BusinessWeek recently published a puff piece about a compressed air-powered car which showed up on a scooterist mailing list I’m on. One thing that was interesting to the list was that

The MiniC.A.T is a simple, light urban car, with a tubular chassis that is glued not welded and a body of fibreglass.

There are a lot of questions about this car, including things like how it works in low temperatures (a real issue in places like Chicago that have winter), how factually correct some of the claims in the article were, etc. In general, members of the list liked the green factor but had concerns about its survivability in a crash–ironic from a bunch of cyclists.

B one of the list members who posts under the name “korhag” provided a wonderful risk assessment of scootering versus driving, the impact of a car’s mass in a collision, and consideration of how this all leads to a Tragedy of the Commons where the environment is concerned.

And how is that different then the safety factor of any two-wheeler?

I think the salesmen have done wonders selling large SUV, trucks and such on the perceived notion that bulk of steel in your cage actually increases the drivers personal safety. In a scientific way, I guess it does. But those NASCAR guys have all the safety features with fire and ambulance trucks at the ready and yet drivers still get injured and worse. Occasionally even the big Semi-truck drivers are hurt and worse on our roads and highways.

Someone invents a lightweight (glued not welded) zero-emission vehicle and the criticism that first comes up is about the safety of such a lightweight car. BOLLOCKS! Anyone can be knocked senseless by an idiot no matter what they are riding/driving. The number one safety factor is safe driving habits and uber-awareness of the unexpected. Idiots will and do run red lights. They go the wrong direction up a one-way, etc. Sometimes there’s no avoidance and you’re just gonna get hit. There’s a better survival rate in a Volvo then on a Vespa. Probably better in an SUV then this airC.A.T. thing… but if Al Gore is right then there’s better survival for us all if we all drive zero emission vehicles like the airC.A.T. then if we all rode 2-strokes (Not that I’m willing to give up my Vespa).

Keep in mind this comes from a guy, me, who rode my scooter all winter in a half helmet. I fell a few times on the ice and gravel and have the dents to prove it. It’s just that before we had helmets and seatbelts and all this hyper-sensitivity about safety (medicare even) we still kept going.

In short, there are some activities where, when you have an incident, even having every possible countermeasure isn’t enough. Most of the time, though, you don’t need every possible countermeasure to mitigate risk to an acceptable level. Finally, we’re all better off when we utilize countermeasures which don’t have excessive externalities.

[…] Getting back on topic, this story has a stronger safety component than most stories of its ilk–it actually stresses that scooters are dangerous, for a change, something that I have harped on in the past. […]