A Tesla owner’s dream of taking his new Cybetruck for a spin turned into a nightmare. He landed in the emergency room with blood spurting from a wrist wound before even getting behind the wheel.
A Tesla owner’s dream of taking his new Cybetruck for a spin turned into a nightmare. He landed in the emergency room with blood spurting from a wrist wound before even getting behind the wheel.
There’s a reason we don’t have hood ornaments anymore, but somehow a vehicle completely constructed of sharp corners and edges is just fine.
Doesn’t certain Mercedes and jaguar still use hood ornaments? I don’t think this is a safety thing, they just fell out of style
Yeah they do, along with Bentley. Not sure about any regulations, but I do know that they are usually (always?) Not rigidly fix any more. You would have to look at the EU to know for sure. I don’t believe that America has any pedestrian impact standards. Hell the the DOT crash standards for passengers are a joke.
Mercedes’s stars have been on springs for decades indeed. You can easily push them over (but make sure you put it back nicely). I think Rolls Royce’s Spirit of Ecstasy pops back into the hood but I don’t know how that works on impact.
You don’t see those long rigidly fixed guillotines they had in the 50’s anymore. I do know from experience that the little Mercedes three point hoop thing is kind of spring loaded so it’ll flex during an impact.
But that’s been that way since the 80s, I know because I was the shitty kid that would turn hood ornaments sideways or backwards as I passed…
Naw man just turn it 15 degrees or so.
The corners are insanely dangerous IMO. You’ve got basically a sheet of metal along the edge of the truck which sticks out a bit. Relevant bit from a Youtube video https://youtu.be/LC9a3GR1HJY?t=437
The two aren’t linked?
Hood ornaments were mostly an artifact of how radiators used to be filled. There was SOME discussion of whether they are more dangerous to a pedestrian but most were flimsy to the point that the corpse rolling up on your hood would snap it off rather than get impaled like a Spindlebeast is running a train on them.
Mostly… it was a mix of people wanting “sleek” cars coupled with those inevitably getting broken off and stolen.
Early hood ornaments, and hood “spurs” were most certainly dangerous to pedestrians. Regulations in the US eliminated traditional fixed hood ornaments, though some later models featured smaller spring-loaded ornaments.
The risk factor of traditional hood ornaments was always very suspect and more a function of hood design than not. The actual danger (which, again, is still very questionable when you are getting hit by a car at speed) was more stuff like (going by the wikipedia page) the 1949 Kaiser and the texas faux horns. Literal spikes on the front of a car. Not a pointy bit on top of the hood. And breakaway bits or springs go a long way toward negating those.
Also, it is very much worth actually looking into the kinds of car regulations the US has. We have a LOT of stupid knee jerk regulation and laws that don’t actually make sense (and, in a lot of cases, make our cars more dangerous) but passed because only one “side” had lobbyists involved.
You’re arguing against a point I never made.
We don’t have hood ornaments anymore. Regulations in the US in 1968 eliminated traditional fixed hood ornaments - along with implementing all sorts of safety and economy standards - shortly after Johnson signed the Department of Transportation into existence. And that came shortly after Nader’s overwhelmingly popular book, Unsafe At Any Speed.
Later spring-loaded and breakaway hood ornaments fell by the wayside for style and aerodynamic reasons, but they were mostly gone anyway.
That’s what actually happened. Hood ornaments were, for all practical purposes, eliminated by safety regulations. Whether that specific, or other general, safety regulation is effective or the result of lobbying one way or another is not relevant to actual historical events.
Yes, there was (very limited…) legislation. But they were already on their way out in the 60s. And there were hood ornaments on rolls royces and even mercedes well into the 2010s.
If hood ornaments were really something people valued then we would still see the spring mounted or snap off variety. Hell, car manufacturerers would LOVE to sell a disposable status symbol. But they went out because, as you yourself even mention, “aerodynamic reasons” (which is also really questionable but…). Cars, especially in the 90s/00s, stopped being boxy messes and started being smooth and “sleek” and the hood ornament aesthetic was not part of that.
This is not a win for legislation or safety. If it were then we would actually see strong legislation against steel frames and putting those bumper bars on civilian vehicles.
They also just kinda look dated.
Also Rolls Royce, Bently, and Maybach still have them.
Exactly. And too many people steal them. They didn’t remove them for safety reasons. Idk what this guy’s smoking.
… in the US. In other countries, they can’t be bought and likely never will be.
We can’t have pop-up headlights because of pedestrian safety, but you can buy a 5,000 pound vehicle that does 0-60 in three seconds and has a hood level with most people’s heads because that’s totally safe for pedestrians.