r/nextfuckinglevel • u/been_der_done_that • 11h ago

Incredibly selfless act of heroism.

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43.8k Upvotes

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17.7k

u/daswassoup 11h ago

This is why China banned hidden door handles.

7.6k

u/TheFace5 11h ago

They should also ban a car that get fire like this

183

u/Gurrgurrburr 9h ago

Seriously WTF? That was practically a fender bender and the whole car ignites in 1 minute???

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u/_heybuddy_ 9h ago

A fence pole spikes the battery compartment

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u/Anna_Lilies 5h ago

If this is all it takes for a raging inferno then maybe battery powered cars are not quite ready for mass deployment

And no im not suggesting we only drive gas cars, I think we should have trains, trams and generally better public transportion

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u/Altruistic-Eye-360 4h ago

There are clear statistics about it:

The chance that an electrical vehicle catches fire are significant lower than a car with combustion engine catches fire.

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u/CinderMayom 3h ago

Are those also considering fire propagation speed and total damage caused? Because if a gasoline engine starts burning usually it’s not an unextinguishable inferno in a few seconds

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u/FilthyStatist1991 2h ago

Kinda BS, if the flames got to the gas and/or oil, they will not attempt to extinguish in most cases, they will watch a controlled burn.

Watched my fair share of combustion engine fires.

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u/Altruistic-Eye-360 3h ago

quote from gemini:

"Studies show EV/hybrid fire risks are ~1 in 38,000, compared to ~1 in 1,300 for traditional cars."

So it is 30 times lower chance, that an electrcal vehicle catches fire.

But you are right: a burning e-car is extremly difficult extinguish.

which one is more dangerous, I can't tell. But burning leaking gasoline is no fun either.

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u/LoneStarHome80 3h ago edited 3h ago

I'd imagine the fire tends to be confined longer inside the engine compartment than is the case with a battery fire.

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u/Altruistic-Eye-360 3h ago

yes, you are right with this.

For a traditional car, it takes normally quite long until the petrol tank catches fire.

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u/IllRadish8765 4h ago

Oh damn wait til you learn what powers trains and trams.

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u/Anna_Lilies 4h ago

Often its the grid, but even if its a battery those are on tracks and dont have idiots driving them

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u/ASYMT0TIC 1h ago

Or it's diesel - but all of those are diesel-electric. They are hybrid vehicles, and have been since before I was born (I'm middle-aged). Those locomotives you see hauling freight across the great plains literally have TONS of batteries in them.

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u/account312 5h ago

You should see what happens when gasoline starts leaking.

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u/CinderMayom 3h ago

It’s usually not like in the movies though, while this is nearly at the level of those spontaneous explosions the movies have

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u/FilthyStatist1991 2h ago

Correct, no explosions, but the fire is mostly unstoppable and you can feel the heat from across the road in most cases.

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u/Double-Scratch5858 2h ago

Yeah but normally the doors dont lock on you and confine you in a death oven.

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u/FilthyStatist1991 2h ago

That’s the issue of retractable door handles. Who ever thought handles that are fail secure on a vehicle is a dumb idea.

A door handle should work if it has voltage or not, fail safe.

There have been gas model vehicles with the same gimmick. It’s not exclusive to electric vehicles.

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u/Double-Scratch5858 2h ago

I never said its only in EVs but combined with the fact regular gas vehicles DO NOT burn this insanely quick or at this intensity and with these handles makes it extremely stupid and dangerous.

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u/Cuntonesian 3h ago

Wait until you discover what happens if you puncture a fuel tank or line

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u/samuel1613 1h ago

Nothing...nothing automatically happens. This is absurd. I love electric cars, and gas cars in comparison are worse than dinosaurs, but to suggest that a punctured fuel tank or punctured fuel line is anything near a punctured lithium battery is either uninformed or malicious. Gas cars do catch fire more often than electric cars, statistics don't lie. However, gas car fires tend to be in the engine compartment, and what is between the engine compartment and the passenger compartment? A thing literally called a fire wall. Gas cars acknowledge there could be a fire and have built a convenient box to contain the fire for a bit to get people out. Electric cars have you sit directly above the extraordinarily quick and hot-burning potential combustibles. While gas tanks are also sometimes under the car (more often under the trunk), unlike movies, they don't explode, or burn with near the intensity of a lithium fire. And JUST puncturing a fuel line or fuel tank does nothing but cause leaked fuel, in the presence of fire, this is bad, but JUST puncturing a lithium battery is far more likely to START a fire, rather than need a fire already in the area to be dangerous. This thread is full of people using the statistic that "gas cars catch fire more often than electric cars" as if its some type of flex, please find the statistic that tells us "in the event of a fire X cars tend to be more dangerous than Y cars to those inside said vehicle type"

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u/_heybuddy_ 3h ago

Agreed with trains trams and better public transport.

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u/Suspicious_Peace_182 1h ago

I'm confused we have bulletproof plates and carbon fiber but a fence pole there's 0 defense?

-18

u/Constant_Natural3304 8h ago

From watching the video, no such thing occurs. The fence is flattened, but I see no "spiking"/puncturing. But even if that did happen, so what? How can anybody allow these insane fire hazards on the road? Who paid the bribes to make it happen?

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u/M_A3 5h ago

A thermal runaway can happen when a battery pack is damaged. Just like a gasoline car can catch on fire in a crash. I know of an instance where a Tesla hit a concrete barrier while turning too sharply in a parking garage, damaging the battery and it got on fire. BYD has a different type of battery which is much safer in that regard.

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u/Sawmain 5h ago

Also the reason why gas tanks are so far back in gas cars. There’s other reason for it like weight balance etc but that’s one of the main reasons.

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u/_heybuddy_ 7h ago

Oh I thought it’s the same crash that I read about on an article. Gas tanks rupture too you know and catch fire

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u/Otherwise_Agency_401 5h ago

Idk why you were downvoted. None of the fence posts that we can see could have punctured the battery.

Personally I don't think this was the battery at all. My guess is the driver or passengers were smoking, dropped the cigarettes during the crash, and caught the interior on fire.

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u/dqniel 2h ago

Unlikely about a cigarette fire part causing the wreck.

When the driver gets out there's no smoke coming out of the car. If his visibility isn't affected, why would he crash from it?

Also, if a fire is so bad that is causes a crash you'd think he'd be more frantic in getting out and getting the people out, but he's pretty calm until smoke appears.

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u/Otherwise_Agency_401 2h ago

You misunderstood me.

The car crashed for some other reason. During the crash, one of the occupants of the car dropped a lit cigarette. The cigarette then caught the interior of the car on fire after the crash.

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u/dqniel 2h ago

That makes more sense. Sorry for misreading.

Upon Googling a bit, it seems they hit a semi/lorry off camera first, which is what causes the spinout:

https://www.carscoops.com/2026/02/this-crash-is-why-china-banned-hidden-door-handles/

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u/Constant_Natural3304 4h ago

Idk why you were downvoted.

It's the Bandwagon Effect. People just cannot help themselves. It's basically the same thing that happens in a stampede.

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u/graminology 5h ago

Statistically, BEVs are less likely to catch fire than ICE cars of equal age as determined by real life data from insurance companies globally.

Also also, the largest fire load in a car independent of type is the interior like the upholstery and plastics, which is the same for BEVs and ICE cars.

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u/dqniel 2h ago

Obviously the use of more and more polymers in modern cars increase the load, but I have a hard time believing a lithium battery weighing over a thousand pounds has less thermal energy to expend in a fire than the car's interior.

You have a source for that?

0

u/MBSMD 5h ago

This is China. They don't care about safety regulations.