FUD is back again :( : Hybrid cars pose danger for first responders

No fear-mongering language there.

I believe that any car is a "potential death trap" in a serious accident. The best course is to make reasonable efforts to avoid a serious accident through situational awareness and risk avoidance (i.e. not driving when the weather conditions are dangerous, not lingering in the blind spot of a tractor trailer, etc). The odds that driving a hybrid would mean the difference between you living and dying are astronomically small.

Some Chevy or Dodge dealership might want a story like this out there. When I was shopping for a car and trying to decide between the Honda Civic natural gas and a Toyota Prius, the Honda salesman fed me the line about how dangerous hybrids were in an accident.

As if riding around with your rear passengers sitting on a tank of methane compressed to 3,600 psi is that much safer...

 

They must have needed a filler piece.

 

Someone who replied to the story asked a good question: has anybody been electrocuted by a hybrid in an accident? I doubt it. Toyota probably has an automatic voltage cutoff in case of airbag deployment or similar event

 

I'm sure Toyota has put the cars through many a scenario to see if there's a chance of electrocution after an accident.

 

Found a decent write-up about hybrids and accidents at Hybrid Vehicle Safety Hazards

Wanted to paste the last two paragraphs here about hybrids having safety features to isolate the traction battery after an accident, but the site says it is copyrighted, so you'll have to go there and read it directly.

The last paragraph also says that an extensive search has failed to find any incident of tech, emergency responders, or drivers being electrocuted by a hybrid.

 

I remember a thread a year ago or so that suggested hybrid and EV cars have different coloured licence plates so that they were immediately identifiable to first responders, as well as enabling free or discounted parking or access to low emission zones.

I remember that the idea was shot down BY first attenders who rightly suggested that they're not foolish and have systems in place for dealing with such cars. Still think the idea has merit though.

 

Toyota - Electric Vehicle Safety Training

 

There has not been any rash of first responders getting seriously hurt or kill due to a hybrid. First responders are more likely to get hurt rushing into a building fire than a hybrid fire.

Auto Mechanics who deal with the battery pack and HV inverters are exposed to some risk BUT the risk to first responders is under versy special and rare situation when the vehicle is overturned. Toyota battery packs and inverters are pretty reliable so auto mechanics don't have to deal with them. Even the notoriously unreliable 2nd gen Honda Civic hybrid battery packs has yet to injure or kill an auto mechanic. The high voltage wires that this story is referring to are on the bottom center of a hybrid or BEV and the only time there is a signficant risk that a first responder might be exposed to these wires is if a hybrid was flipped over , the passenger windows and doors were unaccessible, and the first responder has to use a chain saw to open up the hybrid from the floor panel of the cabin. However, this is a very unlikely scenario because the extra weight from the HV battery pack make Hybrids and BEV very resistant to rolling over. IMHO - this news story's true agenda is to urge local governments and to rally public support to not to cut funding to the fire and police department's training budget ( federal sequestration means federal funding cuts to local governments) - using the hybrid FUD aspect of this story is just out of convenience - local fire and police training budgets are often the first things trimmed when state and federal funding doesn't appear...
Several years ago - our local fire department's traing program was brought under scrutiny for a Spanish Language Training course that conveniently sent firemen on a extended vacation to Puerto Rico ....

 

This is a rehash of old news. Training programs to deal with hybrids are already in place for the nation for a long time.

 

It's not fud that first responders have to get trained for hybrids. They do. Right after I bought my prius, a first responder friend told me she just got trained on the gen III.

What is FUD is that its a problem.

 

I was in an accident about a year back, and the firemen who showed up insisted on disconnecting the 12 volt. Not sure why. The body shop guys had to crawl into the hatch area to reconnect it.

 

Likely to eliminate the chance of an unexpected start up of the engine, which would be bad if the car was still in gear.

 

The 12vdc aux battery just powers up the Prius' on-board computer.
It's the high voltage traction battery which primes the starter motor and start the gas engine. How does disconnecting the 12vdc prevent the the gas engine from starting up? Do the Prius have a dead man's switch which senses that the on-board computer is fried crispy?

 

Page 20 of Toyota's Emergency Response Guide for the 3rd Generation Prius states:

So clearly, Toyota believes that disconnecting the 12V battery will prevent the gas engine from starting.

TIS

 

First responders are going to do, what toyota tells them is the safe thing to do. They don't know the car as well as toyota does. If you think your battery should not be disconnected contact toyota.

 

It is also SOP with every other car. Even if leaving the 12volt connected wasn't an issue on the Prius, there is less chance of errors being made on all cars in the same procedure is followed for them all.