The P.I.N.C.H. Car

Again I have to preface this post by saying I’m not an engineer. Also, there is a lot more to this idea that I will revisit later; this post gets to the real meat of the idea, the potatoes will be expanded upon later.

So this is the ‘P.I.N.C.H.’ car safety system, which stands for: Partitioned Impact-Neutralizing Cage Hero – the ‘H’ I admit I could not find a decent word for, so ‘Hero’ will do for now.

In short, the safety system operates like, well, a pimple. Upon impact, the passenger cage is squeezed out of the frame by it’s surrounding panels. These panels are fastened to the lower frame. The panels that are struck by the impact push the cage out of position. The panels behind the cage collapse under the pressure of the exiting cage.

I designed this because, in my opinion, the friction of the vehicle to the ground is a very harmful factor during a collision – much like a pedestrian who gets knocked out of his shoes when struck. If you are able to integrate a ‘breakaway’ cage, the impact will be now be redistributed as well as absorbed. This allows for a passenger cage to remain relatively intact, while the remainder of the vehicle is flattened by the impact.

The cage rests upon the frame and to an extent the ‘Collapse Panels’. The lower part of the cage is tapered inward, allowing it to be cradled by the frame and panels. The cage is shaped like this to help propel it upward. There are frame extensions that reach the front and rear bumpers, and upon impact they will coil and pinch the cage out of it’s cradle position.

Here are some examples of it in action. Unfortunately, I cannot do physics-based simulations, so these crude examples will have to suffice:

This system is intended for high-speed impacts, despite the slowness of the animations might indicate. The car would react as normal to a low-speed impact or fender bender.

To make this possible, the steering and accelerator/brake pedals would have to be ‘fly-by-wire’, which means the inputs are sent by signal instead of gears. The cage would have all it’s systems have ‘breakaway’ wiring, which ensures a complete unplug of all wires. The cage would have durable roll bars, and would have internal and external airbags to lessen the impact from exiting the vehicle.

A few things to consider: this application exists for F1 and Funny Cars – an isolated pod for the driver that is heavily enforced and designed to separate from the chassis upon impact.

I have thought about extreme impacts that would launch the cage extreme distances. I might look at placing a tether to negate going into orbit, or additional external airbags as mentioned before.

I will revisit this system and address the functional issues, like the doors!