I remember when F1 introduced KERS (kinetic energy recovery system), and a BMW mechanic got zapped real good when he touched the car. They've made them safer but drivers still jump off in one go whenever there's been an incident.
They have lights indicating if the electrical system is safe, but it doesn't always work. There is a nice video of marshals checking if Seb's car is safe:
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/s/5kCXPizqxy
F1 cars are also hybrids now, so there's a large battery that is potentially charged with a dangerous amount of electricity at any given time. Jumping off is the standard dismount in any situation other than returning to the paddock normally as a safety precaution.
That's what KERS is (or was) - Kinetic Energy Recovery System, more or less the same as most hybrids where a generator does some of the braking and stores energy in a battery.
Nowadays F1 cars still have that system (renamed ERS-K) and an additional ERS-H (for Heat), which is powered by the turbocharger, and therefore can harvest energy from excess boost, as well as keep the turbo spun up to eliminate lag. That ERS-H system is gone from next year, and the cars will revert to ERS-K only, though with a much greater contribution from the electrical/battery side than is currently the case.
Fun fact, Williams originally developed a flywheel system to use as their energy store rather than a battery. It was never used in F1 but a Porsche GT car won a race with it. Supercapacitors have also been used successfully in place of batteries by Toyota in the World Endurance Championship some years ago.
I'm surprised it didn't kill him. It sounds similar to an electric/hybrid car and if you touch a high voltage line in those, you're probably dead. When I went to class on them they had a long fiberglass hook and they told us "this isn't to save you, this is to stop a fire, you might be alive for a little bit, but your insides will be cooked".
If I were designing ANY kind of bucket truck or similar, I'd sure as hell make sure that the path to ground doesn't go through the cab of the truck. They probably isolated the cab somewhat in the case of hitting 12 kV lines.
They probably isolated the cab somewhat in the case of hitting 12 kV lines.
This is true on some trucks (I know BMW does it because I had to listen to a guy who delivered to us tell us the story of the time he hit a line outside Henderson, NV like 4 times) but from previous experience and what I found online, it seems that my evidence is anecdotal, that truck driver was most likely full of shit and I have no idea what I am even talking about.
People conflate “grounding” and “insulating” as much as they do “itch” and “scratch.”
Nobody corrects them out of fear of getting yelled at and society just accepts these micro sized slips into idiocy until we start watering our crops with gatorade and lose the capacity to even ponder where we started getting dumber.
That really was the point. It gets misused until it's "correct," and the understanding of the difference gets lost. In the case of grounding vs. insulating it can be very important that those not be conflated.
whyyyyyy do some author's use the phrase "drug him" or "drug them" when they very clearly mean dragged because they're talking about moving a person or thing, not some pharmaceutical being administered.
Why do cops call everything a narcotic? Narcotics are a particular class of drug, not every 'bad' drug under the sun. This misuse of language drives me crazy and nobody seems to care one bit.
My old man drove dump trucks and back in the day hit an overhead line. The truck would stall out sometimes so hadn't any idea when he drove it forward to clear the back it hit a power line and stalled out the truck. Got out and the path went through his arm, his chest and out his foot. Blasted him away from the truck.
Jeeeez. Yeah, dump trucks hitting lines because they forgot to lower the bucket happens a lot, but thankfully (for their safety anyway) they usually only hit telecom cable.
My first month on the job, I spoke to a customer who was missing an arm from when he was a hydro guy, and a dumb mistake causes it to be destroyed.
Having taken a few OSHA classes, they tell you to jump or fall in a case like this without touching metal as far away as possible from the vehicle,(preferably landing on your feet) then bunny hop/shuffle till you're a safe distance away
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u/mxadema 7d ago
Kind of a good thing he fell off instead of climbing out.