Berlin crash prompts calls to ban SUVs from German cities

Re:Berlin crash prompts calls to ban SUVs from German cities by SketchySeaBeast on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @11:53AM (#20929579)

> Volvo created a “pedestrian air bag” years ago that inflated on the hood of the car when it detected what could be a pedestrian being struck.

I wonder how effective that would be - given that a pedestrian hitting the hood could be coming from a ton of different vectors compared to the collision of a driver with a steering wheel, I wonder if you'd just end up throwing more energy and chaos into the collision.

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Re:Berlin crash prompts calls to ban SUVs from German cities by braythwayt on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @12:04PM (#20929721)

Good question. There is a bunch of information about it on the Internet, here's a post that seems somewhat informative:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-pedestrian-airbags-wo...

But note, they have moved on to trying to avoid striking pedestrians and/or reduce injury through reducing speed.

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Re:Berlin crash prompts calls to ban SUVs from German cities by SketchySeaBeast on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @12:26PM (#20929953)

Ah, so it looks to provide cushion for the hood. I had visions of the bumper exploding into a giant airbag ahead of the car.

Seems like that's a better choice - moving to prevention rather than mitigation.

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