Tougher guardrails needed for heavier electric vehicles

AccuWeather

Electric vehicles are plowing through guardrails in crash tests. Experts are studying new designs to prepare for heavier EVs and crashes on wet or dry roads.

Transcript

00:00 From mountainside race courses to distracted driving and losing control on wet and snowy highways,

00:08 guardrails have saved thousands of lives since they were invented in 1933.

00:13 The guardrail system behaves a little bit like a rubber band, capturing the vehicle by deflecting and stretching in tension

00:21 and then redirecting the vehicle and then thereafter.

00:24 As cars and trucks have grown larger in America, guardrails have gotten tougher, but new crash tests have found

00:31 many current guardrails are no match for electric trucks and cars with heavy batteries.

00:38 It revealed that our guardrail systems are not yet suitable to capture the vehicles across the weight and size spectrum

00:45 that we are encountering today.

00:47 Impacting at 60 miles an hour, this 7,000 pound electric pickup plowed right through the steel guardrail.

00:55 Cody Stolle and the team with Midwest Roadside Safety Facility at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln

01:01 also put this electric sedan to the test.

01:04 It sliced right through and underneath the guardrail.

01:08 One of the nice things about EVs is that their center of gravity is much lower.

01:11 They are more stable and more resistant to tripping and rolling over,

01:15 but the CG height has a grave effect on how the vehicle interacts with the guardrail system itself.

01:21 Experts say the rate of crashes on wet, snowy, or icy roads may be doubled or tripled compared to dry conditions,

01:29 but drivers usually slow down in bad weather, so the impacts are less severe.

01:34 When we have dry or hot weather conditions, we have vehicles traveling at higher speed,

01:38 and that's when, unfortunately, the risk when a runoff road crash occurs, that's when it's at its highest.

01:45 These crash tests and computer modeling will help experts design the next generation of guardrails

01:51 to better withstand heavier vehicle impacts in any weather condition.

01:56 It's going to take time and money to fix this, and both of which are tight,

02:00 but the commitment of our state departments of transportation and the federal government,

02:04 together, we're going to be able to solve this problem.

02:07 For AccuWeather, I'm Bill Waddell.

02:12 (water sloshing)

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