I freak out every time I get behind one of these on the highway. How in the hell is something like this legal? Imagine having that in front of you, a semi behind you, and you suddenly come upon a 20 car pile up. Bye bye. That thing will slice you in two like a hot knife through butter. Hood ornaments have to be flexi for safety, why in the hell is someone allowed to drive around with a cleaver aimed at my midsection?
Maybe because you’re supposed to have your vehicle under control such that you can stop within the distance ahead of you? There’s nothing wrong with a rollback. Pick any vehicle, if you hit it hard enough, you’re toast.
Ok, let’s ban those.
Vehicles?
Over here, these overhangs have to be either fold away things, or have very prominent signs on them.
It’s the long objects such as poles sticking out, or long pieces of wood that are the worst.
The driver of the vehicle often forgets that they have this unusual, for them, load and fail to remember that it will swing wide when cornering.
The worst thing about them is that end-on, they don’t have much cross section to see, and its not all that easy to guess how close your are to them either.
Further to casdave’s post, I have a feeling that in the UK if you have anything projecting forwards or backwards from your vehicle, you must place a red flag on it (in practice, people tnd to use an old pair of red underpants…). It’ll be somewhere in the Highway Code.
I’m talking about a situation that would be out of my control. If a semi hits me from behind at 20 mph (think of those 30 car pileups in winter) and an ordinary vehicle is in front of me no problem, my vehicle will withstand the impact. If one of these is in front of me, the wedge clears my hood and slices my body in half. There is NOTHING to prevent this.
How often does this happen?
Toast. We must put a stop to toast before it’s too late.
We should also get rid of front bumpers and airbags. After all, you’re supposed to have your vehicle under control.
Right. We should stop requiring cars to have bumpers, too, because people are supposed to have their cars under control, and if one car hits another hard enough, bumpers won’t really make a difference.
That’s really keen thinking.
Dunno the answer, but I have thought the same thing–all it would take is one solid rear end hit in bumper to bumper traffic and I’ve got the worst bad hair day, ever.
The itty bitty bit o’ red paint on the horizontal edge is useless, BTW, especially in the dark.
Won’t someone think of the children?
They’re short enough that it’d probably go over their heads, unless they were in an SUV or something.
Well, they would be in the back in a car seat.
But they may be traumatized at seeing their mommy bisected. They may never play soccer again.
No kidding. I walked in on my mommy once, and that definitely wasn’t daddy.
Oh, bisected. Never mind.
I’m not sure if it’s required or not, but on a some (newer?) semis, there’s a “stop bar” sticking out from the bottom back bump that would, I assume, hit your front bumper and stop you before decapitation occurs.
The sad irony is that type of float is used to carry smashed cars.
Exactly. You do realize that bumpers aren’t any kind of safety device, right? Their sole purpose is to absorb energy during a low-speed impact, in order to minimize damage to the body panels and chassis. So, instead of having $2000* in body and frame damage, you only need to worry about a $500* bumper replacement.
*Figures made up for sake of argument. Actual costs may vary. Keep out of reach of children. Void where prohibited.
No clue, but one of the guys I graduated from high school with apparently died in such an accident.