]

God it just hit me.

Names are power in VnC. We call the piece of the world formula that defines a vampire their "true name." Learning and altering a vampire's true name gives you near-absolute power over them. Vanitas hides his old name as part of his "Vanitas" persona—a defense mechanism to hide his vulnerable self.

And names are an axis of discrimination too. The main way we've been examining discrimination against the dhampirs is through the lens of vampires refusing to call them by their names. And Luna, the perennial outsider, seems not to have been given a real name. They certainly didn't have a name that they liked or identified with for most of their life.

So with all that context, even more than it might be in another series, Teacher's whole name shtick becomes such an insane power move. He changes his name constantly and will brutally punish anyone that gets it wrong. Nobody has the power that would come from knowing whatever his first/true name was. He has the physical and social power to punish and correct anyone that doesn't call him what he wants to be called. He is in complete control of how people address him, or at least close to complete control, which is such a big deal within this story.

[artofkhaos404]

It may be punk to break the law, but here's your reminder that it's never punk to break traffic laws. People's kids are in those cars.

[netscapenavigator-official]

People in the notes of my post about Tesla removing the gear selectors from its new cars, asking how that's even legal, clearly have no idea just how incompetent and slow-paced the NHTSA is.

Halogen headlights weren't legal until 1979.

Composite headlights (the uniquely designed ones that aren't the old-school circle or square ones you see on older cars) weren't legal until 1984.

Adaptive High Beams (Matrix Headlights) were only recently legalized, in 2022; and the regulations and testing procedures in order to approve them are so haphazard and over-complicated compared to Europe's that not a single automaker has even made them available.

Side Curtain airbags still are not mandated in the United States.

Turn Signals can be red in the U.S., as opposed to the statistically safer amber which is mandatory in Europe.

Making that worse, those red turn signals are allowed to share lamps with the brake lights. This means if you have your turn signal on, 1/3 of your brake lights can’t do their job because they're too busy doing another job.

There is no law in the United States dictating that an electric car must put on its brake lights when Regen braking. In fact, the law specifically states that only the friction brakes are required to activate brake lights. You can bring a Hyundai Ioniq 5 & 6, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, and many other EVs to a rapid, complete stop without ever activating the brake lights.

Early model Chevrolet Bolt EVs and some Mercedes-Benz EVs will activate the brake lights appropriately when slowing down, but will deactivate their brake lights once they've come to a complete stop, allowing the car to sit at a standstill in the road without any indicator that it isn't traveling at the same speed as you are.

It's completely up to the automaker to decide how (or even if) to implement regen brake lighting. EVs and Hybrids have been around since the late 1990s and this still hasn't changed.

The US government STILL only evaluates a vehicles crash safety by crash testing it at 35 mph into a flat wall and t-boning it with a barrier representing a 3,000 lb sedan. They don't do an offset frontal test or a truck-barrier side test like the IIHS has been doing for private insurance companies for over a decade.

The NHTSA performs ZERO pedestrian crash safety tests like EuroNCAP does.

Oh, and on the topic of gear selectors, those aren't regulated at all. Here are some examples from modern cars, both electric and not:

BMW i3 & Nissan LEAF (Electric):

Toyota Prius (Hybrid) & Honda Clarity (Plug-in Hybrid):

RAM 1500 & Cadillac Escalade (Gasoline):

The automotive rules of the American government are pure chaos, and that’s if they're even there at all. If you're seriously asking how Tesla can allow a car to select reverse on its own, and then put the manual override in the touch screen, I mean, that's just scratching the surface.

If you wanna learn more, Technology Connections on YouTube has some great videos on the Turn Signal issue, the EV Regen brake light issue, and the history of the headlight regulations. I highly recommend you check them out because it truly puts into perspective just how awful the NHTSA is at doing its one job: keeping safety standards up-to-date.

[defensive-tactics]

Lock your car doors. Take your key/fob with you. Simple Vehicle Defense.

[coulsonlives]

Holy shit

Can I just say

I am so

motherfucking tired

of these exorbitantly huge

vehicles with front hoods/grilles that are as tall as my head

These need to have the shit taxed out of them and heavily regulated instead of being subsidized as farm equipment and being given out like candy, people are basically like bugs on a windshield if they get hit

[syn4k]

(obligatory "the driving experience is vast, varied, and extremely subjective to both personal taste and local road laws. different people will react to different situations depending on the current level of traffic on the road, the driver's current mental/physical/emotional state, and countless other factors such as weather and emotionally impacting events. this chart was made for fun and i did not really put too much thought into it." that being said i will take constructive criticism here because im curious what yall think)

[itellmyselfsecrets]

“Men are more likely than women to be involved in a car crash, which means they dominate the numbers of those seriously injured in car accidents. But when a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured than a man, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for factors such as height, weight, seat-belt usage, and crash intensity…She is also 17% more likely to die and it all has to do with how the car is designed - and for whom…When men and women are in a car together, the man is most likely to be driving. So not collecting data on passengers more or less translates as not collecting data on women. The infuriating irony of all this is that the gendered passenger/driver norm is so prevalent that…the passenger seat is the only seat that is commonly tested with a female crash-test dummy, with the male crash-test dummy still being the standard dummy for the driver's seat. So stats that include only driver fatalities tell us precisely zero about the impact of introducing the female crash-test dummy.” - Caroline Criado Perez (Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men)

[newx-menfan]

PSA- Don’t Buy Tesla’s

“She told NBC6 that her husband would be still alive if the Model S door handles simply opened the car. That did not happen in Jutha’s Model Y, because its doors work with electronic actuators. If an electrical failure occurs, they demand a mechanical manual release.”

“Tesla has transitioned to an electromechanical door latch system on its vehicles, which means the doors are not physically connected to the door opening handles. Instead, these are electrical switches that trigger the electric door release system to open the door. Because there is no physical connection between the door handles and the door latching mechanism, it doesn’t work when the 12-volt electrical system is down for some reason.

This usually happens in the case of a crash. At least two car crashes ended with fatalities because people got trapped inside a Tesla.”

“‘Uggh, it's a Tesla. We can't get in these cars,’ one firefighter reportedly said. Despite the difficulty, they acted swiftly, using an ax to smash a window and rescue the child.”

“The Hyundai Venue compact SUV topped iSeeCars’ review of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Fatality Analysis Reporting System data for most dangerous cars, while Tesla topped its list of most dangerous car brands.”

“These fires burn at much higher temperatures and require a lot more water to fight than conventional car fires. There also isn’t an established consensus on the best firefighting strategies for EVs, experts told Vox.”

Seriously- no matter what your political leanings are- DON’T BUY TESLA’S; the fact that no one is widely discussing a very blatant safety risk that people can’t reliably get out of their cars during a car accident is HORRIBLE…

If you KNOW someone who owns a Tesla- make sure they are AWARE of this flaw in certain vehicles and that they should possibly purchase a window breaker to be safe.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Daniel Villarreal at LGBTQ Nation:

Florida invalidated the driver’s license of a nonbinary transgender TikTok user who claimed that they changed the gender marker on the document even though the state has laws forbidding it. James Rose, who goes by @jamesissmiling on TikTok and uses she/they pronouns, posted a now-deleted video on the platform in which she claimed that she obtained a driving license that listed her gender as female even though she’s assigned male at birth. “My God, [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis would be screaming right now if he knew this,” Rose said in the video, according to Newsweek. “You’re not even supposed to be able to do this in this state. Here’s the loophole: listen up if you’re replacing your driver’s license, not renewing it… because you [sarcastic finger quotes] ‘lost it,’ they have to take all of your information from what they consider a primary document. A passport is considered a primary document and you can self-identify on your passport.” Rose also advised viewers to change the gender on her driver’s licenses before President-elect Donald Trump becomes president. Trump has promised to roll back trans civil rights nationwide. The anti-LGBTQ+ social media account Libs of TikTok X account, which is run by Chaya Raichik, reposted Rose’s video alongside a January 6 letter addressed to Rose from the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV).

The FHSMV said the gender on the license had been “improperly changed from male to female” and, citing state law, wrote, “The term ‘sex’ in section 322.17, Florida Statutes, does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role or identity but is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.” The FLHSMV said it included “a valid replacement license with the proper sex identifier of male” with the letter and added that it was investigating whether Rose “knowingly made a false statement about whether you truly lost your original license” which could result in the “cancellation, suspension or revocation” of their license.

Trans TikToker James Rose, who uses she/they pronouns, found a way to exploit a glitch in Florida’s gender marker law that bans changes to a person’s gender marker. Anti LGBTQ+ extremist Chaya Raichik raised foul, and the Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles ruled the change impermissible.

[saturnaous]

everytime a heavily armored character is designed without a helm of any kind an angel's wings get burned off by a lantern

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

AMF-2, 1971. An experimental safety car prototype built by American Machine & Foundry Inc in collaboration with AMC. The AMF 2 had airbags and automatic fire extinguishers as well as aluminium bumpers with thirty inches of travel. Rear visibility was by a periscope. The steel-bodied prototype weighed a whopping 5,791 lbs.