Hacker Remix

Tesla Cybertruck Banned and Seized by Police in the U.K

21 points by cratermoon 14 hours ago | 8 comments

hn_throwaway_99 14 hours ago

A question about the Cybertruck's "5 star safety rating" from the NHTSA. I don't think many people have an issue with the Cybertruck keeping its occupants safe in a crash (or, at least, that's not the concern I've heard), it's about the potential dangers to pedestrians and other road users. I think the Cybertruck looks pretty massive, and I live in Texas where giant trucks are the norm. In the UK it must look like a tank, relatively.

From what I can tell, it doesn't look like the NHTSA safety ratings take potential dangers to non-occupants into account. Am I correct in this understanding? If so, that seems like a giant mistake. In the US it feels cars and trucks have just gotten bigger and bigger, and one reason is that for any individual, a bigger car is safer. But when everyone drives giant vehicles, safety is much worse for everyone, because you just have overall much more kinetic energy zipping around the highways.

xnx 2 hours ago

Then NHTSA doesn't even test crashes between different sized vehicles because this would expose how much safer for the occupants it is to be in a larger, higher, more massive vehicle.

cratermoon 13 hours ago

Like much of US automobile culture, the emphasis on what's best for the cars and their occupants. Yes, the NHTSA ratings are heavily tilted towards the safety of occupants of the vehicle. Highway and road design are also skewed towards the best outcome for the automobile. Think of it like a trolley problem where the ideal result is the least damage to the trolley and harm to its occupants.

A relatively new term has come into use, though: Vulnerable Road Users. The current state of automobile and road safety has drastically reduced the number and severity of injured and killed automobile occupants. What's continued to rise is the numbers of pedestrians, cyclists, people using wheelchairs and mobility devices, and even people who work alongside automobile infrastructure.

The lack of concern for anyone outside of a motor vehicle is part of why driverless cars have been licensed despite well-publicized incidents involving these vehicles, e.g. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...

gnabgib 14 hours ago

Discussion at the time (20 points, 2 months ago, 51 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42748172

croes 14 hours ago

> The bottom line is that the vehicle is actually banned in the U.K., which means it cannot be legally driven on public roads as it does not meet the country’s safety standards in many ways.

palata 14 hours ago

> This news is controversial, however, as the Tesla truck has only just recently earned a five-star rating from America’s traffic authority, NHTSA

Was the rating given by Musk? Sounds like it's how it's working in the US these days.

cratermoon 13 hours ago

Nah, US safety ratings are stuck in the 70s/80s, and haven't really been much of a barrier in a couple of decades at least. Almost anything on the road will pass, and getting a 4- or even 5-star rating is common. "In the 2020 model year, NHTSA crash-tested 353 cars in the U.S. market, according to its website (many of those cars were different models of the same make; for example, NHTSA tested the 2020 Corolla four-door, four-door Hybrid, and hatchback). Of those 353 cars, 73 percent received a perfect five-star rating" https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-us-invented-life-saving-...