This Subaru has an external airbag to protect cyclists
If someone driving a new version of a Subaru Forester crashes into a cyclist, an airbag will immediately inflate on the hood to help protect the person on the bike.
The SUV, which offers the feature only on vehicles sold in Japan, isn't the first Subaru to include an external airbag. The company started including pedestrian protection airbags on its Japanese cars nearly a decade ago. But the brand says the new design is the first in the world intended to also protect cyclists.
It's a basic, commonsense idea. 'Airbags have been proven to be effective to protect the occupants in a vehicle,' says Ben Crowther, policy director for America Walks, a nonprofit focused on walkability and safety. 'And there's plenty of testing to show that the same is true for people outside vehicles.'
The Forester's hood is also designed to have as few hard parts as possible, and to easily deform to help cushion the impact of a crash. But the bottom edge of the windshield and the pillars that go up to the roof have to stay rigid because they're part of the frame. When a pedestrian is hit by a car, head injuries are most likely in those places—and that's where Subaru's U-shaped airbag can help.
In a crash, the cyclist usually ends up higher on the windshield. That's why the company redesigned its airbag to cover a larger area. The system deploys when sensors detect a certain amount of pressure on the front bumper.
The vehicle has a suite of other safety features. When a driver turns on the turn signal at a corner, for example, the headlights light up an area diagonally in front, making it easier to spot pedestrians or cyclists on the road. A set of three cameras and radar offer a wider-angle view than in the brand's previous cars, so it's more likely to spot other road users. The vehicle also aims to reduce blind spots in all directions. These are all efforts toward Subaru's goal to have no traffic deaths involving its cars by 2030.
Of course, it's possible to go even further—one of the best ways to make vehicles safer is to make them smaller. Beyond car design, infrastructure also obviously matters: With separated bike lanes, for example, a crash is less likely in the first place. Speed limits are critical. If you're a pedestrian who gets hit by a car going 20 mph, one study found that you have a 5% chance of being killed. If the car is going 30 mph, that chance jumps to 45%. At 40 mph, the pedestrian's chance of being killed is roughly 80%. (Japan has lower average speed limits than the U.S., along with other policies that support pedestrian safety, and much lower fatality rates for pedestrians and cyclists in traffic accidents.)
External airbags aren't a panacea, but they can help. It's probably unlikely, though, that they'll show up in the U.S. anytime soon, especially as automakers are already struggling to deal with increased manufacturing costs because of tariffs.
And while the Biden administration was working on safety issues related to vehicle design, it's not clear what will happen with policy now. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy 'has certainly touted safety as something that his U.S. DOT wants to pursue,' Crowther says. 'But there's a lot of mixed messages, particularly through the reducing in staff at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.' The cuts at NHTSA made by the Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year , according to reports.
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
In distracting times, rumble strips are saving lives — and money — on rural Maine roads
The honeymoon was almost over for Steven Lavrenz and Sandhya Madan. After sightseeing in Acadia National Park, the newlyweds from Michigan woke early and started a long drive back to Boston Logan International Airport on the gray morning of June 3, 2019. But they wouldn't get very far before their trip — and their lives — were nearly upended. Heading north on Route 102, Lavrenz noticed a red pickup truck on the other side of the thoroughfare veering toward his Subaru rental car. Growing up in Iowa, Lavrenz had always held his breath on these kinds of two-lane rural roads, keeping one eye on oncoming traffic to ensure passing cars stayed in their lane. So when the Nissan crossed the centerline, Lavrenz was quick to react, swerving away from the approaching vehicle. The maneuver may have saved his life: The truck crashed into the door just behind Lavrenz, totaling the car but leaving him physically unscathed. Madan and the truck's driver also escaped the incident without injury, which is fortunate after what transit experts call a 'lane-departure crash.' While representing just 30 percent of Maine's traffic collisions between 2010 and 2022, lane-departure crashes accounted for 73 percent of fatalities. These head-on and sideswipe collisions are especially deadly in Maine, where researchers say that extreme weather, an aging population and infrastructure and a preponderance of winding, two-lane rural roads contribute to the highest crash fatality rate of any state in New England. Though Lavrenz was physically unharmed, the crash rattled him for a different reason than most. As a transportation safety researcher, he'd spent years thinking about lane-departure crashes and trying to prevent them from happening. But it was the first time the Wayne State University professor had ever personally faced the life-or-death consequences of his profession. Lavrenz had once worked with the Federal Highway Administration to add rumble strips to rural roads. Transportation departments around the country have gradually installed these grooved lines to jolt drivers who are asleep or distracted, the most common causes of lane-departure crashes. The strips vibrate the vehicle when it passes over the centerline or into the shoulder. Yet there were no rumble strips on this stretch of Route 102 that could have stirred the distracted truck driver, Lavrenz observed after their destroyed Subaru sputtered to a stop next to a Maine Department of Transportation facility. The next morning, after they secured another rental car and caught their flight, he decided to tweet at the agency. 'Centerline rumble strips could've prevented this,' he wrote, linking to a dashcam video of his crash. Research from a bevy of states backed his assertion at the time. But a new study led by civil engineers at the University of Maine provides the most relevant data yet for the effectiveness — and cost-effectiveness — of centerline rumble strips on Maine's sprawling network of rural roads, many of which remain without these life-saving grooves. In a before-and-after analysis, the researchers found that installing centerline rumble strips on rural two-lane roads reduced head-on and opposite sideswipe collisions by anywhere from 28 to 48 percent. By limiting these dangerous crashes, the state saves not only lives but money, according to the authors, who estimated that 'the benefits of the rumble strip installations are at least 14 times the cost.' 'They're one of our most cost-effective safety countermeasures that we can deploy out there — and also one of the most effective,' said Bob Skehan, the director of MaineDOT's Office of Safety and Mobility. Jhan Kevin Gil-Marin, one of the study's co-authors, started working on the paper as a master's student in civil engineering at the University of Maine. With guidance from Ali Shirazi, who was then the principal investigator of the Maine Transport Lab based at the school, Gil-Marin used data from MaineDOT to compare crashes on similar roads with and without rumble strips. Unlike some past analyses in Maine and elsewhere, however, the study examined before-and-after crash data on roads specifically with centerline rumble strips. And it used these figures to model how many crashes would ensue if the grooves had never been installed on them, allowing the researchers to better determine the safety measure's true effectiveness. It also enabled them to perform a cost-benefit analysis, calculating this number based on MaineDOT's reported installation cost ($3,500 per mile, according to the study, though Skehan said it can now be higher) and the Federal Highway Administration's assigned costs for different types of crashes. Even using a very conservative service life for rumble strips of seven years, the study showed the strips pay for themselves and then some. 'I think rumble strips are a very good idea,' said Gil-Marin, who's now pursuing his PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Before uprooting to Maine from Colombia to work with Shirazi, Gil-Marin had never seen rumble strips. On a quiet road, he guided his car over the grooves and felt the vibration for the first time. It wasn't long ago that many Mainers may have had the same experience. Getting ready to rumble When Per Gårder arrived in Maine in 1992, there were no rumble strips in the state. During the Swedish engineer's interview for a position at the University of Maine, however, he met John Alexander, a fellow engineer who'd taken a personal interest in the safety measure. A neighbor of Alexander's had died after driving off the interstate and hitting a tree. 'He started talking to me about installing rumble strips by driving a bulldozer down the highway and roughing up the shoulder so that people would wake up before they go off the road,' recalled Gårder, a professor emeritus of civil and environmental engineering and co-author of the new study. Road safety was personal for Gårder, too. As a kid, he recalls one trip when his sleepy father ceded the wheel to his mother late at night. When Gårder woke up, they were in a ditch — his mother had dozed off. 'We didn't hurt ourselves, but that was probably the first time I started thinking there should be waking you up when you are drifting to sleep, and that it actually could happen to everybody,' Gårder said. After Gårder joined the faculty, he made shoulder rumble strips a focus of his research. There were few studying it at the time. In the U.S., 'singing shoulders' debuted on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey during the 1950s, but they were rarely seen elsewhere for decades. MaineDOT and the Maine Turnpike Association didn't start installing rumble strips along the edges of Interstate 95 in Maine until 1994. In his early years at the school, Gårder photocopied and analyzed police reports of fatal crashes on Maine's interstates between 1989 and 1993, which revealed that nearly half of them involved drivers falling asleep. Yet, after the installation of hundreds of miles of continuous shoulder rumble strips along Maine's interstates, driver drowsiness was no longer as deadly; an analysis co-authored by Gårder in 2006 showed that the safety measure had reduced sleep-induced 'run-off-road' crashes by 58 percent. That same year, MaineDOT began installing rumble strips on the centerline of state roads. While the addition of the safety measure to the shoulders of interstates had helped prevent drivers from veering off the interstate, implementing rumble strips in the middle of rural thoroughfares could reduce the often lethal head-on collisions between cars in opposite lanes. 'When you have two vehicles traveling at 50 miles an hour that hit head on, essentially, it's the same as being in a 100 mile an hour crash and hitting a fixed object, like a tree, if you went off the side of the road,' Skehan said. 'So they're definitely our biggest risk from a safety perspective.' Initially, the agency targeted corridors with a speed limit of at least 45 miles per hour and a traffic volume of more than 8,000 vehicles per day to add rumble strips. The pilot produced excellent results: the new rumble strips on these roads cut head-on crashes in half and eliminated fatal collisions entirely during an initial period, Skehan recalled. That level of effectiveness wouldn't quite hold up over the long term. And as MaineDOT installed more rumble strips in areas where head-on crashes were common, there were still some deadly collisions even after the safety measure was implemented. But time after time, the little grooves significantly reduced crashes and fatalities. 'It's still, by far, our biggest lifesaver with regards to two-lane, rural, head-on collisions,' Skehan said. He pointed to a 20-mile stretch of Route 202 between Lewiston and Manchester where head-on and sideswipe collisions dropped precipitously in the three years after the installation of centerline rumble strips about a decade ago. 'It was pretty remarkable,' he said. Still, part of what made rumble strips so effective also disturbed more than a few neighbors when they were first installed on rural roads. 'There were some noise concerns,' Skehan said. After MaineDOT added rumble strips to Route 302 in Bridgton, neighbor Bill Muir compared their clamor to a tractor trailer 'going down a steep grade and shifting into low gear.' 'I know from personal experience that it could be heard inside our home quite clearly even with all windows closed,' Muir wrote to The Bridgton News in February of 2017. The next year, MaineDOT began exclusively using sinusoidal rumble strips, colloquially known as 'mumble strips.' When they're driven over, the quieter, shallower alternatives to rectangular rumble strips create slightly less sound inside the car but drastically decrease the noise outside of the vehicle, according to Skehan. 'That has pretty much eliminated all noise calls that I've received.' Looking down the road Rumble strips now line the edges of all interstate highways in Maine. But centerline grooves remain absent from most roads in rural areas, particularly in the northern part of the state. MaineDOT aims to add about 100 miles of rumble strips to state roads every year, according to Skehan. The agency prioritizes areas with high traffic and fresh pavement to maximize the service life of the grooves. MaineDOT allocated about $750,000 for these projects annually, per Skehan, with about 90 percent of this funding coming from the federal Highway Safety Improvement Program funding, and the remainder from the state. Route 102 doesn't have rumble strips yet. It's a candidate to receive them, according to Skehan, but the area where a truck crashed into Lavrenz and Madan's rental car is less of a priority than other corridors. The state also doesn't manage town and city roads that thread through communities. Bar Harbor police chief David Kerns doesn't see much of a need for rumble strips on these generally lower-speed roads. 'Really, those in-town streets are so narrow anyway, people tend to go center of the road more to get away from parked cars and open doors,' Kerns said. Still, he's noticed a rise in collisions he attributes to the distraction of cell phones and displays in cars. The town of Bar Harbor received a federal grant to make its streets safer after five fatal and 17 incapacitating crashes between 2019 and 2023. Additional signage and collapsible line delineators are among the interventions under consideration. At the same time, Kerns recognizes that technology can also be part of the solution. Some cars are now built with sensors to detect when the vehicle has left its lane. And though Gårder doesn't advocate checking your phone while driving, he stresses glancing at displays every once in a while to stave off sleep, which is still a common cause of crashes. 'Like in an airplane, pilots are supposed to have certain tasks every now and then,' he said. 'They are not supposed to be completely inactive.' For Lavrenz, it's simple: 'Human drivers are always going to make a mistake.' And instead of waiting for crashes like his to happen, transportation departments can address the problem proactively by deploying low-cost safety measures like rumble strips across many miles. 'Let's go out and try to treat a broad swath of these two-lane rural roads because we know that they're a major risk factor,' he said, 'and hopefully prevent a lot of these crashes from happening in the first place.'
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Gizmodo
2 hours ago
- Gizmodo
The Best Tech Gifts for Father's Day 2025
Getting a gift for Father's Day (reminder: it's Sunday, June 15) is no easy task. What more could the dad in your life need other than your unconditional love? Turns out, physical gifts—preferably something useful or entertaining—are exactly what he needs to escape the hellscape that is our current timeline. Like we did for Mother's Day, we've curated a selection of the finest tech to get your favorite dad. With options for budgets under $100, under $300, under $500, and over $500, we're sure pops will like something from this list. Gifts Under $100 Anker 6-Foot USB-C Cable ($10) Nothing screams 'man of the house' like a 6-foot USB-C cable that can probably reach any outlet from the couch. For $10, you get two of 'em. Gotta keep the phone charged up when the commercials on the big screen hit. Buy at Amazon 8BitDo USB Wireless Adapter 2 ($20) It'll feel wrong at first to use a PS5 controller to play Xbox and vice versa, but it beats buying a completely new gamepad when you can just pair existing ones to your consoles using this USB dongle. The 8BitDo USB Wireless Adapter 2 even works with Switch, so dad can play Super Smash Bros. Ultimate with a PS5 or Xbox controller. Buy at Amazon Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company ($30) Whether dad loves Apple or hates it, the company's sheer scale producing devices like the iPhone and iPad unexpectedly gave birth to China's technology scene and helped give rise to its largest Asian competitors such as Xiaomi and Huawei. Apple in China is a fascinating dive into how Apple's growth has made the world go round. Buy at Amazon Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ($50) It's the talk of the gaming scene for good reason. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 offers a feast for the eyes and ears, and a wonderful story wrapped in gameplay that feels new while scratching the itch of any dad still nostalgic for early Final Fantasy titles. Buy at Amazon Arcs ($60) Leder Games' Arcs is the kind of board game that does so much in such a small space. It's a trick-taking conquest game about gaining space supremacy in the vein of 4X games on PC. If you want to make it extra spicy, also buy the Blighted Reach expansion to connect multiple games into epic, multi-session storylines. Buy at Amazon Anbernic 34XXSP ($67) Anbernic's latest Game Boy Advance SP mimic is the kind of device that will put a smile on the face of any dad who grew up with a Game Boy in tow. The 34XXSP is powerful enough to play most games from early handhelds, and even a select few games from the N64 or Dreamcast era. Buy at Anbernic SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ($70) SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Life is one of those games that will get both the space-loving and mechanics-minded dads excited to sit at the table with you. It's a game that will run for several hours, but it ends with such an epic climax that everyone will be jonesing for another round anyway. Buy at Amazon Xbox Design Lab Controller ($80) That skin oil-worn controller he's using to play Xbox may work just fine, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't love an upgrade. Microsoft's Design Lab is full of unique customization options—from colors to patterns to grips and more. Buy at Xbox Gifts Under $300 Backbone One ($100) A quality mobile controller may be the perfect gift if he has ever complained about aching thumbs while trying to play a game on a phone. Our current choice remains the Backbone One, but if you want to spend more, the Backbone Pro is a good upgrade with tighter controls. Buy at Amazon Govee Gaming Pixel Light ($120) Your dad deserves to jazz up his decor beyond bland paintings you can find at a thrift shop. The Govee Gaming Pixel Light lets the man in your life add his favorite 8-bit art (32×32 pixels) to his wall. Buy at Amazon Razer Pro Click V2 Vertical Edition ($120) Logitech's Lift is the go-to for vertical mice, but if your dad wants one for gaming, Razer's Pro Click V2 Vertical is the only way to go. Not only does it come with a more ergonomic design, but it also has more programmable buttons, faster polling rates for gaming, and RGB—gotta have RGB for dad to prove he's a real gamer. Buy at Amazon Nothing Ear ($130) There are a lot of wireless earbuds out there, but not everyone (dads included) is okay with defaulting to AirPods. Nothing's Ear, with its ceramic drivers, is fantastic for a dad who needs great audio with a style that's just a little bit different than most. Buy at Amazon Klipsch One Plus Premium ($170) Without making any assumptions about your dad, there's a chance that he may appreciate tech that's a little more analog. Klipsch's Bluetooth speaker brings great sound but also a slick mid-century design with knobs to boot—a design that combines modern tech with a vintage look. Buy at Amazon Lego Mario Kart ($170) What better way to spend time with a dad than over a Lego set? Even better is when that Lego set is a giant Mario riding a go-kart. 'It's-a-me-Mario!' voice not included. Buy at Lego Shun Classic Chef Knife ($170) This isn't the most high-tech product on this list, but it may be among the most practical. We can say with conviction that dad will never struggle with carving a bird ever again if you give the gift of Japanese steel. Buy at Macy's Polaroid Flip ($200) The Polaroid Flip is all nostalgia wrapped in a retro veneer, and it's now one of the better ways to take full-size instant photos at home. The camera is a hefty device, so dad may feel like a big, strong man lugging it around. Buy at Best Buy Flipper Zero ($200) The hardware-hacking dad in your life interested in his next DIY project would be absolutely thrilled to have the Flipper Zero. It's a signal multitool that can connect with various RFID and other radio protocols, plus the GPIO pins and custom firmware can be used to create a whole host of interesting use cases. Buy at Flipper Zero Boox Palma ($246) Kindles and Kobo e-readers are great for reading ebooks, but they don't fit into pockets. The Boox Palma is exactly the solution—a phone-sized e-reader that runs Android apps (though using it for anything more than ebooks is slow AF) that dad can actually grip with one hand. Buy at Amazon Meater Pro XL ($280) Grill dads who don't want to stand by the open flame constantly for every cookout will appreciate the Meater Pro XL. The device's four smart meat probes will let him monitor the temperatures and finish times for multiple meals through a single app, which means no more sprinting back and forth between oven and grill. Buy at Amazon Gifts Under $500 Meta Quest 3S ($300) Has your dad ever expressed any interest in VR, or even doing some at-home workouts? Set him up with the Quest 3S, and he won't need anything more. Buy at Amazon Philips Hue Play Sync Box ($334) If your dad needs an upgrade to his entertainment system, Philips' Hue Play Sync Box has him covered. This tiny box can coordinate the lighting of a movie with Hue smart lights and syncs TV content at 8K 60Hz and 4K 120Hz for a unique home theater experience. Buy at Amazon Google Pixel Watch 3 ($350) Everyone has an Apple Watch. Let dad feel different with the Google Pixel Watch. It tracks almost everything an Apple Watch does, including health and fitness, and the battery life is excellent. The only caveat is that it works with Android phones, not iPhones. Buy at Amazon Meta Ray-Bans ($350) Smart glasses might seem like an overboard gift if dad isn't tech-inclined, but Meta's Ray-Bans might be the right ratio of tech-to-style goodness. They have a classic look and are surprisingly nice for Bluetooth audio. Buy at Amazon Breville Paradice 9 ($395) Don't fault dad if his knife skills are subpar. Fortunately, a high-powered food processor like the Breville Paradice 9 can slice and dice just about any ingredient more evenly and faster. Technology saves time! Who'd have thunk it? Buy at Amazon Sony WH-1000XM8 ($448) Whether it's blocking out a crying baby or angsty teenager, Sony's latest WH-1000XM6 over-ear headphones deliver best-in-class active noise cancellation. Bonus points: they fold up neatly and come with a case that doesn't look like a bra (looking at you AirPods Max Smart Case). Buy at Amazon Gifts Over $500 Xreal One ($500) Maybe some lucky dads will get a $3,500 Apple Vision Pro for Father's Day, but if all dad needs is a pair of video glasses for watching Netflix and YouTube, Xreal's One is more than good enough and stupid easy to setup (just plug it into any device that supports USB-C video out). They're barely larger than a pair of sunglasses, the 1080p video is super sharp, and the screens even dim for a see-through effect. Buy at Amazon reMarkable Paper Pro ($680) If you're gonna get dad an e-reader and can splurge for the very best, the reMarkable Paper Pro is the one to get. It's got a color E Ink screen that's great for reading comics, supports a stylus for notetaking, and you can even get a keyboard folio case for it. Buy at Amazon
