I was amazed that the typical vehicle nowadays actually hold very little in terms of what is called maximum payload. I frankly find it to be really a lack of truth in advertising for car makers to state that their vehicles can hold five passengers, but cannot do so safely. The first instinct that most people would have is, no that's not a problem for me because I'm not fat or overweight. But the problem is, that even people who are average weight will overload the vehicle if all the seats are being used at the same time. That is, if you fill your car to the maximum allowed passenger capacity, chances are your vehicle will be overloaded by weight. Part 1: [video=youtube;B3IZJ8ywUz8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3IZJ8ywUz8"[/video] Part 2: [video=youtube;zMIrpujX7ZI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMIrpujX7ZI"[/video] [video=youtube;IKU_AmNo-BY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKU_AmNo-BY"[/video] The problem (as stated in the video) is that car makers is allowed by the government to use figures of an average person being only 150 pounds. But according to the CDC, the average is 191 for men and 164 for women in the US. This is something worth writing to your congressional representative about. -madsign1 And in a related video, speaking of putting things into cars: [video=youtube;V5lh9vjL1YI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5lh9vjL1YI"[/video]
If it is so dangerous to overload the maximum capacity of a vehicle... how come I don't hear news stating the accident is due to overweight within a vehicle?
A part of the problem is that there isn't that much public awareness of this. Take a look at that article from USA today; it's dated 2007. So obviously, while there is concern by some, there hasn't been a groundswell of public outcry for automakers or politicians to make changes. This isn't a discussion of how to handle a vehicle that is overloaded, but rather, that vehicle occupancy specifications and their safety ratings become mismatched if a vehicle is loaded at the manufacturers' stated maximum allowable passenger capacity. It is this little advertised or stated fact that gets me angry at car makers. One has to remember that auto safety crash tests are predicated on an empty vehicle traveling at a 'standard' test speed (usually at 40 MPH). If the vehicle is loaded with say, full passenger capacity and then other cargo; it then become clear that the vehicle was never tested at that weight load. It isn't that an accident was caused by the vehicle being overweight (though that can happen) but rather, the effects on the occupants should the vehicle be involved in an accident that I'm concerned with. The data used in the usual testing would be then be meaningless as the zero weight of the test would skew results. Hence, the entire government ratings system based on the battery of automaker safety tests is a complete sham. IMHO, all future vehicle crash tests should be conducted with the assumption of full passenger occupancy and or full cargo weight loads. I'm sure that many of the stellar crash safety results that some makers claim for their cars would be dramatically different given the inertial movement of an extra (nearly) 1000 pounds within the vehicle during an impact. ***Sidebar*** Vehicle handling can be very much affected by weight loads to the point that trucks or other transports (esp planes) have to be loaded in certain ways to prevent accidents.
