If you want to be prepared for automotive incidents:
1. Check your mood and intoxication level before and while driving. Mood is more important than everything besides drugs and alcohol.
2. Left turns (or across traffic as applicable) are dangerous. Take extra care while turning left (or across traffic).
3. Using screens at night is bad for everyone, but especially above the age of 40, both focus and iris (light balance) response take longer. Using a screen changes your focus and blows out your night vision.
4. If your car has pushbutton electronic door openers, PRACTICE opening the door without battery power.
Please stop building cars with this "feature." We honestly should make them illegal.
Not saying the car is great, just that I found the door lever easily. I'd still rather have real controls (and a real sensor) for the wipers and the reliance on software and software updates makes me very nervous. You can't even open the glove box without a voice command or touch screen (as far as I can tell).
https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/2020_2024_modely/en_us/GU...
> Not all Model Y vehicles are equipped with a manual release for the rear doors.
How is that even allowed?
This is almost certainly what killed those kids in piedmont
On that note, if anyone with Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, et al. would like to revisit the way their apps handle ride assignment - specifically, the way platforms generally refuse to assign orders when the car is stationary, but then inundate contractors with notifications that must be responded to immediately when the car is in motion - it'd be much appreciated.
There is also the issue of fleet turnover. With the average age of US vehicles pushing 13 years, the install base is still overwhelmingly tempered glass. Writing off the tool entirely because new luxury cars have moved on ignores the reality of what people are actually driving. You are statistically much more likely to be trapped in a 2012 Civic than a 2025 S-Class.
Nope. The article states the following just after the table:
> It's true that not all automakers have switched over to laminated glass for the side windows; the FMVSS 226 law stipulates that you can get around it if you install elaborate side airbags that also prevent ejection.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.226
> Ejection mitigation countermeasure means a device or devices, except seat belts, integrated into the vehicle that reduce the likelihood of occupant ejection through a side window opening, and that requires no action by the occupant for activation.
Lamination and side airbags seem to be the way it’s usually done today, but nothing prevents a better way.
Fire extinguishers are for small fires! If a little oil in your frying pan catches on fire and you don't have a lid readily available to smother it, use a fire extinguisher. But if your smoke alarm wakes you up and you discover your whole kitchen on fire, get out. The fire extinguisher will not help in that situation, and it may cause you to waste time. (Tip: If and only if the fire extinguisher is easily available, carry it with you as you exit. You might need it to use it clear a path to get out.)
It'll give you a chance to practice putting out an actual fire, refresh first aid skills, learn the incident command system, learn basic search and rescue, and other preparedness skills to help yourself, your family, and neighbors in an emergency (in that order).
[0]: https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/individuals-communit...
Really though, it mostly is just pull pin -> aim low (at the base and source of the fire) -> squeeze until extinguished. Sweep the nozzle from side to side to get proper coverage.
They're intended to be used by anyone with no training, so there's not much to go wrong (assuming you haven't bought the wrong type and use it on an oil fire, although most of the ones I see for sale for consumers are the powder kind, which work on anything. The water ones are the worst, and I've never seen one).
nozzle gets veeery cold as gas expands, so you can get frost burns
If you find yourself with a fire and an extinguisher, do not hesitate to pull the pin, and go to it. You'll figure it out. In the end, you can't really make the situation worse.
Also, we never used a seatbelt ripper -- they don't work. All first responders carrier trauma shears. Those do work and have multiple purposes.
I mean, still doesn’t hurt to get more familiar, but…
Unfortunately, afaik, porclean/cermaic glass breakers are illegal in most states. They are "Burglary Tools".
Nothing wrong with keeping a box of spark plugs in your center console though
>Nothing wrong with keeping a box of spark plugs in your center console though
But then you've got to keep a tool to break the spark plug to give you a sharp ceramic shard to get through the glass.
...unless you're demonstrating unbreakable cybertruck glass to the world.
3 of them are mine, my 2002 car has taken huge rocks like a champ…
Its big glass im telling you, esp because the recalibration stuff for Assistive Steering is like 7-800 bucks.
Then we got a 2022 Passport and I swear every single trip has a new crack or chip. I was surprisingly fortunate to be talked into the windshield warranty as the sales guy has been through this exact thing and replacing these windshields with assistive tech is expensive. That warranty has already paid for itself and more including once full windshield replacement.
I did end up getting a windshield replacement shortly after purchase (like 6 months into ownership a rock came out of a truck and hit my windshield). I got it replaced for the normal $100-$200 not from the dealership and the vision system has had no issues.
Yeesh at that point I'd just be buying a Comma.
I’ll probably be doing my own windshield on my Tesla to avoid this. Safelight has decent prices but whacks you with a huge fee for pressing “calibrate” in the service menu, which is user accessible.
That was my experience earlier in the year: I was driving alongside a large fuel tanker on a city road when a tiny stone chip, probably thrown up from under the tanker’s tyres, struck the front windscreen. It took about an 1 ½ hour for the initially invisible crack to spread into an irreparable 30 cm one – effectively right in front of my eyes – and the windscreen had to be replaced. Lesson learned: do not drive anywhere near large trucks or fuel tankers or maintain a larger distance.
But the laminated glass will prevent the structural collapse of the windshield and will also prevent the occupants from being showered with glass shards. It is also more likely that the windshield will withstand an impact from a large stone, leaving a localised and static crack that can be repaired with resin.
https://www.lifelinerescuetools.com/products/lifeline-escape...
https://www.ajaxrescuetools.com/prod-20-1-127-28/extrication...
https://www.victorinox.com/en-DE/Products/Swiss-Army-Knife%E...
Rescue tool?
https://www.victorinox.com/en-US/Products/Swiss-Army-Knife%E...
Plus not all headrests can be removed anyway.
Am I the only one who doesn’t know what EDC is?
Then it logically follows that either the only defensible approach is to not have any safety solutions, or that there simply isn’t a defensible approach.
The tradeoffs are unavoidable, a seatbelt or airbag might very well kill someone despite saving countless lives. Even tech like lane departure warnings will almost inevitably distract and kill someone.
Safety design very often involves trade offs. The chances you get partially ejected and killed during a rollover are meaningfully higher than the chances you die because you can’t break the glass to get out. Do you even keep a glass breaker in your car or do you imagine after surviving a wreck that’s trapped you inside your car that you will have the strength to just punch through a glass window?
> fewer than 300 airbag-related deaths
So, they do kill people.
They kill people at a low enough rate that make them both worth installing, and mandating, compared to the alternatives.
I think likely much better would be to mandate solution that forces doors to fully unlock in case of a crash or large water ingress.
Uh huh... Now consider this scenario; you lose control and crash into a tree. You are out and your car catches fire. Who gets to the scene first? Firefighters, or probably just whichever randos happened to be right there when it happened? Probably the later. Probably for the best if one of them is able to break your window and pull you out.
It is a fun feather in your cap, but definitely not suitable for a first run through of the game.
It’s another Half-Life reference
In some states it is the law that if you are from out of state and get a speeding ticket, you either have to pay the officer in cash while you are stopped or they can take you to jail until money is posted or it is your court date.
This happened to a friend of mine from Wisconsin, visiting me in Michigan about ten years ago. I was shocked to learn this was actual Mochigan law, and could hardly believe it even after verifying it. He felt very “lucky” to have had several hundred dollars in cash to simply hand over to the officer. Michigan only just rescinded those laws in 2019: https://landline.media/michigan-laws-end-roadside-cash-payme...