Student Killed Driving Solar Car 847
Lev13than writes "Tragedy struck the University of Toronto's Blue Sky Solar Racing Team on Thursday when 21-year old student Andrew Frow was killed in a car accident. It appears that Frow lost control of the low-riding experimental car and was struck by a minivan head-on. The team was driving from Stratford to Waterloo (about an hour west of Toronto) as part of a tour of universities in Ontario and Quebec to mark the one-year anniversary of the 2003 Blackout. This is a big setback for solar power advocates, especially as the blackout anniversary will pass with remedial legislation stranded in Congress. More information on the accident is available here." The vehicle's design is not really street-safe - this will be a problem as more efficient, lighter cars share the road with Hummers.
Kitchener-Waterloo Record Story (Score:5, Informative)
U of T student dies in solar car; Vehicle out of control near Waterloo Regulations being followed, police say
A University of Toronto student is dead after the solar car he was driving veered out of control on a highway just west of Waterloo Region yesterday afternoon.
Andrew Frow, 21, of Toronto was driving the university's team car east along Highway 7 and 8, from Stratford to Waterloo, as part of a Canadian solar car tour. The small low-riding car suddenly went out of control at about 4 30 p.m., veering across the centre line of the two-lane highway, said Constable Glen Childerley of Perth County Ontario Provincial Police.
The car then swerved back into its lane, hitting the right shoulder. It then plowed across the highway into the path of a minivan in the westbound lane.
"It zoomed right across the road and was T-boned by the van," said Childerley, adding the driver was alone in the solar car.
The impact destroyed the car. Its solar-panelled roof was flung off and its shell ended up in the ditch on the north side of the highway.
The driver's teammates rushed to his aid. The students were in two minivans, one driving in front of the solar car, one behind, when the crash occurred.
Two of his teammates frantically performed CPR on the young man as he lay in the wreckage, said truck driver David Hackett, who pulled up at the scene moments after the accident.
Hackett, a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of Maryhill, offered to take over from the visibly upset woman doing mouth-to- mouth.
"I'm just sorry we couldn't do more," said Hackett, who was delivering groceries to Stratford when he came across the crash.
"I am grateful for the training that I had and that I could respond."
Paramedics, Stratford firefighters and OPP soon arrived on the scene and took the driver by ambulance to another ambulance with a doctor and waiting medical team.
The crew took the young man to a Kitchener hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
After he was rushed away, police began inspecting the mangled wreckage in the ditch to determine why the crash occurred. That section of the highway was closed for hours as they worked.
Hunks of metal, some bearing the University of Toronto logo, were strewn across the grassy ditch.
As police worked, students on the U of T team huddled across the street, many hugging each other.
They did not want to talk to the news media last night.
Rudy Schoenhoeffer, who was driving the minivan that hit the solar car, was also there.
"I'm just saying a prayer for him," the Stratford man said quietly as he stood by his van, its front end dented.
He was on his way home from work in Cambridge when the crash occurred.
Jessica Whiteside, U of T's acting associate director of news services, said it was too early last night for anyone at the university to comment.
Childerley said solar cars have to get a special permit from the Ministry of Transportation to drive on roads and highways, and must travel with a regular vehicle in front and behind. Those vehicles must have flashing yellow lights on their roofs.
The U of T car was following these regulations.
Kitchener-Waterloo Record
[Photo] The U of T solar car drives along Western Rd. toward the University of Western Ontario in London yesterday. Later, near Waterloo, another driver lost control.
[Photo] OPP investigate the scene of the fatal solar car accident on Highway 7 and 8 near the town of Shakespeare, Ont., yesterday.
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:3, Informative)
SUVs shouldn't really be a problem... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:1, Informative)
more sturdy == heavier
heavier == more energy needed
more engergy needed == more solar panels
more solar panels == bigger car
bigger car == heavier
repeat until the car is too big to fit on the road
Solar cars don't have a particularly good power/surface area ratio.
Re:Hummers (Score:1, Informative)
Close to Home (Score:4, Informative)
The convoy was supposed to stop here at our company [comtekadvanced.com] this afternoon because we helped the McMaster University team build "Fireball II." I just found out this morning that today's stop, along with the rest of the tour had been called off due to the accident. Looks like it was a mechanical failure of some kind in U of T's vehicle, and what a tragedy. The engineering student who died was only 21.
The tour was planned to coincide with the one year anniversary of the 2003 blackout, to remind people that we ought to be looking into alternative energy sources. These young engineers are really passionate about these projects and our thoughts are with them at what must be a really tough time.
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:5, Informative)
This is exactly what I was going to say. In certain classes of racing (NASCAR in the post-earnhardt-sr. era, I believe) you are required to use a specified carbon fiber crash bumper which is multicellular and will dissipate truly insane amounts of energy. Of course, they're intensely expensive, but I'd say they're well worth it. When it becomes reasonably inexpensive to build such structures I think it will be both reasonable and expected for many light vehicles to be built of such things in perhaps three or four pieces, and when a piece is damaged to any degree it will have to be replaced. It might even be cheaper to give the car one big body and replace the whole thing if the car is in a collision, swapping the entire contents into a new car with a preinstalled wiring harness and fuel lines.
Such a vehicle will likely have plastic body panels on the outside, to protect from damage by rocks and such.
Re:How can you compare the two (Score:1, Informative)
Well yes and no. You can't make a general statement that any car that is solar powered is only fit for competition. Right now the efficiency of photovoltaic cells makes it impractical to, for example, line your car roof with them. But solar cells with efficiencies in the 90% range are deffinately coming up soon. As the efficiency increases, then maybe we can start researching solar cars that will be more adapted for street driving.
Re:So .. do we get rid of... (Score:3, Informative)
Cars are held to higher crash standards in the US than probably any other nation. Vehicles which have to be modified to be imported to this country are legal even in other countries with lots of large powerful vehicles - For example the Nissan Skyline was sold in Germany in the same trim as in Japan (except left hand drive) until its recent termination as a Nissan product, but the result of crash testing of several imported test vehicles resulted in retrofits being necessary to import them here and make them street legal.
I don't know of ANY car that can get in a full-speed head on with a humvee and have the passenger (or the driver, who is actually in more danger, what with the steering wheel being right there and all) survive, at least in terms of passenger cars. Someone in a semi would have a fairly decent shot at it, if they were actually wearing their safety belts.
Re:Who's driving whom? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Why Lightwight Solar? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:2, Informative)
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:5, Informative)
"solar cars have to get a special permit from the Ministry of Transportation to drive on roads and highways, and must travel with a regular vehicle in front and behind. Those vehicles must have flashing yellow lights on their roofs.
The U of T car was following these regulations."
Quoted from a copy-paste post above...
Re:SUVs shouldn't really be a problem... (Score:2, Informative)
The author goes on to interview several public officials who had no idea heavy SUVs are technically excluded from some roads, and who couldn't care less once it's been explained to them. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for weight limits to erase large SUVs from the roads.
Re:Who's driving whom? (Score:5, Informative)
At one point in my past I built and roadraced GT cars. The combination of slick race-compound tires (9" wide on a 2000 pound car), and the steering axis offset required to allow their use, meant that the steering effort was OK when the front tires weren't sliding, and the caster would re-center the steering. But under conditions where the car was going sideways beyond a certain limit, the steering would drive itself to lock unless you manually wrestled it back to center. Not for the faint of heart or puny forearm development.
Re:Hummers (Score:2, Informative)
Higher taxes won't solve anything. What we need is incentives for companies to develop more efficient vehicles, from the haulers all the way down to passenger vehicles. If the technology that this poor young man was working on becomes adopted, it would be a fitting legacy for him and others with his vision.
And just how is this a setback...? (Score:4, Informative)
And just how is this a big setback for solar power advocates? Is every automobile accident with a regular car a setback for gasoline advocates? Are solar cars supposed to be accident free? Or all 21-year-olds excellent drivers (I know they think they are)?
This is just an example of muddy thinking that doesn't belong on Slashdot.
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:3, Informative)
1) US car companies DO get funding for research into fule effeciency. (Read a news paper once and a while)
2) Big Oil DOES NOT fund car companines, they fund their own lobbyist in Washington.
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's not that sad (Score:5, Informative)
Not really...note from the story that there was a support minivan in front of him, and another behind him. That's pretty good protection.
He lost control, and crossed the lane into oncoming traffic. That would likely have been fatal on a motorcycle, or even many smaller regular cars.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:3, Informative)
Accidents happen. (Score:2, Informative)
However, this one *seems* to be human error at this point. In x days, it may turn out to be otherwise.
Either way, it sux that the kid died.
All that aside, I remember from the early Trans-Australia or whatever the solar race was, they made sure that the cars showed some chance of surviving being passed by the road-trains. And they were still worried that the air displaced by these semis would cause problems for the tiny solar cars.
As to the wonderful world of hybrid cars, why are they charging 20+k$ for a car that gets worse fuel mileage than a 1980 Volkswagen diesel Rabbit???
Hummers(schoolbus)? I think owning one must be punishment enough. Maint costs on those things are horrific and I can imagine what it costs to insure one here in New Jersey.
I'd rather have my late lamented 1991 Mistubishi pickup than a Hummer(schoolbus) or for *REAL* impractical offroading http://www.unimog.net/
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:bad design, not the power (Score:3, Informative)
The collision being talked about in the article, on the other hand, was a head-on collision, which is deadly because the effective speed of collision is roughly the sum of the speeds of each vehicle (in this case, about 110 MPH). The solar car was also likely not designed with the same safety features in mind (such as crumple zones). Because of the difference in mass, the momentum transfer was also much more severe to the solar car.
Re:Kitchener-Waterloo Record Story (Score:2, Informative)
A two-province, 10-day road tour of solar cars built by university students ended in tragedy on its first day yesterday when one of the cars veered into a minivan east of Stratford, killing the driver. Andrew Frow, a 21-year-old engineering student from the University of Toronto, was killed in the collision just before 4:30 p.m. on Highway 7/8 between Shakespeare and New Hamburg, police said.
Frow received serious head injuries in the collision and was transported by ambulance to St. Marys Hospital in Kitchener, where he died, police said.
Rudy Schoenhoeffer, 45, of Stratford, the driver of the minivan, was not injured, police said.
The crash occurred after the six teams on the Canadian Solar Car Tour had made their way through London, stopping at noon at the University of Western Ontario.
Imran Atcha, co-project manager of the Western engineering solar car team, said he was shocked to learn of the North York student's death.
Western Ontario's solar car wasn't on the road tour because the local team is concentrating on building a new one, at an estimated cost of $100,000, for North American and world competitions next year, Atcha said.
The tour, sponsored by the Ontario government to raise awareness of solar technology, began yesterday in Windsor and was to end Aug. 21 in Quebec City.
The six teams were supposed to meet provincial Energy Minister Dwight Duncan at the University of Toronto tomorrow -- the one-year anniversary of the massive power blackout.
The University of Toronto team's solar car, a low, flat three-wheeled vehicle with a dome for the driver, was travelling east on Highway 7/8 when it started to fishtail, Const. Tim Diebel of North Perth OPP said.
"The vehicle crossed into the westbound lane and was struck by a minivan."
The solar-powered car was part of a convoy with a lead vehicle, the solar car and a chase vehicle following behind, Diebel said.
Police said the top and bottom half of the car ended up on opposite sides of the road after the impact.
A section of the highway east of Shakespeare was closed for hours while police investigated.
Diebel said police are examining various aspects of the accident, including the way the vehicle is steered and its stability under different conditions.
Ben Esposito, co-manager of the UWO solar car project, said solar-powered cars are steered with a direct steering arm, "basically one stick." The car is steered by pulling the stick in one direction or the other.
Atcha maintains the steering "is probably the most heavily tested part of the car, if anything for all of our safety checks, if we go to a race, that's one of the things they check for is the steering and braking for the car."
Esposito said the new car the UWO team is building likely will use a different steering system that involves two levers instead of one stick for better control and to create more room in the tight cockpit for the driver's legs and body.
Solar cars are capable of cruising speeds of 80 kilometres an hour and top speeds above 120, he said.
Atcha said solar cars are equipped with a roll cage and harness to ensure the safety of the driver.
"It's important for us that we have to follow a number of guidelines to make it safe for the road," Atcha said.
There are strict guidelines to follow and without them, solar-car teams are not allowed to race.
He said, "these cars aren't necessarily built to take on a head-on collision necessarily because that's not what the point is. It's a race car and just like any race car, they're not built the exact same as the passenger car."
In 2002, the University of Toronto's solar car collided with another vehicle while leaving from a stop in Belleville. The driver of the car received minor injuries.
Perth OPP Constable Glen Childerley said solar cars travel on
Re:Kitchener-Waterloo Record Story (Score:2, Informative)
From: Barbara McCann
To: XXXXX@cannon.ecf.utoronto.ca
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2004 15:14:07 -0400
Subject: U of T's Blue Sky Solar Car Accident
Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Add sender to contacts list | Trash this message | Show original
Dear Students:
> I am sending this message to let you know about a horrible tragedy.
>
> Andrew Frow, a Mechanical Engineering student, about to start third year
> this fall, was killed yesterday. Andrew was driving UofT's Blue Sky Solar
> Car, Faust II, on Highway 7 near Kitchener-Waterloo, when it was involved
> in a two-car crash. He was pronounced dead at St. Mary's Hospital in
> Kitchener yesterday.
>
> The University of Toronto Solar Car team was on a promotional tour, The
> Canadian Solar Tour, which involved six university solar cars, driving
> from Windsor to Quebec City to raise public awareness about solar vehicles
> and solar energy.
>
> A UofT crisis response team involving counselors and the UofT police was
> on the scene yesterday to assist students and Andrew's parents, who were
> also present last night. Perth County OPP are investigating the accident.
>
> Students who would like to talk to someone about this tragedy can do so,
> by calling the University of Toronto Community Safety office at
> 416-978-1485. Faculty members and staff wishing to discuss this tragedy
> are directed to counselors in the University's Employee Assistance
> Program, who can be reached at 1-800-668-9920. Once we have more details
> about funeral arrangements from the family, we will send out another email
> to notify you of these plans.
>
> Our Faculty's thoughts and prayers are with Andrew and his family and
> friends, and all members of the Blue Sky Solar Car team at this very
> difficult time.
>
> Javad Mostaghimi
> Acting Dean
> Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
>
>
>
>
>