i was contracting on the Virginia side of DC when the incident happened that changed that law. you see, the NHTSA had mandated that all new cars be equipped with airbags and that all the airbags be automagically deployed in a crash.

so, whether you were personally leery about having a shaped high explosive charge positioned less than 2′ ( less oftentimes ) from your face and aimed right at you made no never mind. unca-daddy .gov knew what was good for you, you silly goose.

so, there was a woman, minding her own business, driving around the loop road around the Fair Oaks mall. and every so often, there were speed bumps. so she drives over the speed bump, as you do.

well, something was wrong with the bumper impact sensor and the airbags got deployed. yes, from simply driving over a speed bump at moderate speed. fortunately for the driver, the airbags deployed and kept her from receiving any injury whatsoever from the speed bump “impact”.

the problem, and you knew there was going to be one, was that her daughter had been sitting in the front passenger seat.

you see where this is going? i used the past tense for a reason.

can you imagine what you would do if you drove over a speed bump, your airbags went off for no reason, and once you had collected yourself and you looked over in the passenger seat you found that your child had been decapitated?

that’s why we got disable switches for the passenger bags and weight sensors in all front seats now. the .gov never cared about all those little old ladies sitting 6″ from the steering wheel due to their short legs, but you have a child murdered by idiotic .gov policy practically in the capitol city? .gov weasels sat up and took notice.

Lots of electric fork lifts were 48/72 VDC too and used traction cells too.

If ever I was going off grid I’d be using traction cells, 700 ampere hour per 2 volt DC cell, I’d run 24 VDC and inverters, 2 series strings in parallel for 1400 Ah, or three for 2100 Ah, or four for 2800, which if you like your watts…

700 amperes 48 volts = 33,600 watt hours per string, so 4 strings is 120 kWh stashed away, and the bastards will deep cycle and last and last and last, and you can always replace just the one bad cell….

fuck tesla power walls.

Re: safety concerns, I’m sure that ‘Lessons Will Be Learned’ and ‘Nobody Could Have Known’

Batteries, the newest old tech around. Maybe in another 100 years the E.V. industry will understand the most fundamental component of it’s products.

BTW, any idea what the electrical spec of the old fashioned milk floats was? Not a joke question, they trundled around for years and I never heard any disaster stories (Top speed of 2mph combined with a 5 ton pig iron chassis probably helped any accident damage electrocutions…)