I just received this months open road from the NRMA now there at it as
well about bull bars. Have you ever sat in traffic and had a large SUV pull up next to you, its bumper at the same height as you head? And did you idly wonder what might happen if that same bumper was heading straight towards your head in a T-Bone crash?
Jack Haley says there's plenty of evidence to suggest that it wouldn't be pretty, which is why curtain airbags are vital - they could he the only thing between you and a larger car. It's also why automotive design is like an arms race, with today's light cars, like the Yaris, having similar interior room and far superior crash management to the large cars of io and ao years ago.
That `arms race' is simply fuelled by vehicle incompatibility. Drivers of smaller cars need protection from larger cars.
But what if you drive an SUV? What can you do to minimise its impact on a smaller vehicle? Put simply, don't fit a bullhar. NRMA does not support the use of bullbars in urban areas.
Bullhars are unfriendly towards pedestrians and they defeat the smart strategies that car designers have come up with to help larger vehicles absorb more than their
share of the energy in a crash. A bullbar can act like a battering ram, intruding further into the cabin of a smaller car and posing a greater threat to its occupants. There's another good reason to avoid Uullbars, says Jack. "NRMA Insurance has found that vehicles with bullbars are more expensive to repair."
It sounds strange but makes sense when you think about how modern cars (and SUVs) are designed to absorb energy. "A bullbar transfers crash energy across the entire front of the vehicle and can damage parts of the vehicle that might not have [otherwise] been affected by the crash," says Jack.
Rural drivers like bullbars because they can prevent an animal impact from becoming a major event that might leave the driver stranded by the side of the road.
"There's some justification for this," says Jack. "But it's better if you can avoid driving at dusk and dawn, when animals aren't so common." Removable bullbars would be an even better idea, as they'd allow drivers to put one on for rural work and remove it for urban driving. But so far, that's all they are - a good idea that's not available.Have a close look at a modern car and you'll notice deep flanks (designed to help in a side impact) and taller bonnets flowing down into low fronts. You'll also notice that the pillars holding the roof up are thicker than they once were. There are good reasons for all these design features, but in some ways they're working against one another.
Open the bonnet on some recent model cars and you'll see lots of room between the engine's hard points and both the bonnet and the grille. This isn't just design whimsy. High bonnets are designed to stop pedestrians hitting the hard components that make up the engine and
suspension. The bonnet is intended to crush and absorb a pedestrian impact, while the low snout is designed to sweep a pedestrian up, onto the bonnet and away from being run over by the wheels.
This is another area where bullbars can really confound car designers. Instead of sweeping a pedestrian up and out of harm's way (
well, relatively speaking - no one wants to get hit by a car), they'll knock the pedestrian forward with lots of force and a high risk of head impact with the hard road surface. If the force doesn't do significant injury, then the wheels could, since the hapless pedestrian is usually knocked into the vehicle's path. Regards Steve M