The Tesla Cybertruck has invaded Europe, and European road safety organizations are freaking out over it.
Over half a dozen NGOs—including the European Road Safety Council and the International Federation of Pedestrians—recently co-signed an open letter arguing that Elon Musk’s bulky monstrosity poses numerous threats to European road safety. The letter was inspired by the recent decision by the Czech Republic to register one of Tesla’s trucks as a passenger vehicle, thus allowing it entry to the continent. According to the safety orgs, the owner of the car in question may have illegally misreported the vehicle’s weight as a means of getting it certified as a legitimate import to the country.
Now, the road safety advocates seem to feel that Tesla’s electric Hummer-like heap could spell big trouble for Europeans—and that the vehicles need to be kicked out of Europe, with extreme prejudice. “It is our assessment that the approval and registration of Cybertrucks in the EU poses illegal risks to all other road users,” the letter reads. “If this analysis is accepted, it follows that the small number of Cybertrucks registered so far in the EU need to be de-registered, with the relevant Member State/s confirming their removal from public roads.”
Why are the safety orgs so worried about Tesla’s truck? I guess it’s because it seems so obviously dangerous. “The Cybertruck fails to meet a range of basic European road safety norms that apply to passenger cars (M1),” the letter notes. “As outlined below, these range from the Cybertruck’s inadequate, or non-existent, crumple zones for crash absorption to its sharp edges.”
One of the relevant concerns regarding the Cybertruck are its sharp, angular corners, which look like they were built to shiv cyclists. Wired writes that the same driver who imported the Tesla truck to the Czech Republic has attempted to get around local regulations regarding angular car design by affixing slim rubber bumpers to the vehicle’s four corners, thus allowing them to technically skate through regulatory vetting. The groups warn that this particular rubber modification could lead to the “mass import of Cybertrucks into Europe” and that the Czech Republic “risks becoming a back-door channel to trans-ship such dangerous vehicles to other Member States.”
Gizmodo reached out to Tesla for comment but did not hear back by time of publication.
When it comes to avoiding harm to consumers via sensible government regulations, Europe has always been miles ahead of America. Sadly, the safety orgs note that, even by America’s greatly reduced safety standards, the Cybertruck may not qualify as a safe ride. “The Cybertruck’s non-existent or inadequate crash absorption brings unacceptably high risks to all other road users,” the letter states. “Due to the self-certification system which operates in the US, the Cybertruck has never been crash-tested by any public authority. Already, there are real doubts if the Cybertruck meets the lower pedestrian safety requirements that apply in the US.”
Despite the safety concerns, there has only been one reported death involving a Cybertruck. A man was killed in the Houston area in August after his vehicle crashed into a culvert and burst into flames. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened a probe into the incident this summer.
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