Posted on 01/24/2010 5:30:32 PM PST by thackney
I assume you meant a head on collision, which involves impact at 150 m.p.h. Not survivable in any passenger vehicle, no how, no way. Or else you meant that a car was going 75 m.p.h. when it rear ended a stopped vehicle. Again, not survivable in any passenger vehicle, no how, no way. Ask any E.M.T., cop, or firefighter.
Perhaps you meant that the car was travelling at 75 m.p.h. when the driver locked the brakes and skidded, drastically reducing the car's speed. When it gets below 50 m.p.h., survivability goes way up, particularly depending on the type of vehicle. There's a limit to the force a human body can take before the liver and spleen come apart, the lungs rupture, and the heart muscle gets bruised and can no longer move blood.
In all of those types of accidents, the car had a gas tank and it weighed around 120 pounds if it was full. Yet they rarely rupture, and gasoline even more rarely catches fire. It does happen, and when it does, the occupants of the vehicle die. Methane does not just explode when mixed with air. It will only burn when the atmospheric concentration is between 4.7% and 13.7%. The actual explosive percentage is between those two limits.
In one sense, you're correct about the potential explosive hazard of natural gas. If it's present in the right concentration and it ignites, it will explode. But gasoline will do the same thing. One difference is that since the methane is a gas, it will be dispersed more efficiently by the atmosphere. Gasoline will produce vapors unitl all of the liquid evaporates. Gasoline vapors are also explosive, and as the wind disperses them, more gasoline evaporates and replaces the vapor.
There are millions of vehicles all over the world running on propane and methane. They don't explode. The prejudice against this fuel source is obvious and understandable, but misplaced. Millions of homes in this country use methane or propane for heat, hot water, and cooking. Millions of homes have outdoor gas grills that use the same fuels. Think about it, and remember that pilot lights go out and gas lines rupture. Houses don't go 75 m.p.h., but the danger is still present. It doesn't seem to bother anyone. They've accepted the very small risk because of the very large reward.
So if you are serious, then you must not ride in gasoline cars. The odds of you dying in one of them is far greater than any CNG vehicle driver’s risk.
Either you don’t understand mathematics or you are a luddite. In either case I don’t think there’s any point in discussing this further.
I was simply pointing out that any issues you ran into with your forklift have no bearing on highway car collisions. Everything else was your assumption.
I understand the math and I’m not a luddite. I’m pointing out that the risk reward doesn’t work for CNG cars. And your own posts show that CNG cars are more risky. You talk about 200,000 CNG cars on the road and post links to 2 of them exploding in the same year, gas cars don’t have a 1 in 100,000 explosion rate. You want to add bombs to cars to burn less gasoline, it’s just plain a bad idea.
As I thought, you don’t understand mathematics (statistics in this case).
2 explosions in 2007. None in all the other years you fail to mention. That is what’s commonly referred to as cherry-picking data.
Junk science and irrational fear are abundant in today’s society. You should have no problem finding plenty of folks to agree with you.
Maybe it’s none, maybe it’s just none you could find. Also explosion is the highest level of additional problem a ruptured tank could cause, even if it doesn’t find fire to make a boom ruptured tanks release a lot of kinetic energy.
I didn’t cherry pick anything that’s the data YOU brought to the discussion.
There’s nothing irrational or junk science about it. I’ve seen what ruptured CO2 tanks can do, and they’ll never explode in flames. Don’t want that in my car, or a car that might hit my car.
They’re out there in higher numbers every day, whether we like it or not. With hydrogen and battery powered cars coming along, too.
Not to mention bulk delivery vehicles and rail cars filled with pressurized LPG, Liquid CO2, toxic chemicals and even nuclear weapons. And the only things separating us from disaster are Federal Transportation safety regulations and statistics.
Come to think of it, that is pretty scary. Wow, I now realize how right you are, we cannot allow this to continue. Thanks discostu for helping me to see the light. I am now in favor of prohibiting all hazardous materials involvement in transportation. How much of a problem could that possibly be, anyway?
Hydrogen and battery are both non-starters, they’ll fail in the market place too.
Notice the trucks that move that stuff around have to have special licenses, and warning labels.
Except for one teeny inconvenient reality.
The physical laws of our universe have yet to allow a practical way to produce hydrogen, using less energy than what is available for the hydrogen to deliver.
We have not yet met the Hydrogen Fairy.
Nuclear energy comes close but the energy neurotics are still very much in charge.
We are talking about this over here following Honda's announcement about their solar-powered hydrogen home filling station, in case you are interested.
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