Rescue Workers say Hybrid Cars a Danger

This article was posted toFark.com earlier today. The thread that followed was pretty interesting.

 

which means 20/20 should be doing a piece on it any minute now... the show i refer to as "one third the IQ of 60 Minutes"......

 

Yesterday, Fox News ran about a 30 second blurb on the "danger to rescue workers." Curiously, about 3 hours prior to that, the same station ran about a 2 minute segment on the increasing popularity of Hybrids and how great they are! They featured the Prius.
P.S. No, I don't watch Fox News all day. I just happened to catch both news bites.

 

Channel 4 (KRON) in the San Francisco Bay Area ran a small segment with an Oakland Fire Chief saying that they were very worried. But it seemed like they didn't do that much research on it (like they pretty much always do.)

http://www.kron.com/Global/story.asp?s=%20%201839414

 

You know, the FCC should require them to change their name to Fox "News" anyways. Not like anyone watching it would notice.

-m.

 

Finally, a rebuttal article.

However, Google News shows that the original AP "danger of hybrids to rescue workers" article continues to spread to various newspapers.

 

PS Most amusing headline I saw regarding the AP article:

"Hybrid Cars May Send God's Electrical Wrath to Punish Oil-Hating Pinkos"

:lol:

 

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Well, not quite true. According to the Prios 2004 model emergency response guide, the HV battery pack is at 201 volts. There's an inverter to jump it up to 500 Volts to minimize resistive losses in powering the electric motor. However, it also states "The HV battery pack relays will automatically open to stop electricity flow in a collision sufficient to activate the SRS airbags."

 

Nice article here regarding how fire and emergency workers are learning the ropes for hybrid vehicles.

Good quote from article:

 

I printed out the guide for rescue workers available on this site and gave it to our local fire/rescue chief. He claims that they have been aware for sometime of the issues surrounding rescue from such vehicles and was appreciative for the info.
He went on to say that they are continually updated on new offerings, the most important being all the new configurations of air bags.
Bottom line for his crew is that they will continue to learn and adapt as new technology comes along. Seemed like a reasonable response.
Tom

 

As things stand with 1st responders that I know, what they worry about has much less to do with the Electrical system than the side airbags. When cutting into the car thru the struts an undeployed airbag might be triggered causing further injury to the occupant and injury to the rescue worker. Rarely are they going thru the undercarriage.

Obviously, this will become more of an issue with all cars as the new NHTSA mandates for side airbags in all cars by 2006.