Hacker News Reader

Comment by Schnitz | Hacker News Reader

I’m surprised that the article doesn’t mention the complete lack of pedestrian safety, which is so bad the truck can’t be sold in Europe. Geico might not want to pay those claims of sharp steel edges ripping into people.

View on HN

> I’m surprised that the article doesn’t mention the complete lack of pedestrian safety, which is so bad the truck can’t be sold in Europe

I mean that's not a Cybertruck-exclusive problem

What do you mean? It's basically steel blades and sharp/pointy edges on wheels. I'm sure other vehicles will hurt if they hit a pedestrian at speed, but even getting hit at 5 mph by the cybertruck could create very dangerous wounds.

Hardly a Tesla problem though, the grill culture of suvs and trucks is a thing because pedestrian safety is not a design consideration.

An F150 or Dodge RAM, despite being ludicrously large, is much less dangerous than the cybertruck at low speeds because instead of sharp and jagged protrusions they just have a smooth wall-like front end.

At high speeds? Compare their weights and you'll see that making a pickup truck electric also makes it really heavy.

At high speeds pedestrians are dead anyway. The problem with extra weight is that over a certain weight trucks plow through safety barriers into oncoming traffic when get loose control

Is it actually hard to tell when someone says something like this that they’re referring to extreme points along a spectrum?

Nobody would interpret “the Cybertruck is really bad for pedestrian safety” as “all other trucks are completely fine” or frankly even as “bicycles and rollerblades pose no risk at all to pedestrians.”

I’m not sure that is the case, but if it is, it’s interesting to me as a fairly extreme example of the free market self regulating.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com