...and unlike the Pinto, because we are so deep into fucked-reality-ville, it won't get recalled.
this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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Ford's reasoning was that it was cheaper to pay out for the injuries and deaths than to change the car. Cybertruck has a much better plot armor, a fanbase that refuses to believe it's crap.
I think that fanbase is staying to wane. But who knows, maybe the gas loving Maga rednecks will start buying...who am I kidding, most of them can't afford the ridiculous price tag.
Not only that, it's not even a proper truck. They could have come up with a standard truck design and used tech and EV to create a new niche that was usable. But no one can tell Elon no, so his 5-year-old self's vision had to be made because it's different. Sometimes different doesn't mean better.
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What often happens in cases like that is people on the edge leave, but those who remain are now distilled insanity.
They can just buy a used one since the value of these fucking hunks of junk drops dramatically once its driven at all.
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the maga crowd has diesel truck attached to their very masculinity, thats never happening.
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Nah. The Ford Pinto laid the groundwork for the NHTSA's regulatory control of forced recalls. The only way this thing doesn't get recalled for being dangerous is if Musk's D. o. g. e manages to undercut or defund the NHTSA.
Additionally, other countries with better regulatory bodies won't even allow it to be sold or will require mandatory recall of these vehicles which means the end of the cyber truck. They can't even sell them because people don't want them.
The other thing is that insurance companies can absolutely refuse to insure them and if I'm honest, they may be the main reason that the NHTSA doesn't back down from regulating them (insurance companies are a powerful lobby, and they absolutely can countermand the automotive lobby in some cases).
My point is, it's more complicated than just "Musk is a government official now, and historically dangerous cars weren't recalled".
NHTSA
Project 2025 has explicit targets for reforming NHTSA. It is unambiguously in their sights, just lower on the priority list.
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I'd like to thank you for this measured take in response to my unbridled cynicism.
To be fair, you made a good point. In the article it states pretty definitively that the NHTSA hasn't been allowed to have the Cybertruck independently crash tested which is bogus as hell.
The fact that it can't force that from any car manufacturer doesn't really make sense. They haven't even received relevant data related to Tesla's in house crash testing and I can't even begin to understand how that's legal.
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I love Elon Bad posts, but I think it's worthwhile to examine why Elon bad in this case.
Like many reactionaries, Elon's business philosophy is pure tech-bro-libertarianism. And like all libertarians, he's stuck in the neoliberal mindset of less regulation (don't scrutinize) and more efficiency (let me be cheap), in order to create the safe space that industrialists need to ~~extract~~, er create.
He's literally said things like (paraphrasing)
When I see a specification for three bolts I ask: why can't we do it with two?
His transparent reasoning is that if he's allowed to cut corners, he'll save money today and consequences can be dealt with when they arise.
He's following the software model of release a minimally viable product and patch it later. Only instead of user frustration at being beta testers, you fucking die maybe.
Him and his libertarian friends fuck up left and right. Crashing startups and just getting more money for another. Constant recalls. Blowing up rockets until it works.
Yet they hold the government to a standard of being perfect and high performing with no room for failure. NASA can’t be blowing up rockets. As soon as they do the world comes down on them.
And Trump is the biggest fuckup of all these guys.
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You can't use "literally" and "paraphrasing" like that.
Thank you, my pedantic friend. (I say this because I'm often the one making the comment and getting the eyerolls)
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I think it's also worth noting that Elon Musk is a scammer. Every other word out of his mouth is likely a lie. He's been claiming to already have technologies available for his Tesla cars, his SpaceX rockets, etc, all ready to go and.. it never happened. Tesla full self driving? The Tesla taxis? SpaceX on Mars? The Tesla laughably stupid robots? Even those were faked.
Claims after claims for decades and literally no results
The guy is a full on bait and switch yet everyone seems to lap up everything this scammer says.
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I'm guessing that some people at the National Transportation Safety Board are about to get fired by Elon Musk.
Cybertruck will have 14.52 fatalities per 100,000 units — far eclipsing the Pinto’s 0.85.
Holy shit, that means the Cybertruck fatality rate is around 17 times higher than the Pinto's!
If you read the article is was specifically died by fire. Not any other cause of death.
Right but the specific issue with the Pinto was that it would explode into flames on a rear impact, so this is the appropriate metric.
Like deaths from other accidents would skew the numbers anyway because 70s cars were death traps compared to today, but even in that context, the Pinto's explosions were alarming.
Beating it on that isolated metric is a very special kind of achievement.
Top of the line in utility sports.
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts.
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The Pinto got well known for a couple of reasons.
One, the classic "exploding in a rear end collision." The design flaw here was that in certain rear collisions, the fuel tank would be pushed into the rear differential. Not only could this rupture the fuel tank, it could also produce a spark. Boom. Lots of cars had this same design in the 70s, with the fuel tank low in the rear, right behind the rear differential.
Two, the infamous Pinto Memo, which did a cost benefit analysis that determined it would be cheaper for Ford to not fix the problem, and just settle whatever cases came up. This very clearly inspired the Fight Club recall formula scene. Take note that the car used in that scene is a Lincoln Town Car, produced by Ford Motor Company.
The kicker for the Pinto recall? What they did to fix it:
- Two sheets of 1/8" plastic, each about 18" square
- Some long zip ties
- Layer the two sheets over the rear diff, zip tie them to the axle
That's it. My dad pointed this out to me in his shop some time in the late 80s or early 90s. He had a Pinto in for an oil change or something, "Hey, let me show you this." It was such a hacky "repair."
Curious: how effective was that “repair”? Did it actually make a difference at all?
It would have prevented the "spark" part of the failure condition, but not the tank rupturing part.
Stopping the explosions seems like a good enough sort of solution to me
A more appropriate solution would be a plastic shield designed to fit around the whole front of the gas tank, and then appropriately fixed to the vehicle, as opposed to "some hardware store shit."
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And some people wonder why the cybertruck is barely sold outside the US.
Everything I hear about this thing is bad.
keep in mind that while the cybertruck might seem like a bad vehicle, it also is a bad vehicle
It's barely sold outside the US because other places (like the EU) also care about the safety of people outside the vehicle. That's why European and Asian cars (except the models explicitly for the US market like the Tacoma) are designed for pedestrians to be deflected, while US cars are a moving brick wall which will squish them like a bug.
Also, I suspect you'd need commercial plates and a special license to drive it most other places, due to the weight.
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Is it me or are there guts in this picture?
Hard to tell. The picture was widely used in the media, and they're usually quite careful about that kind of thing. There's something reddish in it, but it could be material from the truck or its contents. One of the photos the police released of his guns had some red foamy material in it, another photo had some stringy red material (plastic?) lying in the road, and there were various red items in the bed too. I'll mark it NSFW just in case.
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Really took the wind out of my satirical comment that Musk wanted to bring back the Pinto.
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The thing is a very obvious death trap to anyone that knows simple physics. There are videos testing what happens when a Cybertruck hits a hard wall at certain speeds. That thing didn't crumple at all until speeds greater than 35 mph. And even then it only barely crumples at all. The damage it could produce hitting another vehicle would be catastrophic and fatal.
I was driving out of a parking lot yesterday just as a Cybertruck started to pull in off the street from the left. The driver was white-knuckling the wheel and was frantically looking around as I assume he could barely see out of the goddamn thing as he swung so wide he nearly clipped my car. He needed almost the entire driveway to make his turn.
I cannot imagine dropping so much money on something so useless and so hideous.
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It seems obvious in hindsight. Sheet metal doors will crumple in a way that can't be opened, trapping occupants. The fire doesn't need to start in the relatively safe and armored battery system. It could be pinched wiring causing a short that ignites plastic interiors, or a fire from another vehicle spreading to the cybertruck.
I'm sure someone mentioned all this to them during design.
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Garbage in, garbage out
Was the Pinto really that bad, though, or did Mother Jones do them dirty?
In the numbers above, the Pinto is hardly a standout deathtrap; I mean, by modern standards, sure, everything on that list is a horrible deathtrap, but the Pinto was safer than the Toyota Corolla or the Beetle or the Datsun 210, and none of those cars are as burdened with the oppressive fiery deathtrap narrative as the Pinto is. In fact, the Pinto’s overall deaths per million vehicles is better than the average!
https://www.theautopian.com/its-long-past-time-to-stop-making-fun-of-the-ford-pinto/
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