This article discusses emergency responders concerns about new hybrid vehicles that look like conventional gasoline-only models. Insight and Prius are not a problem, but the new Ford Escape, Honda Civic, and Honda Accord hybrids are difficult to distinguish from their regular brethren...
And the media wonders why the old adage of 'don't believe half of what you read' is far more applicable today than ever before. I get more and more tired of mainstream US media everyday. -m.
That one was a beaut! Actually, First Responders should receive special training on ALL new cars. Every new car has driver and front passenger airbags at a minimum, and firemen have been killed by airbag deployments while working on extraction. Let's not forget that more cars are now equipped with with self-tensioning seatbelts (Pyrotechnics fire the gas cylinder to tighten the seatbelt) and thoracic / head airbags. BMW has a good idea: in a strong enough impact, a pyro device severs the battery positive cable, so the electrical system will be dead after impact. No reason a pyro couldn't be used to forcibly sever the NiMH battery pack.
Tucked way down at the very bottom is the last paragraph, long after the average reader has grown tired of the article: "Toyota and Honda equip their hybrids with switches that shut down the electrical units when a crash is detected. Electrical cables are heavily insulated and distinctively colored. And, Moore and Newport point out, emergency workers have long had to watch out for threats in conventional cars, such as the potential for gas tank explosions."
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(jayman\";p=\"61609)</div> The Prius already does this. (This was pointed out by Tony in the post above, but I wanted to make special attention to this.) In terms of safety, it's hard to find something that Toyota missed on the Prius.
It's not only amazing such dumb articles get written -- but that they get recycled whenever there's a slow news day. We went through this unfounded hysteria months ago. (And the way this country and world is going, there shouldn't ever be a "slow news day")
"Slow News Day" = "Things we're not supposed to report on because it'll just further depress the American public"
My apologies for the above post. Too much personal opinion for the Main Forum. I will try to restrict such outbursts on sensibility to Fred's House of Pancakes.
