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How Crumple Zones Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know front House stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's Chuck a k A. Charles W. Chuck
0:16
Speaker 1: Bryant a k a. Charles Wayne Bryant named after Wayne Coyne. No,
0:26
Speaker 1: thank you, Wait, I wasn't done. And then there's Jake.
0:29
Speaker 1: Thank you people who voted for us for the Webby Award. Yes, yes,
0:33
Speaker 1: we won. We won the People's Voice Award. Yeah, that's
0:36
Speaker 1: three of those for us, and a huge congratulations to
0:40
Speaker 1: UH another podcast that we admire for winning the Webby. Yeah, Invisible. Yeah,
0:47
Speaker 1: if you heard our Ted Talks episode, or we interviewed
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Speaker 1: Roman Mars and he won the I Guess panel vote, Yeah,
0:55
Speaker 1: and then we won the People's Voice vote. He's the
0:58
Speaker 1: he's the industry darling. We're the populist darlings. Yeah, as
1:02
Speaker 1: I like when I put it on my personal Facebook page,
1:05
Speaker 1: attacked Roman and I said, we won the one for
1:08
Speaker 1: people's vote and Roman won the one based on quality
1:12
Speaker 1: and he said, no, they're both quality. He was very
1:15
Speaker 1: sweet about it. Yeah. Um, I also want to say
1:18
Speaker 1: give us special props to reply all who gave us
1:21
Speaker 1: a run for our money for quite a while there
1:23
Speaker 1: the People's Voice Awards, so actually check out all of them,
1:28
Speaker 1: the nominees, nominees, because to to get considered for a webbing,
1:33
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a ton of podcasts out there, and
1:35
Speaker 1: to make it basically what amounts to the top five,
1:37
Speaker 1: you gotta be pretty good. Hats off to everybody, and
1:40
Speaker 1: thank you again for everyone who voted for us, and
1:42
Speaker 1: congratulations again Into Roman and Visible crew agreed we were
1:47
Speaker 1: in good company, So thanks everyone. So Crumple Zones, I
1:52
Speaker 1: predict this is going to be a correct of an
1:55
Speaker 1: episode terrible. Um. You know what I found out that
2:00
Speaker 1: this fascinates me way more than I thought it would. Dude,
2:04
Speaker 1: totally with you because I'm not a car guy, as
2:06
Speaker 1: you know. No, but it's not just that it's this
2:09
Speaker 1: is more the history of auto safety, but it also
2:13
Speaker 1: has more to it. There's some physics that we can
2:15
Speaker 1: grasp involved very simple that makes it very attractive. Um,
2:19
Speaker 1: let's kind of like big thing hit, big thing makes boom, right,
2:23
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. But all you have to do is
2:25
Speaker 1: switch out like force and acceleration. You sound smart. Um, yeah,
2:29
Speaker 1: there's a lot to it that that there's even some nefariousness,
2:32
Speaker 1: corporate nefariousness. So I'm like, yeah, this story is ever sure,
2:36
Speaker 1: you know, agreed? And you know what, this made me
2:38
Speaker 1: want to do episodes on crash test dummies for one,
2:43
Speaker 1: and then maybe even a couple of others. As far
2:45
Speaker 1: as Nator, we should do one on him. Yeah, maybe airbags.
2:49
Speaker 1: Just the whole car safety thing is way fascinating. It
2:51
Speaker 1: really is. And to top it all off, this article
2:55
Speaker 1: was a grabstor article, so well that's why I picked it.
2:58
Speaker 1: At this point, I'm just searching for his articles. Yeah,
3:01
Speaker 1: we should just be like, recommend some articles that you
3:05
Speaker 1: wrote that we should do. We've done most of them.
3:07
Speaker 1: I know that's the problem. He needs to come back
3:09
Speaker 1: into the fray so sad. And we should also shout
3:13
Speaker 1: out our colleagues here at how stuff works with car
3:15
Speaker 1: stuff Scott and Ben. I'm sure I have covered this
3:19
Speaker 1: at some point. And if you're into this kind of thing,
3:22
Speaker 1: they have a just a treasure Drove of car very specific,
3:27
Speaker 1: detailed car podcast, emphasis on the treasure. So that's corumple zones.
3:33
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about it, go listen
3:37
Speaker 1: to car Stuff. All right, should we start with that
3:39
Speaker 1: little history bit? Yeah? Why not right. Yeah, so, um,
3:45
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of history too. I found this
3:47
Speaker 1: really cool Museum of American History, a Smithsonian Museum. They
3:51
Speaker 1: had a like an exhibit years back. It looked like
3:53
Speaker 1: the late nineties, early two thousands, and I just went
3:55
Speaker 1: through the page. There's this really interesting essay that they
3:58
Speaker 1: had broken up over this webs light. Um, there's a
4:01
Speaker 1: lot of weird history. But initially, the idea of what
4:05
Speaker 1: caused REX has changed dramatically over the years, because at
4:10
Speaker 1: first it was strictly driver error, because the paradigm people
4:14
Speaker 1: were looking through was before you had horses, and a
4:16
Speaker 1: horse could spook and bolt and run somebody down, and
4:20
Speaker 1: the horse did that, it wasn't the driver. The whole
4:23
Speaker 1: idea of a horseless carriage was that it was just
4:27
Speaker 1: a lump of metal that responded to the driver's commands,
4:30
Speaker 1: and so anything that went wrong it was the driver's fault.
4:34
Speaker 1: And it took many, many years for people to realize like, actually, no,
4:37
Speaker 1: there's some serious design flaws in cars. We can actually
4:41
Speaker 1: make them safer, right, And once people figured that out,
4:45
Speaker 1: they didn't realize that the auto manufacturers had known this
4:48
Speaker 1: for decades. And then after the public finally realized that.
4:51
Speaker 1: It took a few more decades for people to finally
4:53
Speaker 1: implement it. Yeah, And I think the rationale for a
4:56
Speaker 1: while was and it was the style of the day
4:59
Speaker 1: as well and the materials that were available at the time.
5:01
Speaker 1: But there was a notion of well, let's build these
5:04
Speaker 1: things like Sherman tanks and it will make people safe, right,
5:08
Speaker 1: And what crumble zones proved is the exact opposite. Let's
5:13
Speaker 1: build something that that crumbles and crushes in just the
5:18
Speaker 1: right way, and that's actually much safer. And you know,
5:21
Speaker 1: it's funny. I remember when this stuff kind of came up,
5:24
Speaker 1: what probably mid to late nineties, when people really started
5:27
Speaker 1: to show up and um in normal cars, and I
5:31
Speaker 1: remember thinking, like, God, they make cars so cheaply compared
5:34
Speaker 1: to how they used to, Like they just come apart.
5:37
Speaker 1: Now I realized, oh, they're designed to come apart, because
5:41
Speaker 1: before it was like the car is not gonna do anything,
5:44
Speaker 1: but everybody inside is gonna liquefy. Now it's like, how
5:47
Speaker 1: about we keep the people inside safe and just letting
5:49
Speaker 1: the car take the brunt of the impact. Yeah, and
5:51
Speaker 1: one person, there are a lot of people that that
5:54
Speaker 1: owe to this design over the years. But one person
5:56
Speaker 1: squarely in the center as a dude named Ella. That's
6:01
Speaker 1: a nice name. There's a couple of accents and everything. Yeah,
6:05
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure if that's right, but he was
6:06
Speaker 1: a very very very famous engineer and inventor for Domino events.
6:12
Speaker 1: Holds more than patents like this guy. We all owe
6:16
Speaker 1: a debt to this dude. So many more patents than
6:19
Speaker 1: either of us, Yes, than both of us put together.
6:24
Speaker 1: Do you hold a patent neither? This is kind of shameful,
6:29
Speaker 1: really at this point, do you want to hold a patch?
6:31
Speaker 1: Everybody should hold at least one patent. Well, if you
6:35
Speaker 1: could patent things like, uh, you know, stupid stuff that
6:39
Speaker 1: aren't like real, like um Chuck's method for getting out
6:42
Speaker 1: of the grocery store in a hurry, patent it, I
6:47
Speaker 1: might actually try that. What is it? Are you gonna
6:51
Speaker 1: you say patent pending first before you describe it. I'll
6:53
Speaker 1: just hold on to that. Maybe I could trademark that
6:56
Speaker 1: not patented. No, you can patent a process kenny hh okay,
7:02
Speaker 1: or you can just type a little trademark symbol next
7:04
Speaker 1: to everything you say and it's like back off, everybody.
7:07
Speaker 1: So Bella Mr Barni uh in nineteen fifty two had
7:12
Speaker 1: a patent um It was actually the very first one, uh,
7:16
Speaker 1: the Mercedes Spence W one one one fintail. You didn't
7:20
Speaker 1: say what the patent was for. I know I was
7:22
Speaker 1: getting to it. Oh sorry, the beautiful car. And it
7:25
Speaker 1: was the first car to hold to have this patent pending. Well,
7:30
Speaker 1: I guess it was patent holding by that point. Crunch
7:33
Speaker 1: zones on the front and rear of the car. The
7:36
Speaker 1: whole reason was these current zones could be designed to
7:39
Speaker 1: absorb the impact from a crash, and if the car
7:44
Speaker 1: absorbed the impact, then the people were less likely to
7:47
Speaker 1: absorb the impact because that impact, the force of the
7:49
Speaker 1: impact has to go somewhere. Yeah, it ain't going nowhere.
7:53
Speaker 1: And if the car is built to be rigid, the
7:56
Speaker 1: car is not gonna absorb it. It's gonna transfer it. Yeah,
8:00
Speaker 1: like a big ford edseil hitting a Ford fair lane.
8:04
Speaker 1: It's a lot of pounds of metal smashing into one another.
8:08
Speaker 1: And the people inside aren't getting fare too well, especially
8:10
Speaker 1: back then when they're like, what's the seatbelt, dude? Not
8:12
Speaker 1: only what's the seatbelt? The earlier, earlier cars had plate
8:16
Speaker 1: glass windows. Yeah, there were death machines. They all of
8:20
Speaker 1: like this, the knobs and stuff. Now that's like touchscreen
8:23
Speaker 1: before where they would stick out, so you just take
8:26
Speaker 1: one and go right through your forehead into your brain,
8:29
Speaker 1: just getting paled. Dashboards. Dashboards weren't even padded. It was
8:34
Speaker 1: a steel bar that would just take the top of
8:36
Speaker 1: your head clean off. And then the cars ran on
8:39
Speaker 1: nuclear fuel. Basically it might as well. Yeah, it was amazing.
8:44
Speaker 1: I know that they've done side by side examples these
8:48
Speaker 1: days where they crashed an old car because people are like, oh,
8:51
Speaker 1: the old cars were built like tanks, and so they
8:53
Speaker 1: would do the same miles per hour for like a
8:55
Speaker 1: Volvo compared to like a nineteen fifty seven Ford, and
8:59
Speaker 1: you know, the it's obvious what happens. You just like
9:02
Speaker 1: there's a there's a point in time where the common
9:05
Speaker 1: wisdom was you didn't wear a seatbelt, even if you
9:08
Speaker 1: had it, because you would prefer to be thrown from
9:10
Speaker 1: the car because it was so deadly inside the car.
9:13
Speaker 1: And there's actually a very famous injector seat pretty much
9:16
Speaker 1: there's a famous um Reader's Digest article that really captured
9:20
Speaker 1: public opinion back in is called Eds and Sudden Death
9:24
Speaker 1: and it's just like really gory and gruesome, and it's
9:27
Speaker 1: talking about like these cars are death traps. We need
9:29
Speaker 1: to do better than this. Yeah, and they weren't even
9:31
Speaker 1: going that fast back then, you know. All right, So
9:35
Speaker 1: these days, um, it's all proprietary the exact features and
9:39
Speaker 1: specifics of crumple zones because these car manufacturers they have
9:45
Speaker 1: their own methods and they don't want to share that
9:47
Speaker 1: with everyone. Makes sense, that's fine as long as they're building,
9:50
Speaker 1: that's right. But in general, what we're talking about our
9:53
Speaker 1: frame designs, where certain parts of the frame of the
9:56
Speaker 1: car bend and collapse in such a way that it
10:01
Speaker 1: keeps the people and things like the gas tank uh
10:05
Speaker 1: safe because you don't want that gas tank exploding either,
10:08
Speaker 1: which we'll get to right, So let's talk about what
10:11
Speaker 1: a crash is, right. A crash is where an object
10:15
Speaker 1: with mass traveling at a certain rate um collides with
10:22
Speaker 1: another object with maths. Yes, and when that happens, force
10:28
Speaker 1: is created. Right And yeah, Well, I was gonna say,
10:32
Speaker 1: people saying, well, what if you don't hit a car,
10:34
Speaker 1: you're gonna hit a street, You're gonna tumble, you're gonna
10:36
Speaker 1: hit a telephone pole, that something is going to make impact.
10:40
Speaker 1: So what what's happening when you when you have impact
10:43
Speaker 1: is you are technically you're accelerating, but every and logically
10:48
Speaker 1: you should just call it decelerating in the case of
10:50
Speaker 1: a crash, but it's still scientifically, it's still accelerating whenever
10:54
Speaker 1: you have a change in velocity. Right, Um, So when
10:58
Speaker 1: you hit some thing in your car and you decelerate quickly,
11:03
Speaker 1: that force is transferred force. The force is the mass
11:08
Speaker 1: times the the rate of deceleration. Right. So another way
11:13
Speaker 1: to put is how bad you're messed up equals how
11:16
Speaker 1: heavy the car is and the object that hits times
11:19
Speaker 1: how quickly and suddenly it stops. Yeah, So you can
11:24
Speaker 1: actually take force in that equation and and diminish it tremendously.
11:29
Speaker 1: If you can diminish tremendously the rate of acceleration, if
11:33
Speaker 1: you can make if you can extend the time it
11:36
Speaker 1: takes to decelerate, and you you can understand this a
11:39
Speaker 1: lot more easily if you think about when you come
11:42
Speaker 1: to a stop slowly at a stop sign, as opposed
11:46
Speaker 1: to when you have to slam on the brakes and
11:47
Speaker 1: you come to a stop. Now, the next degree above
11:50
Speaker 1: that is when you hit like a pylon and come
11:54
Speaker 1: to a complete stop. So that's what an accident is.
11:57
Speaker 1: It's that transfer of force from one to another through
12:01
Speaker 1: this deceleration, this rapid deceleration. Yeah, and in the case
12:05
Speaker 1: of a crumple zone. Uh, there are two things that
12:07
Speaker 1: is trying to do. Their one is to reduce that
12:10
Speaker 1: initial point of force, initial force from that first point
12:14
Speaker 1: of contact when you hit that phone pole or that
12:16
Speaker 1: other car or whatever. You want to drop that force
12:20
Speaker 1: and then redistribute that away from the people, right right,
12:24
Speaker 1: So the way you drop that force is to extend
12:28
Speaker 1: the rate of deceleration, even by tenths of a second,
12:31
Speaker 1: makes an enormous impact, Like that's all you have in
12:34
Speaker 1: the case of a crash. Right. So Ed points out,
12:37
Speaker 1: um that if you take if you change the deceleration
12:40
Speaker 1: time from point two seconds to point eight seconds, you
12:43
Speaker 1: reduce the total force by huge difference. Yeah, especially if
12:49
Speaker 1: you're in a car accident, like less force being transmitted
12:53
Speaker 1: through the car, is that's preferable, yeah, right, So, Um,
12:58
Speaker 1: the whole point of crumps, the whole thinking behind them,
13:01
Speaker 1: is to basically build an area that can change this deceleration,
13:07
Speaker 1: lengthen it out some so that the forces. Yeah, and
13:11
Speaker 1: then also to kind of redistribute that force throughout the
13:14
Speaker 1: car away from the passengers. That's the whole thing behind
13:18
Speaker 1: it makes total sense. All right, let's take a quick
13:20
Speaker 1: break here and we will come back and talk a
13:23
Speaker 1: little bit about how they're doing that stuff. All right,
13:48
Speaker 1: So a car is it can't be one big crumple zone.
13:53
Speaker 1: There are parts that need to be rigid, Like the
13:56
Speaker 1: if you picture a car, picture the four seat. Let's
14:00
Speaker 1: just talk about a four seater. Let's do it. I
14:02
Speaker 1: know people will be like, what about the third row,
14:04
Speaker 1: there's seven of us in here, whatever the case. Just
14:07
Speaker 1: picture a small box where the people are actually sitting. Yeah,
14:11
Speaker 1: that's the called the passenger compartment. The passenger compartment, that
14:14
Speaker 1: is that box that needs to be rigid. You don't
14:17
Speaker 1: want that crumpling. You want everything before that and after
14:21
Speaker 1: that crumpling to reduce that force and that decert rate
14:26
Speaker 1: of deceleration. So you want that middle to be super strong,
14:30
Speaker 1: and you don't want to because if that crumples, the
14:34
Speaker 1: people aren't protected any longer. They're exposed all sorts of
14:37
Speaker 1: terrible stuff. So it does have to be rigid. But again,
14:41
Speaker 1: before they made the whole thinking was, well, just make
14:44
Speaker 1: the whole car super rigid. And the problem is there
14:48
Speaker 1: has to be something that's absorbing into redistributing that force. Um,
14:53
Speaker 1: and that's what the crumple crumple zone does. So they
14:56
Speaker 1: took that tank of a car and rather the whole
14:59
Speaker 1: car being that, they shrunk it down to just the
15:01
Speaker 1: passenger compartment where it's really needed, and then made the
15:04
Speaker 1: rest of the car a big crumple zone and then
15:07
Speaker 1: surrounded that part with air bags, side curtain, front and
15:11
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So that's what protects the people. But um,
15:14
Speaker 1: the way this article put it in Man sure has
15:17
Speaker 1: a way with words. He talked about thinking of it
15:20
Speaker 1: in terms a car crash in terms of a budget,
15:23
Speaker 1: like a monetary budget, and that's what that forces. And
15:26
Speaker 1: everything that happens is paying a little bit of that budget.
15:32
Speaker 1: It's spending some of it, yeah, spending some taking away
15:34
Speaker 1: from that budget, like like on glass breaks, when the door,
15:38
Speaker 1: you know, when anything any kind of damage happens, that's
15:40
Speaker 1: spending a tiny little bit of that budget because that's energy, right,
15:43
Speaker 1: And then eventually the budgets entirely spent and all the
15:46
Speaker 1: force has been distributed in the accidents over the crash
15:48
Speaker 1: is over right. Um, if you can get other parts
15:53
Speaker 1: besides the passenger compartment and even more importantly the passengers
15:58
Speaker 1: to distribute that force, then ad can be distributed before
16:03
Speaker 1: it gets to the passengers. Yeah, you wanted to be
16:06
Speaker 1: paid down to almost nothing by the time it gets
16:08
Speaker 1: to you. I don't think it's get the imperson. I
16:10
Speaker 1: don't think it's possible to distribute a percent of the force.
16:13
Speaker 1: Probably not, because in that case, like the person wouldn't
16:16
Speaker 1: even you wouldn't feel anything, right, So, but I mean,
16:22
Speaker 1: is that possible? I guess could you design something to
16:25
Speaker 1: where somebody could come to a complete and sudden stop
16:29
Speaker 1: in an impact and not not experience any force whatsoever
16:34
Speaker 1: because all of it was distributed away from the person.
16:37
Speaker 1: Probably not. And that's the point the article makes. Probably
16:40
Speaker 1: not like a drivable manufacturable car, because that's the delicate balance.
16:45
Speaker 1: They they still have to drive and handle in a
16:47
Speaker 1: certain way. And like when you that's what it fascinates
16:50
Speaker 1: me about this is car design. You have to take
16:53
Speaker 1: all these things that are knocking heads against one another
16:56
Speaker 1: into consideration. You know, it's got a gas think in there,
16:59
Speaker 1: things full of flammable fuel and it's crashing into things
17:03
Speaker 1: like it's amazing. It's really like that delicate balance they've
17:07
Speaker 1: walked these days to make cars as safe as they
17:10
Speaker 1: are as astounding to me. So so there are some
17:13
Speaker 1: things that they have to trade off. Like if you
17:15
Speaker 1: have a really good um crumple zone, a big one
17:18
Speaker 1: in front, you're gonna have to do something with your engine.
17:21
Speaker 1: And you can only put an engine so much on
17:23
Speaker 1: top of itself before it needs to just kind of
17:26
Speaker 1: go back toward the passenger right, And you can only
17:29
Speaker 1: move it back so much. And the problem is with
17:31
Speaker 1: an engine. An engine is one of the few things
17:33
Speaker 1: in the car aside from the passenger compartment that is
17:37
Speaker 1: rigid and basically immovable. Like an engine is not going
17:41
Speaker 1: to crumple and bend. It's going to transmit that force.
17:47
Speaker 1: And if that engine comes into the passenger compartment, it's
17:50
Speaker 1: going to say hello and transmit that force right into
17:54
Speaker 1: the people that it runs into. Yeah, and that I
17:57
Speaker 1: mean I remember old car Wrex where the engine is
18:00
Speaker 1: like in the front seat, you know, where the person
18:03
Speaker 1: used to be. That's not a good place for an engine,
18:05
Speaker 1: and that's not a good place at all. So there
18:08
Speaker 1: are considerations you have to you have to do in
18:10
Speaker 1: making a crumple zone, um Like, so in that case
18:13
Speaker 1: you would be like, well, it's likelier that the engine
18:16
Speaker 1: is going to kill the passenger by getting pushed into
18:19
Speaker 1: the passenger compartment. We're just gonna have to make the
18:21
Speaker 1: crump zone a little less um And then another thing,
18:25
Speaker 1: like you said, that they have to deal with is
18:26
Speaker 1: gas tanks. Thought that most cars fuel tanks are in
18:30
Speaker 1: the back, and this is really cool. Most modern cars,
18:35
Speaker 1: when you getting a rear end collision, it's designed the
18:39
Speaker 1: rear crumple zone is designed to go up so that
18:42
Speaker 1: the gas tank is actually lifted up and away from
18:45
Speaker 1: the point of collision, which is usually the hood of
18:47
Speaker 1: a car behind it, right, which happens in a fraction
18:49
Speaker 1: of a second, right, So it's designed to do that.
18:52
Speaker 1: That's part of a crumple zone as well. And that's
18:54
Speaker 1: a huge improvement from the seventies, specifically with the Ford Pinto.
19:00
Speaker 1: So the Ford Pinto. Man, this is this one may
19:03
Speaker 1: even deserve podcasts in and of itself, but I think
19:06
Speaker 1: in like ninetevent definitely the seventies people were dying in
19:11
Speaker 1: fairly low speed rear and collisions because the Pinto's fuel
19:16
Speaker 1: tank would break and catch flame and burn people alive.
19:21
Speaker 1: These cars were exploding in minor collisions, and then the
19:24
Speaker 1: autopsy would show they had like basically not even a
19:27
Speaker 1: bump or a bruise. They had just been burned to
19:29
Speaker 1: death because the Ford Pinto gas tank blew up. And
19:33
Speaker 1: Ford got caught very famously with some internal memos where
19:38
Speaker 1: they calculated the cost benefit of a recall as opposed
19:42
Speaker 1: to paying out lawsuits for human lives, and they said,
19:45
Speaker 1: the human life we're going to say is about five
19:47
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars, So if if you know X number
19:50
Speaker 1: of people see us will end up probably spending forty
19:53
Speaker 1: nine million. But it cost us a hundred and thirty
19:56
Speaker 1: seven million to recall these things and actually make them
19:58
Speaker 1: safe to protect people. So they went with the just
20:01
Speaker 1: handling lawsuits and it was a big deal, and finally
20:04
Speaker 1: there enough of a public outcry came out about it
20:07
Speaker 1: that they finally did something. Um and I think they
20:10
Speaker 1: did recall some Pinto's and then they were like, oh,
20:13
Speaker 1: we'll just put the guess thing in front of the
20:15
Speaker 1: rear axle so that's not exposed during crashes, and a
20:19
Speaker 1: couple of other improvements that cost like a dollar a piece,
20:23
Speaker 1: and they at that point it was kind of um,
20:25
Speaker 1: the Pinto was dead. Yeah, they weren't selling longer. No,
20:30
Speaker 1: I mean, like you want to get a bad name
20:32
Speaker 1: for your car, fiery death is a good way to
20:35
Speaker 1: do it. There was a movie, what was it. It It
20:38
Speaker 1: was one of the spoof movies. Oh it was. It
20:42
Speaker 1: was don't don't talk top secret, Secret barely tapped the tree.
20:48
Speaker 1: It was a Pinto that exploded like it slowed down
20:51
Speaker 1: and went and then went boom. I didn't think it
20:54
Speaker 1: was top secret. So when that World War two, it
20:57
Speaker 1: was an anachronism. I'm I'm nine point nine. That was
21:05
Speaker 1: my first thing too, my first guess. Alright, so, uh,
21:09
Speaker 1: not only gas tanks, but these days with these fancy
21:13
Speaker 1: schmancy electric and hybrid cars, you've got these big battery
21:16
Speaker 1: packs and you've got toxic chemicals, and you know it's
21:19
Speaker 1: you've got to protect that as well. If you, in
21:22
Speaker 1: the case of a Tesla Roadster, if you get into
21:24
Speaker 1: an accident, elon Musk himself comes and pulls you to safety.
21:29
Speaker 1: That's the level of service. Yeah, oh wow, I might
21:33
Speaker 1: be worth it. If you need it. Uh No. In
21:35
Speaker 1: the case of a rodster though, it is pretty neat. Though, Um,
21:38
Speaker 1: it's got a safety mechanism. It shuts off the battery packs,
21:41
Speaker 1: drains all the electric energy from the cables the instant
21:44
Speaker 1: it senses an emergency. Pretty rad. It is pretty rad.
21:48
Speaker 1: What about if your car is tiny, though, it's pretty easy.
21:51
Speaker 1: If you've got a stretch limo, you've got plenty of
21:54
Speaker 1: things to crumple, Yeah, crumple away. But what about like
21:56
Speaker 1: a Mini Cooper. What's this thing? Smart car? Yeah, like
22:00
Speaker 1: a smart car. Um. So the grabster says, well, let's
22:04
Speaker 1: use a smart too as an example. Um. They came
22:07
Speaker 1: up with crumple zones that they call crash boxes, one
22:10
Speaker 1: in the front and one in the rear. But the
22:12
Speaker 1: problem is these are extraordinarily small cars. You've seen smart
22:15
Speaker 1: cars before. It's like the kind you could put like
22:18
Speaker 1: a giant penny in the back and like pull it
22:20
Speaker 1: backward and it takes all It looks like a McDonald's
22:22
Speaker 1: happy meal very much, except a very very expensive one. Um.
22:27
Speaker 1: But the smart cars very small, and when it does
22:29
Speaker 1: get in the crest, it does have these crumple zones,
22:31
Speaker 1: and they do do something, but they The engineers also
22:34
Speaker 1: had to like get kind of clever to like, for example,
22:37
Speaker 1: I think, um, the transmission actually turns into its own
22:41
Speaker 1: crumple zone to redistribute the force, right, Yeah, it's amazing.
22:44
Speaker 1: And um they use the wheels and the tires. They
22:47
Speaker 1: were like, well, these things they're gonna be getting a
22:49
Speaker 1: lot of impact right away, so why not design the wheels,
22:52
Speaker 1: the suspension, the tires, uh two deform and breakaway or
22:57
Speaker 1: even rebound and distribute that kinetic energy elsewhere, which is
23:00
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. It's amazing. Yeah, And so again we should
23:04
Speaker 1: say this is proprietary stuff for the most part, but
23:07
Speaker 1: you can really let your imagination run with these things.
23:09
Speaker 1: Like all you have to do is say, um, you know,
23:13
Speaker 1: like really high end sports cars, they'll use like honeycombed
23:17
Speaker 1: structures which give great, excellent strength under normal conditions, but
23:22
Speaker 1: when they're dented with enough force, they just completely give
23:26
Speaker 1: and crumple and that force gets redistributed throughout the honeycomb.
23:30
Speaker 1: Imagine more lightweight too. Yeah, I guess you think trains,
23:35
Speaker 1: even trains just technology, which is pretty smart too. What
23:38
Speaker 1: they put them on the front and rear of each
23:41
Speaker 1: car compartment, right, each passenger car, and then when the
23:44
Speaker 1: cars to start stacking up, it just gets distributed throughout
23:47
Speaker 1: the train rather than into the people who are trying
23:50
Speaker 1: to eat their seals. Very steak. All right, we let's
23:53
Speaker 1: take another break and we'll come back and finish up
23:55
Speaker 1: with a little bit on everyone's favorite topic of the
23:58
Speaker 1: stuff you should know Army Nascar No So Chuck the
24:22
Speaker 1: Grabster mentions a crash in this article. Michael waltrips Darryll
24:27
Speaker 1: Walt trip No. Michael waltrips crash at Bristol. You look
24:32
Speaker 1: it up. It's pretty bad. It's insane that he not
24:37
Speaker 1: only survived like they show him right after the crash,
24:40
Speaker 1: like waving to the crowd like, hey, I'll be at
24:43
Speaker 1: the bar. Yeah, he probably was too. Oh I would
24:46
Speaker 1: have been have been like give me a flask right now.
24:49
Speaker 1: This is a and it was that the Bristol track
24:52
Speaker 1: in Tennessee. And um, Bristol is a it's not. It's
24:55
Speaker 1: the one of the slowest, thankfully. It's not a superspeedway.
24:59
Speaker 1: It's really small. But he was going fast. Well, you're
25:03
Speaker 1: still racing cars, but it's not like he was. He
25:05
Speaker 1: wasn't going like two hundred miles an hour or anything
25:07
Speaker 1: like how fast is he going? Nina, I don't know.
25:09
Speaker 1: At Bristol. I'm gonna get this wrong. I think. I mean,
25:11
Speaker 1: the top speeds are in the lower one hundred, twenties
25:15
Speaker 1: and thirties. He's still going over one mile an hour,
25:19
Speaker 1: which is several kilometers per hour. And he just stopped
25:24
Speaker 1: all of a sudden because he hit a pylon, a
25:26
Speaker 1: concrete pylon. Yeah, he hits uh. Instead of like another
25:30
Speaker 1: car that will move with you, or offense that will
25:33
Speaker 1: break away, he hits something that had zero give. Now
25:36
Speaker 1: um something else that may have saved him, but it
25:39
Speaker 1: seems it's so slight, it seems minimal. He actually hits
25:42
Speaker 1: the guardrail a fraction of a second before he hit
25:46
Speaker 1: the concrete, and you see some stuff kind of come off.
25:50
Speaker 1: And again, when you look at force, that force of
25:53
Speaker 1: the collision. As a budget, that spent some of that
25:57
Speaker 1: that force when those things takes force for those things
25:59
Speaker 1: to be thrown clear, But it was probably just miniscule
26:03
Speaker 1: compared to the actual impact that came right after that
26:06
Speaker 1: when he hits the concrete and just the car just disintegrates. Well.
26:09
Speaker 1: And this was in before they had done a lot
26:12
Speaker 1: of the safety advances that they have today in NASCAR,
26:17
Speaker 1: and they head points out in this article like he
26:19
Speaker 1: got lucky, Like he shouldn't have survived that crash with
26:22
Speaker 1: the kind of cars they had. He got super lucky.
26:25
Speaker 1: But even if you're not a car race fan and
26:28
Speaker 1: you see these rex on TV where the car just
26:31
Speaker 1: flies onto a million pieces, that's exactly what it's supposed
26:35
Speaker 1: to be doing. And every little piece of that car
26:37
Speaker 1: you see flying off is something that has kept that
26:40
Speaker 1: driver safe. It's so funny to think, like before they
26:43
Speaker 1: designed cars to save you money in the shop after
26:47
Speaker 1: a wreck, but it didn't matter because there's really just
26:51
Speaker 1: saving your a state money because you're dead. Now it's
26:54
Speaker 1: like this is gonna this is gonna cost you a
26:56
Speaker 1: billion dollars to replace this this car. It's basically just
26:59
Speaker 1: told old but you're fine, right, Like that's the thinking
27:03
Speaker 1: behind crumple zones. Basically, yeah, that human life was more
27:06
Speaker 1: important than a bumper that you don't have to replace.
27:10
Speaker 1: Good move. UM in two thousand, In the eighties and nineties, UM, actually,
27:15
Speaker 1: all throughout NASCAR history up until the two thousand's UM,
27:21
Speaker 1: the idea was a little more that old school approach.
27:24
Speaker 1: They wanted these cars to be rigid and stiff because
27:27
Speaker 1: they performed better and they were heavier and you could
27:31
Speaker 1: drive faster and hug the road and handle better. But
27:34
Speaker 1: then in in two thousand one and you know, it's, well,
27:38
Speaker 1: it's not funny at all. I followed NASCAR one time
27:43
Speaker 1: for one season and the very first because I had
27:46
Speaker 1: friends that did it, and I was like just driving
27:49
Speaker 1: in a circle. They're like, no, no no, no, just watch Chuck.
27:53
Speaker 1: It's much more than that. Just watch. You're smart guy,
27:56
Speaker 1: you'll get it. And so I was like, all right.
27:58
Speaker 1: I watched the Daytime five hundred and two thousand one,
28:01
Speaker 1: and that's when dail Ernard died. That was the first
28:04
Speaker 1: race I ever watched, like all the way through, like,
28:06
Speaker 1: does this happen a lot? Well, I was scared I
28:08
Speaker 1: had something to do with it. I don't know if
28:11
Speaker 1: you did. I don't think you're a jinx no. But
28:13
Speaker 1: it was very sad because if you saw that wreck,
28:16
Speaker 1: it didn't appear to be that big of a deal
28:18
Speaker 1: because the car didn't fly into a million pieces. Yeah,
28:21
Speaker 1: he just kind of turned up into the wall and
28:23
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Dale Earnhart's dead. I think they
28:25
Speaker 1: even like they played like a wall sound effect before
28:30
Speaker 1: they realized like, oh wait, yeah, it was awful. So
28:33
Speaker 1: what happened in that case is he had what's called
28:36
Speaker 1: a Bassler skull fracture. So did you look these up? Yeah?
28:40
Speaker 1: I mean this is when you're going really fast and
28:43
Speaker 1: you stop immediately, and in the case of a race
28:45
Speaker 1: car driver, their bodies are completely strapped in, but their
28:49
Speaker 1: heads at the time weren't, and your head goes forward
28:52
Speaker 1: and your body doesn't. Yeah, and you get a fracture,
28:55
Speaker 1: a snap where your spinal column meets your skull. That's
28:59
Speaker 1: the basilar skull fracture. Did you look it up on
29:01
Speaker 1: Google Images? Yeah, it's Man, did you see the raccoon eyes?
29:06
Speaker 1: There's actually, Ah, you can if you're doing an autopsy
29:11
Speaker 1: or something. One way to too if the person has
29:14
Speaker 1: like real dark circles around their eyes and especially under
29:17
Speaker 1: their eyes. Um, that's called raccoon eyes, and it's a
29:20
Speaker 1: symptom of basilar skull fracture. Um. It's pretty crazy stuff.
29:26
Speaker 1: You probably shouldn't look that up because there's some really
29:28
Speaker 1: awful pictures of just dead people with raccoon eyes and
29:32
Speaker 1: the tops of their heads removed and stuff. Man, well
29:35
Speaker 1: because that wreck, because they are in heart with such
29:39
Speaker 1: an icon of the sport. I mean, you know, anytime
29:42
Speaker 1: someone dies it's a tragedy. But he was like on
29:45
Speaker 1: the mount Rushmore of race car drivers, So for him
29:49
Speaker 1: to die in a crash, they really started taking things seriously.
29:53
Speaker 1: And um they created what's called the Car of Tomorrow,
29:56
Speaker 1: which is what they've been racing in I think since
29:58
Speaker 1: two thousand eight. Uh, and that is uh, well, it's
30:02
Speaker 1: essentially just a card that's way way, way safer. We
30:05
Speaker 1: won't get into a lot of the particulars, but there's
30:09
Speaker 1: more styrofoam involved that are crumple zones. It was just
30:13
Speaker 1: a big one. I think the I think it's called
30:15
Speaker 1: the Hans Device is what they started wearing after that,
30:17
Speaker 1: which keeps your head attached to the seat smart so
30:21
Speaker 1: it doesn't snap forward. The drivers didn't like it as
30:24
Speaker 1: much because they couldn't look around as easily, but you know,
30:27
Speaker 1: it's like a give and take with safety. Sure you
30:29
Speaker 1: don't want to die out there either. Let's put some
30:32
Speaker 1: mirrors in there. I got a rear view mirror. We'll
30:36
Speaker 1: put a bigger one up. Uh. I got nothing left, No,
30:41
Speaker 1: you got anything left? As crumple zones part of the
30:44
Speaker 1: growing auto safety suite. Uh. If you want to know
30:49
Speaker 1: more about crumple zones, type the word those words into
30:52
Speaker 1: the search part how stufforks dot com. Since I said
30:54
Speaker 1: search parts notap for listener mail, I'm gonna call this
31:00
Speaker 1: hundreds of doll heads? Did you read this one? Hey?
31:05
Speaker 1: Guys love the show. The lead episode hit home because
31:07
Speaker 1: I worked for a consumer product certification company. We test
31:10
Speaker 1: everything from guitars to pacifiers to chainsaws, and one of
31:14
Speaker 1: our responsibilities is certifying low lead content. UM. Part of
31:20
Speaker 1: our federal code mandates that surface coatings paint on children's
31:23
Speaker 1: products and furniture contained no more than ninety parts per
31:26
Speaker 1: million of lead at This limit was originally six hundred
31:29
Speaker 1: parts per million, but it was lowered after the lead
31:31
Speaker 1: toy panic of two thousand seven. Remember that one, the
31:35
Speaker 1: Great lead Panic of two thousand Do you know? Yeah?
31:38
Speaker 1: Remember the Chinese toys turned up with lead in it
31:40
Speaker 1: and everybody's like, get those things out of here. I
31:43
Speaker 1: think I slept through most of two thousand seven. Yeah.
31:46
Speaker 1: Did you have mono mature? Okay? Uh? And our trace
31:50
Speaker 1: Metals Analytics lab we test thousands of products every year. Uh,
31:53
Speaker 1: for heavy metals, lead, mercury, arson, etcetera, and other restricted substances.
31:59
Speaker 1: My first job at the company was to use a
32:00
Speaker 1: razor blade and physically scraped surface coatings off toys for
32:04
Speaker 1: lead testing UH. This job was quite tedious due to
32:07
Speaker 1: the amount of UH scraped surface coating needed for acid
32:11
Speaker 1: digestion and chemical analysis. The early days of your podcast
32:15
Speaker 1: definitely helped. In one instance, our lab we asked was
32:18
Speaker 1: asked to test only the painted eyebrows of a doll.
32:22
Speaker 1: You can imagine how little surface coating can be collected
32:25
Speaker 1: from one set of eyebrows. Due to this, I was
32:27
Speaker 1: surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of doll heads with scraped eyebrows.
32:33
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, the sites of hundreds of eyebrows
32:36
Speaker 1: doll heads staring at you as you work is quite
32:37
Speaker 1: off putting. If their dead eyes just want you to
32:40
Speaker 1: know there were thousands of people working hard every day
32:43
Speaker 1: to ensure the products are safer you and your families.
32:45
Speaker 1: Thanks guys, keep up the great work. And that is Matt.
32:47
Speaker 1: Thank you. Matt. Hat is off to you for what
32:51
Speaker 1: you do for a living things, for keeping him with
32:53
Speaker 1: soul safe, tucking us all in at night. If you
32:56
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, you can tweet
32:58
Speaker 1: to us the spy Scape Podcast. You can join us
33:00
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know, hang
33:02
Speaker 1: out with us on Instagram at s y s K
33:04
Speaker 1: podcast so you can send us an email to Stuff
33:06
Speaker 1: podcast at how stuff Works dot com and has always
33:09
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
33:11
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com for more on this and thousands
33:18
Speaker 1: of other topics. Does it how stuff Works dot com