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How Death-Proof Cars Work · Stuff You Should Know

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  Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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  Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
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  Speaker 1: from house stuff works dot Com? Hi, and welcome to
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  Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, as staff writer here at
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  Speaker 1: how stuff works dot Com. With me is my trustee
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  Speaker 1: and double jointed edit tricks, Candice Gibson. How are you, Candice? So, Candice,
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  Speaker 1: you want to join me? And given a shout out
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  Speaker 1: to our favorite listener. Okay, so, hey Billy, thanks for listening.
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  Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed this podcast as much as the others. Um,
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  Speaker 1: And what we're talking about this week is Deathproof cars,
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  Speaker 1: which is just super cool. Candice. Have you ever seen
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  Speaker 1: the movie Deathproof? Candice? Have you ever seen the movie Ghostbusters? No? Okay,
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  Speaker 1: well you need to see both. Well, we'll just talk
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  Speaker 1: about death Proof now. I'll tell you about Ghostbusters later. So. Um,
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  Speaker 1: in the movie, uh, there's a guy named stuntman Mike,
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  Speaker 1: and he's got this car. But I know a really
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  Speaker 1: cool car when I see one, And something in Mike's
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  Speaker 1: car is cool in aces. It's a nineteen seventy Chevy
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  Speaker 1: Nova and it has like a skull with lightning bolts
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  Speaker 1: for crossbones on the hood and he has a reinforced
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  Speaker 1: with steel beams, shadow proof glass, five points seatbelt, all
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  Speaker 1: this other stuff. Um. And the reason he has gone
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  Speaker 1: to the trouble of death proofing his car is because
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  Speaker 1: he loves to ram it into other people's cars at
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  Speaker 1: high speeds and kill him. So he just generally reeks
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  Speaker 1: havoc on the highway. And something in Mike's car is
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  Speaker 1: death proof. He walks away from it several times. Uh.
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  Speaker 1: And it turns out that they're in real life and
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  Speaker 1: this is just a movie as far as we know.
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  Speaker 1: It's not based on any real life events hopefully. Um.
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  Speaker 1: But in real life there are some people who are
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  Speaker 1: thinking about death proof cars, but they're kind of taking
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  Speaker 1: it in another direction. You know much about that, Candice.
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  Speaker 1: I do, and I'll redeem myself since I lack movie knowledge.
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  Speaker 1: This is a European commission called they Prevent Safety Research Group,
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  Speaker 1: and they're very lofty goal is to reduce auto accidents
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  Speaker 1: in Europe by fifty cent by the year. And to
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  Speaker 1: this end, a very well renowned European automaker Revolvo. Volvo
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  Speaker 1: I used to have one to I have one, and
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  Speaker 1: actually our producer Jerry admitted that she had one as well.
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  Speaker 1: So Volvos are very popular around the office. I'll love
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  Speaker 1: those bees. Um, they have a vowed to make an
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  Speaker 1: injury proof car by and it's not going to be
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  Speaker 1: injury proof. And the way that stuntman Mikes is it's
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  Speaker 1: actually going to rely on digital features to reinforce it.
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  Speaker 1: And that's a that's a pretty good thing actually because
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  Speaker 1: stuntman Mike, he's a hard driver. But for the most part,
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  Speaker 1: we humans tend to fold like card tables under pressure,
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  Speaker 1: especially when it comes to collisions. Yeah, well they're pretty scary.
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  Speaker 1: And the way that our our brain works just a
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  Speaker 1: short little lesson for you. You can read more about
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  Speaker 1: it and healthier works on how stuff works dot com. Essentially,
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  Speaker 1: when you perceive something that's kind of harry, your brain
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  Speaker 1: interpret systemulus and start sending chemicals through your body to
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  Speaker 1: help with your reaction to that. Your fight or flight syndrome,
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  Speaker 1: and some things that happen are like your breathing speeds
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  Speaker 1: up and your heart starts racing, and your muscles tense
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  Speaker 1: up and you can't always react. And in the case
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  Speaker 1: of auto accidents, that's pretty scary because in fifty of
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  Speaker 1: rare end collisions, people don't even apply the brakes because
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  Speaker 1: they're too frozen in fear and actually a big whopping
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  Speaker 1: one point one seconds path before drivers in the phase
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  Speaker 1: of an impending collision do anything at all. Yeah, which
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  Speaker 1: which goes to lending creams to my theory that humans
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  Speaker 1: are useless and I'm not the only one who thinks
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  Speaker 1: to see that these engineers that prevent are basically taking
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  Speaker 1: humans out of the equation when it comes to facing
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  Speaker 1: a collision. Right. Um, there's already a lot of features
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  Speaker 1: on the digital car that you mentioned, which is another
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  Speaker 1: article on how stuff works dot com um, and there
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  Speaker 1: are there are all sorts of like safety features that
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  Speaker 1: are popping up on high end luxury ours, uh, like
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  Speaker 1: the blind spot detection system, which uses sensors to detect
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  Speaker 1: when a car is in your blind spot and you
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  Speaker 1: can't see it, or um collision prevention systems, which also
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  Speaker 1: use sensors to tell when you're coming up really fast
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  Speaker 1: on another obstacle at stakes self tightening seat belts, breaks
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  Speaker 1: that can adjust pressure for your foot and all of
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  Speaker 1: these features like combined to gather are going to be
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  Speaker 1: a part of this injury proof car. And what's more,
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  Speaker 1: you know we mentioned breaks that increase pressure for you
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  Speaker 1: if you can't quite break as hard as you like
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  Speaker 1: to you before you hit something there you like myself,
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  Speaker 1: um but this car could actually break for you. So
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  Speaker 1: completely removing humans from the equation, taking out emotionality and
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  Speaker 1: replacing it with hardcore rationality and the hardcore rationalities what
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  Speaker 1: you want in the face of a collision. And it's
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  Speaker 1: not just breaking for you. Some some cars will be
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  Speaker 1: steering out of the way for you, and the the
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  Speaker 1: the injury proof car most likely will be so set
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  Speaker 1: with sensors it will be aware of everything that's going
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  Speaker 1: on around it and ahead of it and behind it.
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  Speaker 1: And um so in the future, when you have to
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  Speaker 1: swerve one way or another in the face of a collision,
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  Speaker 1: your car may say, okay, well, we've got a baby
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  Speaker 1: in a stroller being pushed by a mom to the
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  Speaker 1: right and a squirrel the left, and the car will
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  Speaker 1: swerve to the left and goodbye squirrel. So there's a
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  Speaker 1: lot more information on this in the article I wrote
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  Speaker 1: in Candice edited Can a car Really be Death Proof?
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  Speaker 1: You can read it on how Stuff Works dot com
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  Speaker 1: dot com for moral this and thousands of other topics.
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