16
votes
Tests show that guardrails possibly do little to stop EVs and other heavier vehicles. And US transportation officials are concerned.
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Guardrails Aren't Designed To Work On Giant EVs: Study
- Published
- Jan 31 2024
- Word count
- 427 words
No, guardrails do little to stop heavy vehicles.
My EV weighs less than a Ford F150. A suburban weighs even more.
There are heavy EVs. There are also heavy ICEs. If you're concerned about heavy vehicles driving through barriers, be concerned about the most common heavy vehicles that already exist.
Good point.
The article is so flawed: the test drives a vehicle perpendicular to the guardrail, this is not what they are intended to do, they redirect cars onto the road if they veer off. There are also plenty of heavy semi-trucks or luxury cars, and then we haven't touched on semi-trucks. All in all, it is a mediocre study that the article uses to say "look how dangerous these EVs are". TBH, it feels a bit like astroturfing from the oil and gas industry. If you want cars to be lighter, stop having less strict safety rules for trucks and start promoting "smaller" cars (a station wagon can do everything a truck can do for a suburban American family).
I’d be interested to see a video of what a “normal-weight” truck does to a comparable guardrail with the same approach.
This does smell like astroturf to me, intended to sow mistrust in EVs. Not that EVs should be above criticism. But there’s a subtlety in the article’s word choice, as well as what the author chooses to say (and not say), that suggests either an agenda or benign ignorance.
The headline could be changed. @cfabbro
I am glad the dangers of heavy vehicles are being highlighted, even if as you say it could be astroturf
Sure, if you let me know what you think the title should be changed to I can do that. cc: @adutchman if you have a suggestion.
Possibly do little to stop EV's and other heavier vehicles...
I'm not certain..
Yeah, that sounds fine. Changed.
I wouldn't say it's astroturfing, EVs just get more headlines, and Jalopnik as whole is a shit blog with good SEO. The best policy for anything read there is to ignore the article and go directly to their source as they do little to no actual reporting of their own and it's just hot takes or clickbait otherwise.
We could do all that, at massive public expense, in order to accommodate increasingly heavy and dangerous privately-owned cars... or we can limit the weight of those cars. One sure sounds a lot easier than the other.