Lil4X
Elio Addict
Elio Motors has designed in some outstanding safety systems, including a roll cage, air bags, crumple zones, ABS, VSC, etc. that can only come from the manufacturer. But I've been thinking about a few things I can do to ensure the safety of my little pink body in commuter traffic.
- First, you want to be seen, and to that end, I propose a set of fog lights. Not just for visibility in our frequent coastal fogs, but for more lights thrown down the road (on low beam only, if it has to comply with auto lighting regs) for visibility.
- Color plays a part in this visibility thing too. Rocket silver or black is nice, but out on a foggy road or at night they are pretty close to stealth mode. If not DRLs, maybe getting in the habit of running with your lights on - like a motorcycle - will help.
- Then a horn that is loud and distinctive. Cossetted in their 2-ton leather cocoons, with their sound systems blasting away, your fellow motorists are unlikely to hear a warning honk when they change lanes into your path. I want to say "hello, I'm here!" The good folks at Maserati took care of that years ago with a small compressor and a set of air horns. I've used them successfully on three small cars and they DO get attention. Right NOW.
- An alarm system, as discussed elsewhere, should be considered a "must" for anyone parking an "unusual" car in an urban area. As has been noted, if someone wants your car badly enough, they'll take it, but we'd like to make it more difficult to steal than the Escalade parked across the street. (I don't have to be able to outrun that pursuing grizzly, just my hunting partner) Just keeping the honest folks honest.
- Automated door
lockslock. I was spoiled by a couple of other cars that automatically lock the doors at 14 mph. My wife has to remind me now to lock the doors manually. It would seem a simple thing to fire a burst of voltage through the door lock solenoid at some desired speed. - Nerf bars might seem like a good idea to protect the body panels, and would look good on some retro designs, but I'm always wary of aftermarket additions like bull bars and the like that tie directly to the frame and partially defeat the purpose of those crumple zones. A friend with such appendages on his pickup managed to fire the airbags in his cab during a fairly innocuous encounter with a stump. It seems the air bags' trigger is associated with decelerative G's, which transmit to the frame rather directly if you circumvent the crumple zones that are figured into the triggering threshold. No point in doing bodywork and replacing a good part of the interior TOO.
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