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Bull Bars


Guest paul thompson

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[i have to say bull bars

 

pretty yes

 

pedestrian friendly no.

 

ian your argument is going nowere?

in the serengity in africa the bull bar is essiencial

 

in the darkest areas of outer london i cant see the use for it appart from the fact that it looks good.

 

regards graham

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i have to say i dont quite get the logic behind that. yes without question bull bars on a military vehicle probably might be a good idea.

it doesnt follow that simply because a vehicle is designed for a specific purpose it makes it justifiable (even at the danger of causing more damage to unfortunate pedestrians) in a totally different one. didnt sherman tanks (built to MOD brief too) have big guns and live rouhnds on the top? great in a war zone, not really justifiable in the high street.

 

"Anyone like to argue how much more dangerous the bull-bar made that?" i thought rich mentioned that modern cars are designed to give in key areas that a head might come into contact with?

 

"I'd be interested to know how the wishbones on a hood would compare to a bull-bar if coming into contact with a body at speed"

but arent you missing a crucial distinction there? isnt the wishbone relatively essential to the hood, and isnt the bull bar a hangover from a military use which is no no longer applicable.

 

it would be interesting to see any scientific evidence to suggest that a bull bar makes a car better in the real world or more specifically the uk, and in terms of what? pushing flaming cars off highways in far flung lands? boinging wandering roo's out of the way on outback roads?

if the bull bar is (according to what i'm betting is scientific evidence resulting in this legislation) a dangerous and unecessary appendage which is either an unecessary cosmetic apendage, or an irrelevant part of a former military designed vehicle then how is there a justification for keeping them.

 

forgive the rant. its late.

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Guest tom2b

I see no need for them, yes it would be bad to hit a 4x4 full stop but it would be worse with a few feet of scaffold bar on the front adding to it

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Some facts and figures from an article in the Independent:

 

"The problem is that bull bars are bad for pedestrians. The European Safety Council has estimated that 2,000 people die and 18,000 serious injuries are caused every year in Europe because of the use of bull bars. Yet in Britain, more then 600,000 vehicles have them, despite being little more than fashion accessories. Put simply, as the Department for Transport acknowledges, the majority of bull bars fitted are of a shape and hardness which research shows makes them more likely to injure pedestrians in collisions than if the vehicle was not fitted with a bull bar. In fact, the most recent consultation document said: "The Government, therefore, believes that action is needed against aggressive bull bars."

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Guest stu205
Bull-bars doing extra damage to other vehicles - so it wasn't the 2+tons of metal behind it then? Your repairer should look for a job he knows something about (or where bull-poo is valued). They simply aren't that strong on their own.

 

it wasnt a landy that hit me though so the nice squishy plastic bumper that was designed for absorbing some of the impact had been coverd by 2" tube which like you said ment that all 2 tons of the car went straight into mine!!!!

 

not to mention it was in the middle of Manchester, not in a farmer field, the Australian bush of deepest darkest Africa there are places for bull bars city center Manchester on a blinged up pimp mobile isnt one

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Guest paul thompson

Here's a pic of my new company's product. A soft squishy energy absorbing bit to stick on the front of your car/van/4x4

what do people think of this?

post-80-1173462337_thumb.jpg

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Guest trevor hooley

sorry im with ian on this one. if i hit something in my 2 ton landy it wont make a difference weather i have a bull bar on or not >

 

 

karl

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Guest salty_monk

I believe the two points are different so you're arguing at crossed purposes.

 

On an old car such as Iain's Landy there was no consideration to pedestrians in the design (it's 1969) thus the roll bar probably does no more than get rid of some of the sharp corners on the front end. On top of that a 69 Landy is not as likely to be travelling at the same velocity as a modern brick. The engine, aerodynamics etc probably won't allow the sort of acceleration etc round town you get with a modern 4x4.

 

On a new vehicle they are completely unnecessary in the UK & if they override the built in safety features then they shouldn't be allowed. (Although I can hear the nanny state arguments against this comment as I type). It's just my opinion.

 

Paul if your product helps & gives an aesthetic advantage that some like, why not! :D

 

Dan :)

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Guest chris brown

I also feel that all steel bull bars should be outlawed but I do see what Ian is saying the L/Rover is a real pedestrian killer but I don’t think fitting a set of scaffolding pipes on the front is much of an improvement and may because of its weight increase your breaking distance. Surely this is one vehicle which would be improved immensely by the fitting of as type of device Paul is advocating both in looks and function.

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Once again people are making decisions/statements/forming opinions without thinking outside their own experience or lifestyle - just like the muppets that wrote and passed this legislation.

 

"No use for bull-bars outside the Serengeti" - Really? bet a pound on that?

 

"No use for bull-bars in London" - none that I know of, not much use for a 4x4 either so feel free to ban them from the city. Fortunately though we don't all live in London.

 

If I can justify them can I still fit them?

 

I used to drive vehicles on construction sites, we had bull-bars fitted. They kept us from damaging bodywork and lights on branches and whatnot as we were driving past and came in very useful as an aid in recovering them if we managed to get them stuck. Given that I was working for Group 4 at the time yes we were driving around the sites in the pitch dark and you can quite easily loose a SWB Land-Rover in the tracks left by a big earth mover.

 

I've helped the local countryside rangers recover both their own and others' vehicles and people and animals using ropes and other equipment attached to a bull-bar.

 

The street one of my mates lives on ends at the gates for the mountain-rescue base - again they've got a fairly good justification for off-road vehicles with things like winches and bull-bars.

 

I know at least one local Police authority that has Land-Rover Defenders with bull-bars and I know for a fact that they use them to drag wreckage out of the road until the recovery trucks arrive or on occasion to drag damaged vehicles into a position that the recovery services can then take over. It's not just cars - they shift shed loads on occasion.

 

The coast-guard vehicles have them fitted and use them in anger.

 

What about fire engines? some of those have bars fitted so that they can be used as a glorified battering ram if the need arises.

 

Will any of these uses be exempt from the new regs? They already have the kit fitted to current vehicles but what happens when they get new ones?

 

I'd have no problems if the regulations said that you couldn't fit non-approved equipment to a car that has been designed to be pedestrian friendly but I think that it's foolish to apply regulation like this across the board when there are vehicles out there to which they will make naff all difference or even improve their characteristics.

 

Swan - you need to re-read my post. My Land-Rover was designed to fit two abreast and stacked in the transport planes of the time and this resulted in lots of very square edges that are decidedly unfriendly to soft squishy things like people. The bull-bar was not designed or specified by the MOD but fitted for practical reasons which do not apply specifically to it's military life. If all else was equal would you rather be hit by two pieces of Birmabright that are riveted together at a right-angle or a round steel tube?

 

Stu - Energy cannot be destroyed, it's one of the laws of physics. Where else was the energy the other vehicle had going to go? Bull-bar or not it's all going into your car. In the case of hitting a pedestrian the soft bumpers spread the impact out timewise and give the body a chance to accelerate away from the big bad 4x4 - some of the energy is converted into moving the person rather than damaging them. Unless your car was light enough to effectively bounce off the 4x4 it's still going to receive the same amount of energy and therefore the damage is going to be pretty similar whether it's imparted by a bull-bar or a plastic bumper. Also bear in mind that a plastic bumper has a fairly solid bit of metal inside it - the pedestrian isn't going to deform the bumper enough to get to that metal, another car will.

 

Iain

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i think you make a good point ian, there clearly are applications for the bull bars in the Uk, in certain specialist areas.

 

i wonder though what the proportion is of those that do have a use for them compared to those that dont? it doesnt make sense to not pass a law because of a tiny minority that may actually have a use for the things.

 

i've been looking round for the past few days and have seen maybe fifty 4x4's and none have so much as a scratch on the bull bars (one had a teddy bear tied to it though: so that might count as a "use")

 

so if theyre dangerous and unecessary in the vast majority of cases whats to be done about them?

 

how about banning them from all vehicles in private ownership? then all the company/government owned ones which have specific roles would be fine and all the bling busses would be safer?

 

it isnt perfect, but then no current laws are, they all try to apply rules to an amazing complex world and someone always loses out. if more people stay alive, but i cant push heavy things around in my 4x4 then thats a decent sacrifice imo

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Guest paul thompson

Enforcer,

We have been making a product like this which we sell to Landrover and have been doing so for years. The vehicle manufacturers stopped selling bull bars about 10 years ago becuase of the bad press. I have seen several Landrovers around where I live in the midlands with them fitted. I think people will buy them, but not until they are aware of the legislation. We are also looking to sell them to corporates, like the police, Tesco, Transco, coastguard, BT etc, because these poeple are all interested in improving their corporate social responsibility image.

As far as the insurance benefit is concerned, offiially you need to tell your insurers that you have anything fitted which is not standard, i.e. bull bars, and if you o tell them they will load your premium because of it. You get no such loading with these, and we are trying to lobby the insurers through thatcham to get discount.

Don't spose you know who buys vehicles for the police do you?

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Paul I don't know of any police forces which are still using 4x4s with Bull bars. Many forces have phased out 4x4s for motorway use as this part of the work has largely been passed on to the Highways Agency. Certainly the 4x4s where I work do not have them - (my daily company car is a Frontera, but we also use Mercedes). Even our Sprinters (riot vans) don't have them. We keep a few 4x4s purely because we are largely a rural force with some isolated communities, but even then they are rarely used in that capacity. From the fleet budget perspective we can lease and run 2 pandas for each 4x4, so they are a bit of a luxury.

 

It's up to each individual Police Authority to decide where the fleet comes from, but major manufacturers such as Vauxhall have always provided fleet packages for the police.

 

It was the Ambulance Service that took a lot of flack over their use of bull bars a few years back, but I think they've all gone now. Big Jim might have a bit more info about the Highways Agency.

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