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[–] 157 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (10 children)

This needs to be updated.

Getting hit by a pickup truck at 30 MPH is similar to getting hit by a Honda Civic at 120 MPH for kinetic energy.

That's besides the fact that pickups have a much taller hood vs sedans so there are significantly higher rates of head/internal injury.

Taller cars and trucks are more dangerous for pedestrians, according to crash data

https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/complete-streets-chicago/home/traffic-safety/vehicle-size-and-speed.html

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  • [–] 45 points 4 months ago

    Your math is wrong. Kinetic energy scales linearly with mass, quadratically with speed. The graphic you included supports the idea that at same speed, the pickup truck has double the KE. The 120 mph sedan has dramatically more KE than a 30 mph pickup.

    Assuming that your sedan has exactly half the mass of the pickup, it would match a 30 mph pickup's KE at 30*sqrt(2) mph, which is somewhere between 40 and 45 mph.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I am not sure why the difference in energy related to vehicle mass is relevant here as humans have an insignificant amount of mass compared to either vehicle, so transferred energy should be roughly the same. However, the difference in how the collision plays out (pulled under Vs thrown above) should be a huge impact

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The higher mass and force transmitted by a truck means the human will be thrown further and possible impact other objects at a higher speed

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

    Not all of that energy is transferred. The car doesn't stop as if it hit a wall. Usually it barely slows down. The human on the other hand gains at most the kinetic energy corresponding to their body mass and the speed of a human bouncing forward off the car at around the same speed as the car was going, so a tiny fraction. Of course impact geometry will determine the specifics and pickups suck there too. The important thing about kinetic energy is that it's dependant on the square of the velocity. That's why speed kills. The mass is just a linear relation.

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  • [–] 13 points 4 months ago

    There's quite a large discrepancy between this image and OPs image. This image says the survival rate of 30 mph (48 kph) is 60%, while OP's image says 50 kph it's at 20%. I wish they included a source for the data that could explain it.

    This is the same issue I take with braking distance scales. They often vary wildly, and some don't even follow a quadratic increase in distance like you'd expect.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    The energy difference is only really relevant if the thing you're hitting is significantly heavier or at least similarly heavy like a house or another car. For a person it's still much worse, but that is moreso because of the high hood of the car.

    I know pickup trucks are heavy, but I'm surprised they are 16 times heavier than a Honda civic. The more you learn.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    So my curved front sports car is totally safe to ram into pedestrians with?

    /S

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I'd rather be hit by that at 20 MPH instead of a full duty lifted pickup with a fresh shiny paint job on chrome wheels (mall crawlers)

    I don't think pickup trucks should be banned. They should be commercial use only. It's not a family car or a daily driver.

    Fuck mall crawlers

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    And then there is the SUV class. Aka the non-passenger work vehicle family passenger vehicle.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    So they passed laws for emissions and fuel efficiency of passenger vehicles to help with pollution.

    These laws force MPG ratings on sedans and SUVs. But they're looser for trucks. Car manufacturers realized its also looser since its calculated by weight.

    So these fuckers decide to build SUVs on pickup truck frames and make pickups even bigger so they don't have to tighten up the fuel efficiency...

    This is one of the main reasons there are so many bigger class vehicles being made now.

    Add in all the new LED headlights. Which are too bright because the regulations are outdated based on wattage instead of lumens.

    So you have taller vehicles with brighter headlights blinding everyone.

    I'm at the point where I'm aiming for a SUV instead of a sedan for my next car...

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    We wouldn't have so much trouble with this if all men had the same size dick.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I got hit by a large SUV doing between 30mph and 40mph a few years ago. I can’t tell you why or how, but I had a split second to twist and plant my hands on the hood and jump so I went up instead of under. Went into the windshield (broke it) and then got launched when she slammed on the brakes. It put my radius and ulna into my hands, my back into my guts, and knocked my brain so hard I gave the emergency crew a phone number that belonged to a girlfriend I’d broken up with almost 20yrs prior. Took me a year to be able to write again, not just physically. I’d start putting words to paper and end up with gibberish because between my brain and my hand it didn’t connect. Had to leave post-it notes around the house as a check list- did you eat, bathe, brush your teeth, feed the dogs, piss? My ability to sleep was wrecked, no circadian rythym. I don’t entirely believe in fate, but how the fuck that didn’t kill or cripple me boggles my mind (what’s left of it) daily.

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    [–] 25 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Man I'd hate to be one of the 40 subjects of this experiment

    Spoiler/s if that wasnt obvious

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    [–] 18 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Great now do SUVs for the Americans. Go ahead and assume they are not simultaneously being shot at just for the purpose of keeping the simulation simple.

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    [–] 16 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    But just wait for the deafening screaming of people when 30km/h limits are enacted in front of schools because that would dramatically reduce lethality of accidents, while costing car drivers maybe a few seconds of drive time, if at all. It is quite a spectacle.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I live near an intersection. Drivers will ten second horn blast because someone won't crawl up the arse of the car in front of them just so horatio can mount the kerb and get into a sliplane they can't exit until the lights change anyway

    So what i'm saying is you're underselling the stupidity

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    [–] 16 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Damn. I didn't realize it was so drastic. 100% fatality rate seems crazy, even rounded

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Local news:

    https://www.koin.com/local/clackamas-county/notorious-intersection-portland-driver-speeds-hits-car-before-crash-milwaukie-police-say/

    "The officer spotted a grey BMW going 87 MPH in a 40 MPH zone"

    For our European friends:

    87 MPH = 140 KPH
    40 MPH = 64.4 KPH

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago

    Kinetic energy = mass*velocity^2 in action. Faster you go the harder you stop.

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  • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Jokes on you, I don't know kilometers

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    There’s a new neighbor at the end of our street with small children. She always puts one of those green children at play signs in her front yard, yet insists on driving 25-30mph down our suburban street. The rest of the neighbors hate her.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I remember a public safety ad being shown that showed the difference in either 30 and 35mph or 30 and 40mph. Was quite dramatic.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    This one was quite widespread in UK TV, it was one of the first government films to use such shocking imagery and dark themes, 40mph vs 30mph. it's probably a bit mild by today's standards, but it was notorious at the time..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEzLQJV_z8w

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    At least motorcycles are fair. If the pedestrian dies, you die as well

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    [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    After watching Gen V, “fuck cars” got a different connotation.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    okay but don't fuck it at any faster than 30 kph

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Mass times velocity equals FUBAR...

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