Comparing Smartbars And Bullbars, Facing The Facts
I'm a bit of a 4WD buff, I always have been. From climbing impossible mountains to cruising through the sand dunes for an ocean fishing expedition, I just love getting out there, into places unreachable by foot or road.
Recently on an outback excursion I hit a kangaroo. I was only doing about 10km/h so the damage was minimal, but this incident got me thinking about frontal protection. So I called my mates at All Vehicle Accessories in Melbourne to have a chat about bullbars.
So I rang the guys at All Vehicle Accessories in Melbourne to get a bullbar installed. While chatting, they told me about these new pastic bullbars. Intrigued (as I'd never heard about them before) I jumped onto Google to do some research. Smartbars vs bullbars, what would protect us the best. Initially I found a lot of opinion and little fact, but digging a little deeper, a pretty clear picture emerged.
Frontal protection products are designed to do 3 things in a collision. They are designed to 1. Protect the passengers in the vehicle. 2. Protect the vehicle in a collision. 3. Pretect the object being struck in a collision. So that was my first point of reference. Which product did a better job in a collision, the bullbar or the smartbar?
Its pretty funny when you look around for information on the relative safety performance of bullbars and smartbars. People who love bullbars keep pointing out that at 150kms/h a collision will be fatal. So to be clear, we are not looking at the 150kms/h collission. Rather we are comparing performance of these products at speeds up to and including fatal impact, but not exceeding it. That means at speeds which are less than and equal to the point where a collision becomes fatal to the vehicle, passengers or pedestrian.
The two frontal protection devices perform differently as they have been designed to do different things. Bullbars have been designed to be the "unbreakable barrier". They are intended to form a barrier between your vehicle and the collision that nothing can get through. Smartbars on the other hand have been designed, through their hollow polymer construction, to absorb, cushion and decelerate the forces of impact. Ie. To be a "frontal airbag" if you like, albeit for your car. When you look at the independent tests, there really is no escaping it. The fact is that up to the point of fatal impact, smartbars protect your vehicle, your passengers and pedestrians better than bullbars do.
To put this point in perspective though, into words you can feel, smartbars are made out of similar materials that they make those big wheelie bins from. Imagine you fell over in the street and smacked your head into a big iron postal box. It would hurt right? Now compare the same fall if your head hit the middle of one of those big wheelie bins. The bin would cushion the impact somewhat and the damage to your forehead would not nearly be so bad. (Or painful for that matter) Thats the way the smartbars work.
Beyond protection, there is the matter of performance. Given smartbars are significantly lighter than bullbars, its not hard to see that this equates to better fuel consumption, better tyre wear, better suspension wear and safer handling for your vehicle. Vehicles just drive better with a smartbar. Did you also know that the construction of a smartbar creates about 1% of the greenhouse emissions that bullbar construction creates? Better performance on the road, better performance for the environment.
And I have one final point to make on the subject. I love taking the jeep out bush but I'm pretty lazy about it when I come home. I don't want to spend hours polishing, buffing or scrubbing my bullbar because its rusting a bit (especially after those ocean fishing trips) or has lost its shine. A quick wipedown with a soapy sponge is all the smartbar takes to clean. Which means I can spend my time planning the next trip.
These are the facts I found when researching frontal protection products for my Jeep. The protection of my family was my #1 consideration, so getting this right was important to me. If you are considering frontal protection products I encourage you to do your own research, try to seperate fact from the immense amount of image based opinion out there, and pick the product that best suits your purpose. - 21396
Recently on an outback excursion I hit a kangaroo. I was only doing about 10km/h so the damage was minimal, but this incident got me thinking about frontal protection. So I called my mates at All Vehicle Accessories in Melbourne to have a chat about bullbars.
So I rang the guys at All Vehicle Accessories in Melbourne to get a bullbar installed. While chatting, they told me about these new pastic bullbars. Intrigued (as I'd never heard about them before) I jumped onto Google to do some research. Smartbars vs bullbars, what would protect us the best. Initially I found a lot of opinion and little fact, but digging a little deeper, a pretty clear picture emerged.
Frontal protection products are designed to do 3 things in a collision. They are designed to 1. Protect the passengers in the vehicle. 2. Protect the vehicle in a collision. 3. Pretect the object being struck in a collision. So that was my first point of reference. Which product did a better job in a collision, the bullbar or the smartbar?
Its pretty funny when you look around for information on the relative safety performance of bullbars and smartbars. People who love bullbars keep pointing out that at 150kms/h a collision will be fatal. So to be clear, we are not looking at the 150kms/h collission. Rather we are comparing performance of these products at speeds up to and including fatal impact, but not exceeding it. That means at speeds which are less than and equal to the point where a collision becomes fatal to the vehicle, passengers or pedestrian.
The two frontal protection devices perform differently as they have been designed to do different things. Bullbars have been designed to be the "unbreakable barrier". They are intended to form a barrier between your vehicle and the collision that nothing can get through. Smartbars on the other hand have been designed, through their hollow polymer construction, to absorb, cushion and decelerate the forces of impact. Ie. To be a "frontal airbag" if you like, albeit for your car. When you look at the independent tests, there really is no escaping it. The fact is that up to the point of fatal impact, smartbars protect your vehicle, your passengers and pedestrians better than bullbars do.
To put this point in perspective though, into words you can feel, smartbars are made out of similar materials that they make those big wheelie bins from. Imagine you fell over in the street and smacked your head into a big iron postal box. It would hurt right? Now compare the same fall if your head hit the middle of one of those big wheelie bins. The bin would cushion the impact somewhat and the damage to your forehead would not nearly be so bad. (Or painful for that matter) Thats the way the smartbars work.
Beyond protection, there is the matter of performance. Given smartbars are significantly lighter than bullbars, its not hard to see that this equates to better fuel consumption, better tyre wear, better suspension wear and safer handling for your vehicle. Vehicles just drive better with a smartbar. Did you also know that the construction of a smartbar creates about 1% of the greenhouse emissions that bullbar construction creates? Better performance on the road, better performance for the environment.
And I have one final point to make on the subject. I love taking the jeep out bush but I'm pretty lazy about it when I come home. I don't want to spend hours polishing, buffing or scrubbing my bullbar because its rusting a bit (especially after those ocean fishing trips) or has lost its shine. A quick wipedown with a soapy sponge is all the smartbar takes to clean. Which means I can spend my time planning the next trip.
These are the facts I found when researching frontal protection products for my Jeep. The protection of my family was my #1 consideration, so getting this right was important to me. If you are considering frontal protection products I encourage you to do your own research, try to seperate fact from the immense amount of image based opinion out there, and pick the product that best suits your purpose. - 21396
posted by X - Men @ 12:20 AM
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