Laws of Physics and Other Fun…

Things have been very busy since the last time I posted. My family and business relocated to Virginia, there was an election in Iran (and the outcome was something more crazy than the “hanging chads” of 2000), a comedian is now a Senator, and the Cap & Trade bill passed through the House like something through a goose.

Looks like I got the micro car / environmental sector of blog readership stirred up with my last entry. Some “colorful” comments were not “printable” and so do not appear in the comments section. But I am not sure how many really caught the point that there is something about going “too small”.

“Less is More” is a line that I have been exposed to more than once. I don’t buy it as a blanket rule; choosing more in the line of “right size and right tool” for the job. The challenge is, how can you operate in “maximum efficiency” when there are so many missions to fulfill?

What do you use your vehicle for? Is it for the commute? Then are you driving a small car? Or are you driving a fuel efficient car. One is not the other. Which is one of the points that I was driving at, you do not need to compromise safety for fuel efficiency.

Do you do other things with that car? How about pick up and drop off kids? One kid or three? Ever attempt to get three kid seats across the back of a small car? Go ahead, try it. We can wait.

Doesn’t work well, does it? Current traffic laws do not allow you to put a seat in the front. And before anybody starts to say that we should not have so many children in an attempt to solve a practical with a “we should” social solution, the answer is a larger vehicle.

Now what if you need to move large stuff around? Not every day, but maybe one or twice a week. Sure, you can go rent a truck, spend time getting and returning the rental, busing more gas to get to the rental place and back home. Hmm, not much of a solution, is it?

What about those people who use a truck or a van as “the office”. There is a reason for those “vocational” vehicles. The people that practice those vocations have to carry the tools of the trade, materials and perhaps other people to the work site. The original “crew” cab pick-up trucks were made for that purpose, carry men, materials and tools to the job site.

One last question. How about if your job is moving large quantities of material around? Dump Truck, Oil Truck, Semi-Truck, they may not be what you take the kids to school in everyday, but they are on the road too. (Though I do know of a story of the daughter of the owner of a large trucking company picking up her new boyfriend in a bobtail tractor.)

The point of my physics question was, at what point do we trade away safety for the environment, or for fuel economy, or for, whatever? There are cars that are more fuel efficient than the micro cars that people can drive. Do you really want to trade your survival, or the ability to walk away from a wreck for a few MPG?

Some folks have commented that the F-150 I drive is not that safe. And you know, in a 40 MPH offset crash the 2001 F-150 does not fare well. The 2004 model update improved the design to “Good” rating. I have personal experience with what damage an F-150 can take, and what it can deliver, having been in a full sized Ford Taurus that got “T-Boned” by a 2000 F-150 at 35MPH. Totaled my car, but I walked away with only a cut that I got climbing out of my car. The driver of the F-150? He drove away, in his F-150.

I spent some time looking at the tapes of the F-150 crash on the IIHS website, like one of the comment suggested I do. Interesting thing, that is a tape of a F-150 Super Cab, one of the trucks that has a little “half door” behind the full size doors. The little doors in that design served as the “B” post in the truck by providing a locking point for the front door. But unlike a REAL “B” post that is welded to the roof and the floor frame rails of the body, these doors are just latched. So for this design it is not a surprise to see the truck cabin structure bend out and crush as shown in these photos.

The F-150 I drive is a “Super Crew”; a true 4 door cabin. There is a traditional “B” post between the front and rear doors, welded to the roof and the floor rails. The body is really the front of the Ford Excursion SUV, which uses many of the same basic body parts of the F-150.

Thinking along the lines of finding something that will be really good to use in the city, how about this idea from our friends at General Motors and Segway? I wonder how that will do when hit by one of the famed NYC cabs?  

There was also a comment about Ford’s financial stability. Who of the Detroit 3 did not take government and is not either sold or owned by the American taxpayers?

Has anybody in our profession had the time to read all of HR 2454, the Carbon Cap & Trade bill? I know I haven’t. But think on this: Congress has been session 6 months and they have already created over two thousand four hundred and fifty pieces of legislation. That boggles the mind.