Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

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as a track marshal that routinely denies track entry (probably every single event) due to inappropriate battery mounting and wire mismanagement, these pictures terrify me.

It's a cute experiment with the kids, and i'm glad they got away without injury -- but on the other hand i've witnessed first hand what a lead battery that is floating around the cabin can do during a wreck -- and what I witnessed was, sadly, deadly for the driver.

single orientation nylon straps that are strapping heavy square objects against foam cushioned seats and sandwiching the chaos with human meat on both sides. It's a recipe for disaster regardless of what vector the force of the impact comes from -- and that's ignoring the batteries.

Please folks , when you drive a vehicle the heavy stuff gets strapped behind a bulkhead at the front or rear of the car, or atop the car with appropriate and well-tested strapping & mounting equipment.

Don't risk your life for the sake of convenience.

Do you honestly expect these people to add proper tie down points to the floor of a minivan for a one time trip?

The batteries are behind a seat row, the stuff in the seat is strapped in, the loose stuff is in the pass front foot well per OSHA guidelines (I figure most here worship at that altar). It'll be fine. They're not tracking the minivan.

I know that every time something like this is posted everyone likes to swoop in and talk about how X or Y is unsafe and you need eye protection every time you pick up a screwdriver and fall protection every time you even glance sideways at a step ladder because that's a way to score easy virtue points but it just comes across as tone deaf posturing. They aren't driving the van around like this 40hr a week for an entire career likewise it is not reasonable to expect them to implement a tie down solution that scales to that level.

It only takes one time to die.

I’m not sure why you read GP’s comment as virtue signaling. Sure, those examples you gave sound like virtue signaling. I dislike that sort of people probably more than you. Maybe it was his italicized “terrified” comment. I guess you were thinking “Seriously? This terrifies you?”

But GP is talking about something more serious. Maybe read their comment again. He literally said he saw someone die due to a similar situation.

Your OSHA comment sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder about something.

If it helps you process things better or at least put things in a different perspective, how would you feel if someone said they were _terrified_ that the kids weren’t wearing seatbelts? Would your response be slightly different?

> how would you feel if someone said they were _terrified_ that the kids weren’t wearing seatbelts? Would your response be slightly different?

That would still be an overreaction but to a lesser extent. Especially if they were talking about how dangerous it would be on a track.

Your comment just shows how stubborn you are to prove a point.

At least I gave you the benefit of the doubt and seriously reflected about both yours and GP’s viewpoints.

I wasn’t talking specifically in this article context. It was a completely made up hypothetical situation yet actually does happen in real life resulting in deaths. According to a quick search when typing in “seatbelt deaths”, Google says in 2017 that ~33% of vehicle deaths in the U.S. were or could have been prevented if seatbelts were worn. That’s tens of thousands of people, _each year_.

What if you saw a drunk driver get into a car headed for the highway? Same response? “Oh, no you’re just exaggerating, he only lives 5 blocks down the street, he’ll be ok”.

You’re complaining about one extreme where people overreact over safety. Yet, you exist at the other extreme, telling people that they’re overreacting just to fit your narrative. Terrible.

EDIT: I see that the most recent comment was from a Dylan. I thought I had been replying to “throwaway”. Are you two the same person? It’s even more funny thinking that someone was so annoyed by someone talking about safety that they had to make a throwaway to complain lmao.

Couldn't be a throwaway made for the purpose of this discussion, new accounts show up in green for a couple of weeks.

If we were only talking about something that is dangerous at say, 100mph+, then sure - just drive slowly, it will be fine.

This is just isn't - this stuff will kill you in a 30mph collision. If you saw someone put a baby on the hood and drive around like that would you also say "oh do you expect these people to secure their babies for a one time trip - relax!". Like, it's just not safe. At all.

And the fact that it's a one-off makes it worse, not better - they won't be used to the handling a van this heavy, you will try to come to a stop and discover you're missing a car length - enough to get t-boned by a truck. I don't know why people treat it as some kind of wild and completely improbable incident that just won't ever happen - of course it will! These sort of things happen all the time!

>>not reasonable to expect them to implement a tie down solution that scales to that level

It's unreasonable to not expect them to.

> they won't be used to the handling a van this heavy, you will try to come to a stop and discover you're missing a car length

200 pounds of clock in a seat, and 300 pounds of battery with a removed seat. That's on par with simply having two people sit in the middle row.

Yes, 500 pounds of gear sounds about right. I was aware that the car was slightly heavier than usual and drove accordingly. There was no hurry; it was not a race, just a leisurely weekend trip, about 2.5 hours in the car, with an average speed of maybe 35 mph.

With 3 expensive clocks, 3 priceless kids, not to mention hot coffee in hand, I accelerated and decelerated modestly. The drive from Bellevue to Paradise Lodge up on Mt Rainier is mostly rural and then follows a long slow winding mountain road to 5000 ft elevation.

If there were 4 adults (and not 2 adults and 2 kids) with that amount of extra weight in the minivan, then you would see that they would be cutting it extremely close or be over for the maximum recommended amount of weight.

Besides, it’s not just the pounds that matter. Would you rather be hit by 200 pounds of hardness/sharpness/person bouncing to-and-fro or not be hit at all during a car crash cause that 200 pounds, whether object or person, was secured?

That setup would probably be illegal in many countries today. There's a lot of improperly secured equipment in that van. Even a relatively minor crash can get some of it flying around and crushing bones or killing someone.

> If my bike ride is just 5 minutes why bother wearing a helmet?

It reads much easier like this.

If you only make a couple bike rides like that in your life then skipping the helmet isn't a big deal.

It only takes one time to die.

I’m assuming you’ve never met anyone that died due to a bike. So insensitive.

It's okay to take a risk occasionally.

It's a bad idea to climb a mountain or go sky diving every day, but doing it once doesn't make you a reckless person.

Doing it once and not being properly prepared does make you a reckless person. To use an exaggerated example like you did, would you go skydiving without taking a class ahead of time? Would you go without a parachute? Would you go without a backup?

Stop being facetious just to prove your point, please.

Going skydiving, with a class, with a parachute, with a backup, is still dangerous.

Climbing a mountain with good equipment and a buddy is still dangerous.

Being "properly prepared" is only relevant inside a context. You can't look at just preparation when deciding if something is too dangerous. The actual risk numbers are the important thing here.

If I'm driving 100 miles, and I do something sloppy that doubles my risk of dying in a car crash, the actual danger I face is less than the danger of skydiving just once with perfect prep. If it's also a special occasion where I'm going to get a huge amount of enjoyment out of it... the risk seems okay.

Even if we're focused just on car safety, we should be far more upset when someone buys a car without top-tier safety ratings than about some one-off trip like this.

Being able to point at some specific danger, like a battery on the floor, is just bikeshedding. What matters is the risk per day/month/year, and most of that risk is invisible.

I’m not going to read your comment since you’re clearly being facetious.

1. I'm not.

2. Do you really think that's an appropriate comment?

To be pedantic, bike helmets are uncommon in bike safe countries like mine / NL.

Cycling fatalities still make up a third of total traffic fatalities in the Netherlands. And almost 70% of those several hundreds who die in cycling accidents are over 65, people who are much more likely to lose their balance and are more sensitive to an impact, meaning a bit of protection would have gone a long way. That's just fatalities, think of all the non-fatal accidents, and how may of the 6000 people hospitalized each year just for unilateral accidents (with bollards or lamp-posts) need an MRI because they bumped their head. The numbers don't get better without adding protection because according to SWOV almost 80% of cycling accidents are unilateral or between cyclists.

But there's a cultural opposition to helmets in many countries, chief among reasons being that "helmets don't look good" and "real cyclists don't need one". If you didn't wear one your whole life, you won't start at 65.

30% of vehicle deaths are due to traumatic brain injuries. There's also a cultural opposition to wearing helmets in motor vehicles.

Is there a cultural opposition?

In my 30 years of life, I’ve never read an article, seen a TV show, watched a movie, read a book, heard a conversation, etc where the idea about wearing helmets in cars was even discussed.

I’ve never even heard a comedian joke about it.

Who is opposing this? Are you saying there’s opposition just because it’s a thing that doesn’t exist?

And yet, it turns out there have been various attempts at a motoring helmet over the years:

https://colvilleandersen.medium.com/the-case-for-motorist-he...

So that does open the question about whether suppression of this lifesaving technology has been something intentional on the part of automotive companies and enthusiasts (see: "jaywalking") or if it's the other way, that making road safety issues about only cycling helmets is an attempt to de-legitimize that mode and blame victims.

i tapped a kwall in a drift car (as one does) and the battery detached and shattered.

that was fun.

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