Lose going thru a turn go way too fast (I mean WAY too fast), hit a curb, and that might do it....
That's me (with my old wheel/tire combo)
Posted on 09/14/2006 6:01:17 AM PDT by Cagey
If all of the manufacturers are installing this technology, anyway, what is the need for a government mandate. This NTSC is the same outfit that missed the Firestone tires whwen they were tipped off. Rather than having new mandates from them, maybe we should discontinue that worthless agency.
Hitting a curb, 6 or so inches higher at a flat angle at 30+mph can flip just about any car.
The cost of this Gubmint mandated add-on will be passed onto the consumer.
Simply wearing a seatbelt would save a lot of lives in rollovers. Always seeing "he was thrown from the car" in those accidents.
I suppose I should have been more specific.
I have a hard time imagining a scenario that A) would flip a Miata, and B) be helped by technology controlling the rate individual tires turn.
If someone hits me from the side (and I don't die right away), the Miata might very well roll. It might roll if I DO die right away, but I wouldn't much care at that point! If I go off a mountain road, I might roll down the side of the hill.
But this new technology won't do squat all to help me in these scenarios. It will just make it a more expensive Miata rolling down the hill...
And that was usually going off road or driving into a ditch.
How about we keep it as an option and allow people to decide whether they want this ability. The lack of ABS (and even power brakes) on my sports car made it quite fun.
Been there, done that -- as a passenger of course.
A low center of gravity is not high technology.
Limiting speed and limiting tight turns are the only ways that rollover could be prevented outside of the driver's control. I expect either of those would be more dangerous than the current situation.
It would be better to train drivers before issuing a drivers license rather than issuing them to anyone with a temperature of 98.6.
I thought this was about my deoderant.
I've been driving since the 60's, and it seem to me that the major difference is that prior to Nader and the Corvair most drivers had never given much thought to the possibility that some cars were safer than others. Or to the possibility if they were, this was a matter of "hidden" design" as much or more than of more obvious characteristics such as size or weight.
As a result, general opinion was much more fatalistic than today as regards vehicular injury and death.
For example when two of my grade school classmates were permanently disfigured when they were catapulted through the windshield of a car driven by their mother, it didn't occur to any of the adults around me to comment on the fact that none of car's occupants were restrained by their (then novel) unused seatbelts, and no one gave a thought to the possible potential of "passive restraint" devices.
IMO, the attempts to embarrass or blackmail Nader, and the subsequent congressional hearings, greatly accelerated awareness that automotive design was a significant factor in automotive safety. Not only were the design deficiencies of the Corvair a real eye-opener to much of the driving public, but the discovery that automotive manufacturers were themselves weighing the economic costs and benefits of safety related design and design modifications was the beginning of general public concern about in just whose benefit such calculations were performed.
Still, it often took a long while for such concerns to sink in to the point where opinion (and consumer behavior) changed.
Years after the congressional hearings, I had a roommate who owned one of the original "bathtub" Corvairs.
I was of course aware of Nader and the hearings, but I drove the car without much concern, convinced that the suspension problems I'd read about would only manifest themselves when under the control of incompetent old ladies behaving in imprudent manners. (After all, a major manufacture had produced and sold it, tens or hundreds of thousands were still on the road - how bad, really, could the problem be?)
Thus I was somewhat concerned when a rear wheel tucked (per Ralph's prediction) on the gentle camber of a curve on Hwy 1, and I found myself spinning down the road into oncoming traffic ("There's the hills (!), there's the drop-off to the ocean !)… there's the hills again... OH SHIT..").
Not surprisingly, my general level of concern about safety related design issues – and my level of belief that manufacturers would refrain from putting known Really Bad (even potentially fatal) Product Design in the hands of consumers - was never quite the same afterwards.
That car was an evil piece of design, and potentially a killer under completely normal operating conditions.
And, of course, would never make it onto the road today.
They should've added a LOT of armor to the floor pan, then.
Some drivers already act as if the car drives itself. This feature will allow not only cellphone usage but widespread farding and dining, and probably FR posting exchanges of unbridled ferocity, during the commute to the mall.
Yeah, I slid into a curb in my old vega. It could have made it flip. But yer right. I wonder if we had not dumbed down the requirements for drivers licenses if we would be seeing all of these rollovers.
Yup. In fact, I was literally thinking that as I typed that post. :)
Dude!
That is a great post. I'm copying the pic to take to work with me tomorrow - a fellow Miata driver will enjoy it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.