It’s probably worth noting that this was done for the US State Department, and is a test of anti-ram barriers to protect embassies and bases. This is not a truck barrier that you’d find around a loading dock. The researcher also noted that driver safety is “not a priority.”
I call foul. The truck has no engine to begin with! How is that for a representative crash test?
on other thoughts, there was no crash dummy in it, how will they measure the survivability rate in this kind of “accident”?
I’d like to see that with a pair of crash-test dummies in the cab – one wearing a seat-belt, and one without.
So what happens when someone mounts a wheeled sled under the truck designed to detach on impact?
it has an engine, it’s just not using it for propulsion. if you watch the view from the front and side you can see the engine get pushed through the cab and out under the bed, ending up by the rear axle.
And if you don’t hit the barrier dead-center?
Truck driver unions. Lawsuit.
I consider lawyers to be a last-resort option, below a car bomb, but in this case the full-force counterattack is warranted.
Wheeee!!!
Assuming these are fixed barriers around buildings to prevent someone ramming a truck or truck bomb, I don’t really have a problem with this. The likelihood of someone unintentionally ramming this at full speed in an urban location is low. If used for highways etc, this wouldn’t be a good design. For highways we have a lot of those catch cables that seem to do a good job preventing cross over accidents.
Another option is mounting a rocket on the truck bed. There are even some models out there that are housed in standard cargo containers; these days every vehicle can become a war machine.
Yet another option is supersizing the bomb so the blast would reach from the barriers. Russkies used this approach back when their ICBM guidance systems weren’t up to par. Doesn’t matter you can’t hit the target spot-on when you can fireball-sweep enough area to include the target, from wherever you manage to hit.
And there’s always the good old ballista, also possible to mount on the truck bed. (Now that would be an innovative technical…)
This looks like an effective way to stop a truck without disturbing the cargo, which I assume was the intent. Now they need to design a bunch of other gizmos to stop every other type of attack that may be dreamed up to bypass this particular countermeasure, hopefully before said methods are dreamed up. IOW, preventing the last attack isn’t exactly proactive.
I’m wondering if it would be possible to rig the truck so that instead of crushing it would flip over and throw it’s cargo like a catapult using the barrier as a pivot point…
Ramming an explosive-laden vehicle is a reasonably common attack. Ingenuity requires money and with enough money, you would not use a truck. Now, if someone were bright enough to put the explosives on a ramp in the truck bed so the payload continued in an arc…
And the flowers are still standing!
The spray of glass in the slo-mo head-on shot is fantastic, but what’s with the “typewriter” spinning off to the right?
So what protections do they have against thousands of free-flying pigeons with explosives in their cloacae?
I looks like is slices through the cab and finally stops when it hits the bed. What if the bed was higher? Wouldn’t it just slide over the barrier? Or just put your bomb on a pallet that continues to fly forward.
How is this an improvement over the reinforced concrete barriers? And why leave the structure open at the bottom?? It’s a nice goal to roll grenades under. And it’s useless as cover from any other attackers with guns.
I don’t see any connection to the trolley problem, except both involve fast things. Were there some people in those barrels?
Prevention of harm to…I dunno… people standing beside a freeway as compared to the moral weight one places on outright spaghettifying truck drivers.
But can’t we take the Libertarian perspective on this issue?
Those people by the freeway are probably homeless vagabonds and that truck is somebodies sovereign PROPERTY damnit!
The freeloading homeless should be glad to sacrifice their lives in a valiant effort to save the truck.
