EggXellent Passenger Compartment

All the safety features built into vehicles don’t change the fact that people die in auto accidents.

Nature tries to show that an object in motion tends to remain in motion, and the passengers are throw from the car, mostly through the windshield. We fight this law by belting our passengers in, thereby causing a whiplash injury, or worse, trapping them in the crushed and burning vehicle.

Two things need to be done to reduce the fatality in future collisions.

We should have the fuel container seal itself and eject from the vehicle upon impact. This would remove the greatest danger to the passengers. This can be accomplished either mechanically or electronically, but when the vehicle experiences a serious collision, a neutralizing agent would inject into the fuel tank, seal the fuel line and similar to an ejection seat mechanically separate the fuel container from the vehicle.

At the same time, the passenger compartment should not be a welded part of the vehicle. As the vehicle controls become more electronic, steering, brake control and acceleration can be wirelessly connected to the passenger compartment. Upon collision, the compartment, designed in the basic egg form reinforced to protect the passengers, would separate from the base – engine, wheels, and body – and allow the passengers to be flung clear still inside the safety of the pod, belted into their seats. The compartment would be designed crush proof to maximize survivability and due to its design spin so that the passengers would be continually pressed into their seats even if not wearing the seatbelt. This would greatly reduce whiplash injuries.

When two vehicles collide, the base of the car would absorb most of the damage and the passenger compartment would spin up and forward to hit the passenger compartment of the opposing vehicle with the seat bottoms forward (the most padded portion) absorbing the impact. No matter which direction the impact is coming from, the egg shaped capsule, would always eject and turn its bottom in the direction of the impact. Passengers would always be pressed deeper into their seats upon impact, minimizing injury.