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Originally Posted by DirtyDan Lesson learned? Wear body armor at all times...no that's not it. Even at low speeds an OE front end is going to injure people and so will a bull guard. |
Pardon me sir, but that is a fallacious argument.
Frighteningly 20 inches away though the vehicle's wheel may have ended up from you, each one of you was either tossed over or away thanks to the design of the OE bumper. A bull bar would've both mowed you down and caused more significant impact injuries. If glass (head injury) and OE bumper (the fracture) can cause the injuries you described, what do you think a sharper (lower contact area) impact from a metal (unyielding) would've done?
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At higher speeds, both OE bumper and bull guard are going to injure or kill people and I doubt it there is much difference.
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Again, I'm afraid it's the same. A bull bar
will mow down a pedestrian, and a bumper will toss. There will naturally be accidents where there are fatalities in both, given the "right" conditions. But it is simply that the former is much more likely to cause fatality/grievious injury than the latter.
As I said in my previous post, I cannot see the merit of our inferences based on increasingly random accidents (with many variables beyond our comprehension) that we witness once in a blue moon over and above those of standardized, simulated crash testing. So forgive me for giving no credence to the incident that follows your statement as substantiation.
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You guys should stay away from exaggerations. A bull guard is not a knife, nor does it have to be in any way sharp.
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It is sharper. Literally. Sharpness of a surface refers to the minimal-ity of its contact area. A bull bar is therefore, by design and definition sharper than a OE bumper.
And no, nowhere close to a knife. But there have been no exaggerations from "us guys". The one (as opposed to a plurality) erudite gentleman who did make the statement has put forth an illuminating analogy, not an exaggeration.
In all the above arguments, the point being made may be thought of as driving the side of your fist into your other forearm, with and without a knife. Both would hurt above a certain force. It's the thresholds that matter. With a knife, there'd barely be a threshold to speak of.
"German research proved that bull bars are deadly in crashes at low speeds. Whereas 95 per cent of children would be expected to survive the impact of a normal car at 20mph, a vehicle fitted with bull bars would inflict life-threatening injuries on all children it hit at 12mph and many would die even at 10mph."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...39275.html?amp
"It is clear that bull bars certainly increase the risk of bodily injury, that’s how they work. Their whole purpose is to prevent energy being dissipated through the body of the vehicle when it strikes an animal. In order to satisfy Isaac Newton more of the energy of the impact must therefore be taken by the animal’s body which will injure it more. Exactly the same physics applies to pedestrians too."
https://www.racv.com.au/membership/m...-bad-idea.html
"The CASR study found that steel bull bars significantly degrade the performance of the front of the vehicle with respect to pedestrian safety.
Steel, aluminium/alloy and polymer bull bars were tested on six popular four wheel drive vehicles. The two metal bars performed much worse in impact tests than the front of the vehicles prior to bull bar fitting.
Polymer bull bars gave much better results and in some cases, slightly improved the safety performance."
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/news/news14682.html
If you look for it, you can find weakness against, and even justification for your arguments in any of these links. But this has a contentious nature not due to any inherent weakness in argument/lack of proof, but only because of the way stakeholders perceive the situation. But if one looks through it with an unbiased eye, it is clear they do cause more harm.
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A bull guard is too low to break skulls upon impact...unless you have a bodacious lift kit or the victim is 3 feet tall, a child.
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Agreed.
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One inch of foam padding on a bull guard would eliminate a lot of injury. One or two inches of foam padding on an OE bumper would eliminate a lot of injury.
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At crawling speeds only perhaps - but given its rate of deformation, at any real speed there would be no practical difference.
Lastly (as far as this goes), despite a perception that since I'm investing time in replying to this thread, I might be one with a personal bias against bull bars, I'm not. I am not convinced they are a safety risk simply because I think they're pointless and aesthetically displeasing. Your opinions may be more suspicious about my motives. I cannot do anything about that.
For what it's worth:
A. You can try and be as careful as possible, and pay more when (no question of
if in India) when front end damage occurs due to lack of a bull bar. You can choose to accept it as a genuine safety concern, or add it to one of the many things we accept about India and its regulations/problems and curse the damn place until you feel better.
B. You could move to a different city if you absolutely can't live without a bull bar. There will be options. Purely as an example, mine will simply not bother about your bull bar. They would have to start bothering about helmets more than once a month before that, I imagine. And that's something they know is law - I wouldn't be surprised if they had no idea about bull bar laws.
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I suspect that this type of legislation is influenced by "interested parties" rather than anybody with real expertise. But i am a vile, suspicious, skeptical character.
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As someone who has already become "cynical, skeptical and jaded" (well before my years), since you claim to be still becoming those things, allow me to say that that line can only get you so far, I'm afraid.