Why don't they make the relay self-reset? It kill the fuel when rolling over but you can start the engine right after rolling back onto its wheels.
Some Fords have something called an inertia switch. Basically if it experiences a jolt, it cuts power to the fuel pump. It is quite useful for doing compression tests etc. because all you need to do is hit the switch with a screwdriver handle to deactivate the fuel pump and press the reset button when finished.
People unconscious, fuel pump primes itself fuel system as car gets upright, potentially spraying fuel to hot parts. Generally it might be considered better car not going after rolling as normal people probably would not need to get going after rolling the car anyway.
Yep this. Even more trivia: This technically solved by a little explosive charge that disconnects most consumers at the battery. It only leaves some systems with power (emergency calls, some lights etc)
I'd say because with an explosion you can get a fairly large physical separation, not sure how much current relays can usually seperate without arcing constantly.
"I crashed my 1970 Chevelle into the back of a 5 Series and now I'm dead, but at least the car only sustained minimal damage!" Seriously, do you really care more about a car's repairability than its ability to keep you alive?
Well that seems to be taking his statement and running with it. It seems he was just wondering why they used such an expensive system when a potentially far cheaper one might be 90% as effective, not that cars should be built like a battering ram.
Because that 10% could decide someone's life or death. The Ford Pinto case showed that customers don't like calculation, even if the numbers end up being in their favor.
There's a big difference between these cases though. Many big businesses tend to make things unexcusably dangerous to keep money in their own pockets (case of the Pinto and Explorer). ShotgunChuck was just asking why not use a system that's probably as safe the vast majority of the time but way cheaper for the consumers. I'm not trying to say one thing or the other about the system, just that he was taking SC's comment to another level.
Another fun fact VW's disable the fuel pump on impact to prevent explosions also they close things like open windows too.
All modern cars do that, but he meant little explosive charges to disconnect things which may cause a fire, and a car can't really explode, at least not like they show us in stupid action movies nowadays.