Preliminary test crashes indicate the nation's guardrail system can't handle heavy electric vehicles
Source: Associated Press
Preliminary test crashes indicate the nation’s guardrail system can’t handle heavy electric vehicles
BY MARGERY A. BECK
Updated 10:56 AM EST, January 31, 2024
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Under an overcast sky last fall, engineers with a University of Nebraska road safety facility watched as a electric-powered pickup truck hurtled toward a guardrail installed on the facility’s testing ground on the edge of the local municipal airport.
The test crash was to see how the guardrail — the same type found along tens of thousands of miles of roadway in the United States — would hold up against electric vehicles that can weigh thousands of pounds more than the average gas-powered sedan.
It came as little surprise when the nearly 4-ton 2022 Rivian R1T tore through the metal guardrail and hardly slowed until hitting a concrete barrier yards away on the other side.
“We knew it was going to be an extremely demanding test of the roadside safety system,” said Cody Stolle with the university’s Midwest Roadside Safety Facility. “The system was not made to handle vehicles greater than 5,000 pounds.”
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicles-crash-test-guardrails-nebraska-3ec299a7ad87d0f63a6dd9357f663fce
= new reply since forum marked as read
“A lot of these parking structures were built to hold vehicles that weighed 2,000 to 4,000 pounds — not 10,000 pounds,” he said.
Scary. I wouldn't want to be in a parking deck filled with these vehicles and built for one set of specs but affected by these new weight numbers.
If we think condo/apartment collapses are devastating I would imagine that the amount of suffering from a parking deck collapse would be comparable.
Lots to think about.
Thanks for sharing this, Eugene. ❤️
