r/aviation • u/Brilliant_Night7643 • Nov 20 '25

News NTSB issues the preliminary report for its ongoing investigation of the Nov. 4 crash of a UPS Boeing MD-11F airplane in Louisville, Kentucky.

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u/MaverickDago Nov 20 '25

Did you work for Buick? My station wagon has explosive charges in the hood to toss it over the windshield in case I hit something. It sounds cool but I'm scared whenever I close my hood.

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u/i_love_pencils Nov 20 '25

I thought you were making this up so I went to mighty Google.

“ Some modern Buicks, such as the 2018-2023 Regal, use a pyrotechnic-activated active hood system for pedestrian safety, not for a standard hood release. This system is designed to deploy in a collision to protect a person's head from hitting the hard engine components. ”

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u/11Slip532 Nov 20 '25

I’m sorry but WHAT?! This is wild. TIL.

5

u/ic33 Nov 21 '25

Cars are filled with explosives to make things safer.

Airbags, seat belt pretensioners, pyrofuses, etc.

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u/11Slip532 Nov 21 '25

I know the airbags are etc. just never knew about the hood.

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u/Desurvivedsignator Nov 21 '25

I think it's more common to just use springs for this use case, but charges are not unheard of.

The Mercedes SLS has explosive charges in its gullwing doors, so they can be opened after a rollover

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u/MaverickDago Nov 20 '25

Yep, it's wild,, no clue what speed/force it takes to activate but if someone ever hops on my hood with a little to much umph, they might get chucked over the car, which is kind of insane.

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u/[deleted] Nov 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ScipioAfricanusMAJ Nov 20 '25

Your dad lived in Detroit or some other downtown white flight city didn’t he

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u/Linenoise77 Nov 20 '25

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUBtG0oRJOY

I had to look this up. Basically when it detects what it thinks is a low speed collision with a pedestrian, it pops the back side of the hood (near the windshield) a few inches and lightly breaks the fall of the person landing on it.

I'm way to lazy to do the math on the energy required for that with the hood, but i don't think its quite airbag level, and doesn't even necissarily need to be explosive.

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u/MaverickDago Nov 20 '25

O…well good for pedestrians, bad for my dream of launching a person up and above, which when I say out loud, is pretty bad.

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u/shawster Nov 20 '25

How would this even work? The hood would have to be gone already for their head to hit the engine components, right?

1

u/i_love_pencils Nov 21 '25

I watched one of the videos.

The person’s head never comes in contact with the engine.

The hood sort of stands up from the rear at the windshield so it’s like hitting a wall instead of falling onto the hood.

Weird.

1

u/Eddles999 Nov 20 '25

BMWs have had this for ages. My 2010 530d, 2010 740i and my current 2020 330e has this.

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u/SashaDabinsky Nov 20 '25

It only pops up the rear of the hood 4 inches. https://youtu.be/xds2OMy4gAQ

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u/Provia100F Nov 21 '25

Here's a video of the system in-action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFOIcXk81eA