# Ontario Wants Further Safety Studies of ZENN Electric Car



## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

This is what happens when one politically correct issue clashes with another. Generally safety trumps the environment, so we will have to see how this plays out. All thats really needed is to let ZENN build the car to egally drive up to 35 MPH instead of 25MPH and then the problem is solved.

Although if the rhetoric comming out of ZENN is in fact true, this won't really matter because they will have a highway capable car in the "near future". We shall see.......


----------



## jdgomez (Apr 18, 2008)

And I thought Ontario would be the first one to legalize it since it was produced there. ZENN really needs to build an electric car that goes 35 mph to have it finally legalized.


----------



## xrotaryguy (Jul 26, 2007)

lol, how many golf cart manufacturers are claiming that they'll have a highway legal car for sale soon?


----------



## david85 (Nov 12, 2007)

jdgomez said:


> And I thought Ontario would be the first one to legalize it since it was produced there. ZENN really needs to build an electric car that goes 35 mph to have it finally legalized.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


 
Its not really all ZENN's fault. Heres where it gets complicated.

Starting in 1979 I think, all passenger vehicles had to be crash tested and meet minimum crash worthiness requirements. Since then, safety has constantly been mandated to a higher and higher standard by a mixture of lobbyists, politicians, and victim's rights advocates. A noble cause, but the catch is that it becomes increasingly difficult for any newcomer to make a car that can be legally sold to the general public. There are a few ways around the strict safety standards. 

One loop hole is something called MVS 500. This loophole allows the vehicle to be completely exempt from many of the more expensive aspects of motor vehicle safety standards, such as:
Crash testing,
Air bags,
Electronic safety systems like ABS and ESP,
some EPA standards,
and a lot of others.

The trade off is that to compensate for the fact that the vehicle is now inherently less safe (at least on paper) than a regular OEM build, the top speed is limited to try and reduce the chances of injury or death in the event of a crash.

Now thats all fine and good, but based on how the law is right now, this means that cars that are governed to 25 MPH are allowed on streets with posted speed limits of 30 MPH (and we all know that the flow of traffic is usually higher than posted speed limits).

This presents a conflict that is clearly concerning many governments as they are being asked to reduce safety standards to allow more of these already less safe vehicles to drive on public streets at an even higher speed than was previously considered safe. Ontario also loves to make rules and safety on public roads as complicated and counter productive as possible. You have not seen bureaucracy until you have lived in ontario.

The solution could be the establishment of a medium speed vehicle status of 40-55 MPH top speed. Some states in the USA are considering this. But this again means lower safety standards being appleid to faster cars. Wouldn't it be nice if the government had to pay for the safety testing!?


----------

