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Elio Safety Considerations

BlioKart

BlioKart

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As for lighting it will be done to motorcycle standard so it will be brighter than a car.

And for body color I have been thinking the same I am still leaning towards the creamsicle color but still not 100% decided.
 
zelio

zelio

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Lil4X said:
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 locks lock. 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.
A few considerations I've been mulling over, any other ideas?
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Thank you for reminding me about one item I have heard nothing about - a horn. Is there one on the Elio?

A friend interrupted my lap swim today to ask me if you can back the Elio up. I said of course, it drives just like a car so why wouldn't you be able to back it up. Then he told me motorcycles can not back up. I did not know that and had wondered why the Elio description includes a statement similar to "and it also has reverse". I could not, for the life of me, see why that statement was there. LOL Learn something new everyday. And I was very polite and did not dunk my friend for interrupting my laps. LOL :-) Z
 
D

Devilstower

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Lil4X said:
Automated door locks lock. 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.
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I hate those automatic locks. HATE them. Why the heck do I want the doors to lock when I'm moving? No one is going to open my door when I'm moving, and I can't see why they need to be locked in the first place.

My last experience with automatic door locks was in a rental car. I was in a small town in New Mexico and got up one morning to find it had snowed. I started the car to warm it up, stepped outside to brush off the car, and ten seconds later *CLICK* went the locks. It took me three hours and two locksmiths to get out of the parking lot.

Since then, I don't trust those things for one second.
 
Joshua Caldwell

Joshua Caldwell

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Devilstower said:
I hate those automatic locks. HATE them. Why the heck do I want the doors to lock when I'm moving? No one is going to open my door when I'm moving, and I can't see why they need to be locked in the first place.
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I love the feature when kids are in the car, but it is not needed in the Elio - it's not like they can fiddle with the doors and open them while going down the road.
 
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