Stuff You Should Know - How Death-Proof Cars Work

Episode Date: June 26, 2008

Could high-end digital auto systems such as blind-spot detection and collision prevention overcome the errors of human drivers? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the death-proof cars of the future. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off The cops are they just like looting? Have they just like pillaging they just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or be in Rob they call civil acid Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast Bridgewater the hit fiction podcast is back a supernatural thriller presented in immersive 3d by neural audio the Bridgewater Triangle there is some kind of mystical force in this region that attracts monsters and paranormal activity There's something beyond our understanding going on here starring supernaturals Misha Collins the walking deads Melissa Panzio and rogue ones Alan Tudyk

Written by Lauren Shippen and created by me Aaron Mankey listen to Bridgewater on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from how stuff works calm Hi and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark a staff writer here at how stuff works calm with me is my trusty and double-jointed Etatrix Candice Gibson. How are you Candice fabulous Josh? So Candice you want to join me and give him a shout out to our favorite listener You know I do okay, so hey Billy Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this podcast as much as the others What we're talking about this week is death-proof cars. We're just just super cool

Candice have you ever seen the movie death-proof? Candice have you ever seen the movie Ghostbusters your ass make you look bad, but no no, okay? Well, you need to see both. Well, we'll just talk about a death-proof now. I'll tell you about Ghostbusters later So in the movie there's a guy named stuntman Mike, and he's got this car, but I know a really cool car when I see one And stuntman Mike's car is cool in aces. It's a 1970 Chevy Nova and it has like a skull with lightning bolts for crossbones on the hood And he has it reinforced with steel beams Shatterproof glass a five-point seatbelt all this other stuff

And the reason he has gone to the trouble of death-proofing his car is because he loves to ram it into other people's cars at high speeds and Kill him so he just generally wreaks havoc on the highway and stuntman Mike's car is death-proof He walks away from it several times And it turns out that they're in real life. This is just a movie as far as we know It's not based on any real life events. Hopefully But in real life there are some people who are thinking about death-proof cars, but they're kind of taking it in another direction Do you know much about that Candice?

I do and I'll redeem myself since I lack movie knowledge this is a European Commission called the prevent safety research group and They're very lofty goal is to reduce auto accidents in Europe by 50 percent by the year 2010 and to this end a very well-renowned European automaker Volvo Volvo I used to have one too I have one and actually our producer Jerry admitted that she had one as well So all those are very popular around the office. I gotta love those bees They have a vowed to make an injury-proof car by 2020 and it's not gonna be injury-proof in the way that stuntman Mike's is

It's actually going to rely on digital features to reinforce it And that's a that's a pretty good thing actually because stuntman Mike. He's a hard driver But for the most part we humans tend to fold like card tables under pressure Especially when it comes to collisions. Yeah, well, they're pretty scary and the way that our brain works Just a short little lesson for you You can read more about it and how fear works on how stuff works calm essentially when you perceive something that's kind of scary your brain interprets the stimulus and

Start sending chemicals through your body to help with your reaction to that your fight or flight syndrome and some things that happen are like your Breathing speeds up and your heart starts racing and your muscles tense up and you can't always react and in the case of auto accidents That's pretty scary because in 50% of rear-end collisions people don't even apply the brakes because they're too frozen in fear and Actually a big whopping 1.1 seconds path before drivers in the face of an impending collision do anything at all Yeah, which which goes to Len creeds to my theory that humans are useless and I'm not the only one who thinks to see that these engineers that prevent are basically Taking humans out of the equation when it comes to facing a collision, right?

There's already a lot of features on the digital car that you mentioned, which is another article on how stuff works calm and there are There are all sorts of like safety features that are popping up on high-end luxury cars Like the blind spot detection system which uses sensors to detect when a car is in your blind spot You can't see it or a collision prevention systems Which also use sensors to tell when you're coming up really fast on another obstacle It's that self-tightening seatbelts breaks that can adjust pressure for your foot All of these features like combined together are going to be a part of this injury-proof car and what's more? You know we mentioned breaks that increase pressure for you if you can't quite break as hard as you'd like to before you hit something

It's been Lee legs. There you go like myself But this car could actually break for you So completely removing humans from the equation and taking out Emotionality and replacing it with hardcore Rationality nice. Yeah hardcore rationality is what you want in the face of a collision and it's not just breaking for you some some cars will be steering out of the way for you and The the the injury-proof car most likely will be so set with sensors it will be aware of everything that's going on around it and ahead of it and behind it and

so in the future when you have to swerve one way or another in the face of a collision your car may say okay Well, we've got a baby in a stroller being pushed by a mom to the right and a squirrel left and the car will swerve to the left And goodbye squirrel, but there's a lot more information on this in the article. I wrote in Candice edited 10 a car Really be death-proof you can read it on how stuff works For more on this and thousands of other topics visit how stuff works calm Let us know what you think send an email to podcast at how stuff works calm Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off the cops

Are they just like looting? They just like pillaging they just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or be in Rob they call civil asset Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast Bridgewater the hit fiction podcast is back a supernatural thriller presented in immersive 3d by neural audio the Bridgewater Triangle there is some kind of mystical force in this region that attracts monsters and paranormal activity There's something beyond our understanding going on here starring supernaturals Misha Collins the walking deads Melissoponzeo and rogue ones Alan Tudyk written by Lauren shippen and created by me Aaron Mankey

Listen to Bridgewater on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts