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Christian Manz

V. Christian Manz is a multicultural journalist specialized in ecological vehicles, history of cars and trucks, features about extraordinary cars and travels by car. He offers a press service to companies and has an important photo and documental collection of cars and trucks.
 
Are we prepared for a new era?

By Christian Manz

The answer is a clear no; we are not prepared at all for the upcoming era. We drastically reduced speed on the roads, a fact which could benefit the introduction of electric vehicles. But the witch-hunt initiated by state authorities, the excessive control and the flattery of people who most frequently betray the state of law destroy the vision of a bright future. The state turned into a big company, the only thing missing would be an initial public offering (IPO): Its business of excessive control of citizens, minorities, natural resources and financial entities etc. is not a good omen. As long as we don’t recover pacific coexistence between authorities and citizens -we must not forget that the citizen is the one who pays all the state officials- we are not prepared.

And still less for the introduction of the ecological car.

It is funny to notice that some “traffic” solutions in Spain are at odds with car safety aspects. One of the most obvious examples is the use of speed bumps or also so-called sleeping policemen, most of them are illegal due to their incorrect sizes. They are spread all over the cities and villages of our territory. The majority doesn’t comply with the current regulations. These speed bumps drastically reduce the safety of our cars, they damage them. If we go on like this, we will soon have the most obsolete and damaged vehicle fleet of the European Union. The speed bumps are wearing out the car’s most important safety elements such as shock absorbers, rubber mounting, all axles, and any type of fastenings. For those of you who cannot believe what you are reading please ask the car mechanics of the brand’s garages. They find themselves confronted with a greater amount of dangerous unusual damages of new and second-hand cars of excellent condition; especially fastenings and screws are worn off. In order to not leave any more doubts: the car is also worn off if we cross these speed bumps at a very low speed! One of the worst cases was published recently: a slanting screw of the gas tank support fell off and onto the road, touching the speed bump and producing the corresponding sparks of fire. Is that what we call safety?

The speed bumps don’t facilitate the use of new safety elements in our cars which could be pedestrians’ protection with a hood coming down when slowing down the car or special shock absorbing systems becoming harder at just the right moment, and thus perfectly meeting all requirements regarding driving safety. The use of lowered and therefore more aerodynamical cars is not permitted. Our roads, strained in this way, are not appropriate for the future electric cars which have the motor and the shock absorbing system installed within the axle, in the lower part of the car in order to optimize its consumption: the most sensitive and expensive technology of these cars depends completely on our speed bumps. The lithium-ion batteries used in the first generation of electric cars of the new millennium and which are about to be launched on a large scale all over the world have a safety system which produces a short circuit when touching the ground or at stronger impacts onto the ground, the car thus comes to a standstill. Just use your imagination: half of the cars broken down after having crossed a Spanish speed bump.

What’s the use of becoming fined when you exceed the speed limit by one km/h if there don’t exist such accurate systems? Neither the radar systems nor the car’s tachometers show the correct speed. Consequently, a fine will never be fair and you could always take legal steps if justice existed. The so far valid regulation of 10% tolerance in measurement was not chosen to favor the driver but simply because accuracy of measurement and handling of the instruments doesn’t exist. The following data serve to proof this statement:

The independent association of experts regarding traffic, accidents and technology, the German VUT carried out a detailed study about the fines produced due to high speed in Germany including radar controls, video surveillance and laser pistols. The result is disappointing: only 15% of the fines were correct. The others showed mistakes of measurement, adjustments or simply in the use of modern technology. We are talking about Germany, a country which boasts about having the best technologies and people who know how to use it. No further comments.

Are we prepared for introduction of electric vehicles in our cities? At the moment, we aren’t because we are used too much to noise rather than to silence. Neither our electric cars nor the hybrid cars at low speed can be heard when they approach. But do we have to give them up only because we are noisy and don’t pay attention to silence? It is obvious that the first thing to do is to work for a world of less noise; higher volume implies neither less quality nor major rights, in fact, it’s quite the opposite. The Japanese want to push through a law saying that the electric cars have to be noisy to avoid that people are run over. This could be an interesting proposal for the accessory sector. We could freely choose the sound of our electric car. Hopefully a decibel limit will be determined otherwise we wouldn’t have won anything.
 
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