Never Mind the Bullocks, Here's the Science (27 page)

There are different types of tyres.

In Ferraris and other sporty cars, the tyre is like a skinny strip of licorice, only 5-10 cm thick from where it sits on the metal wheel to where it kisses the road, and doesn’t have a lot of slop in it. Racing drivers call this a ‘direct feel’—you turn the steering wheel and, almost immediately, the rubber tyre begins to change its grip on the road, and shift the car.

But in a 4WD the tyre is like a big fat cushion, some 15-20 cm thick. It needs to be this thick to absorb the shocks of the rough roads. When you turn the steering wheel, the metal front wheels begin to turn—but the big fat rubber tyre absorbs the motion. It will eventually begin to change its grip on the road, but there is a time delay. So in a tricky situation which requires some evasive manoeuvring, the vehicle is always reacting a little while after the driver has actually turned the wheel. The unfortunate driver may then turn the wheel wildly this way and that in a frantic effort to straighten up the 4WD. But because the driver is out of time with the vehicle’s actual movements, the vehicle keeps swinging further to each side with each oscillation—until it goes out of control. (In the airline accident business, the investigators call this a PIO—pilot induced oscillation.)

A vehicle that insulates the driver from the ‘feel’ of the road is not ideal for someone learning to drive.

Airbags

I love airbags. In addition to seat belts, they are a good way to give extra protection to passengers in a car crash. (I specifically exclude children in the front seat of an airbag-equipped car. Children are likely to be injured by the rapidly expanding front airbag, because of their large head size relative to their body size, and correspondingly weaker neck muscles.)

Airbags can make the difference between life and death. In the USA in 2004, the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord were tested in crash tests and rated for the protection that they provided to passengers, when they were hit in the side by 4WDs, SUVs and pick-up trucks. When they had the expensive optional side airbags that give head protection, they each got the highest of the four safety ratings. But the standard version of each car, without the airbags, got the lowest rating.

And here’s the rub. In 2004 in the USA, only 15% of people paid extra for the Toyota Camry model with the side airbags, because it’s cheaper not to have to pay for the airbags. But finally, some car manufacturers are installing the full complement of airbags in every model in their range.

Crash Safety

Finally, if there is a crash, what actually happens? Well, it depends on how the 4WD is built.

There are two main designs.

The first is the monocoque design (from the Greek
mono
, meaning ‘single’, and French
coque
, meaning ‘shell’), in which the
floor, sides and roof are a single integrated structure. Conventional cars also use this design. This kind of structure is usually integrated with crumple-zone technology, which absorbs much of the shock of a collision.

In the other design (as in most 4WDs), the body is mounted on a pair of solid rails—a chassis—and usually does not incorporate crumple-zone technology. This design does not do well when it runs into a fixed object, or into something that weighs as much as it does. It wins only when it runs into something lighter.

The ideal situation after a collision is that all of the shock should be absorbed by the car (which has given its all to protect the occupants) and that none of the shock goes to the occupants. Most 4WDs are too ‘stiff’ and do not absorb enough of the shock.

Safer to Not Wear Seat Belt?

Every now and then, in a discussion of seat belts, somebody will come up with a story of how they (or a friend, or a friend of a friend) were in a terrible crash, but survived only because they did not wear a seat belt, and were ejected from the car.

First, not all crashes happen near a conveniently located hill of straw or cardboard boxes upon which one can land ever so gently.

Second, US data looked at this specific situation of all occupants in rollover crashes. They found that 72% were not restrained (!), and that about half were ejected from the car. If they were restrained, only 4% were ejected. But of all of those ejected from a car, 62% were killed.

So if you are in a collision, it’s safer to be wearing a seat belt, rather than not wearing a seat belt and being ejected.

The Reality

In the USA, wearing a seat belt is not always compulsory, and varies from state to state. However, wearing a seat belt when travelling in an SUV is very important, because they roll over more frequently than sedans.

A 2006 study from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, looked at crashes involving some 4,000 children aged between 0 and 15 years, in SUVs built in 1998, or later.

Looking at kids in rollover accidents in SUVs, if they were not wearing appropriate seat belts, 41% suffered a serious injury. This dropped to just 3% if they were wearing seat belts in an SUV rollover, and 2% if they were wearing seat belts in a passenger car rollover.

The study found that kids in SUVs have similar injury risks to those in passenger cars.

On one hand, bigger and heavier cars tend to provide more safety for their occupants. Overall, each 227 kg (500 lb) increase in weight led to a 14% decrease in injuries. One glaring exception was the case of compact extended-cab pick-up trucks—kids in the back seat suffer a five-times rate of injury increase, as compared to kids in the back seat of all other types of vehicles.

On the other hand, SUVs were twice as likely to roll over as compared to a sedan. Furthermore, children were three times as likely to be injured in a rollover if they were in an SUV.

4WDs Not Safer

Yes, there are benefits associated with being in a heavier and higher vehicle. But they are offset by the increased risk of rollovers, and decreased manoeuvrability. Overall, in terms of safety for the occupants of a 4WD, the opposing factors balance out.

Four-wheel drives are not inherently safer—their safety depends on the type of crash you’re intending to have and, of course, who is behind the wheel.

The Nut Behind the Wheel

Way back in March 1899, the British journal
The Autocar
described one of the very first well-documented fatal car crashes. One critical factor in the crash was that a wheel collapsed. But at the inquest, the coroner advised the jury that the car ‘appeared to be going at too rapid a pace to be safe, either for the occupants themselves, or the public’. Even back then, it was recognised that not only was the engineering of the vehicle important, so was the behaviour of the driver.

Over a million people die on the world’s roads each year. Most of them are young. In the USA, about 41,000 people die in road accidents each year. In terms of road deaths per registered vehicle, in 1966 the USA was the safest in the world, but by 2000 had slipped to 13th place.

Dr Leonard Evan, who had a 33-year research career with General Motors Corporation, wrote that‘…despite an obsessive focus on vehicle safety or arguably because of it, the U.S. ranking in the world has steadily slipped. The focus on vehicle factors – factors over which they have no control – has encouraged American drivers to regard safety as something out of their control…A disproportionate emphasis on vehicular factors affecting safety has distracted Americans from the importance of driver behavior.’

References

Daly, Lauren, et al., ‘Risk of injury to child passengers in sport utility vehicles’,
Pediatrics
, January 2006, Vol 117, No 1, pp 9-14.

Evans, Leonard, ‘Traffic crashes: measures to make traffic safer are most effective when they weigh the relative importance of factors such as automotive engineering and driver behavior’,
American Scientist
, May-June 2002, Vol 90, No 3, pp 244-253.

Hakim, Danny, ‘Some popular SUVs fare badly in rollover tests’,
The New York Times
, 8 June 2004.

Hakim, Danny, ‘Struck in side, many cars fare poorly in safety test’,
The New York Times
, 19 April 2004.

What’s the Buzz About Royal Jelly?

The humble bee is essential to our society. It has been around for at least 65 million years, while honeybees go back about 10 million years. The earliest proof of honeybees’ importance to us dates back to 13,000 years ago. That’s when cave paintings show human beings gathering honey from hives.

With today’s agriculture, bees are even more important. Bees pollinate crops for us, and so they are responsible for one out of every three moufhfuls of food that we eat.

Bees live (of course) in beehives. Despite her name, the queen bee doesn’t run the hive—she is its reproductive slave. She is the mother of all the bees in the hive.

Even though most of us are not insect specialists, we’ve probably heard of the truly amazing substance called royal jelly that can turn regular baby bees (larvae) that are otherwise destined to become worker bees into queen bees.

Now there are people who want you to believe that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander—or, in this case, that what’s good for the bees is good for the people. And, therefore, they reckon that you should buy royal jelly.

Royal jelly does perform amazing makeovers on bee larvae (it seems to do this via fooling around with the DNA of the larvae). But this does not make royal jelly some kind of super health food for human beings.

Bees Work for Us

In the USA, some 90 crops depend almost entirely on the honeybee for pollination. The value of this pollination has been estimated to be around US$19 billion per year. Each year in the USA, a million beehives are shuttled cross-country to pollinate the almonds in California in February, the apple orchards of Washington in March, and so on. Even Australian bees are exported to California to help in the pollination of alfalfa, apples, almonds, etc. And each year, some one million bee colonies are spread across the fields. They are roughly distributed at about 250 colonies per square kilometre of apple orchards, and double that for almond orchards.

Now the bee is probably the first insect that springs to mind when you think about an insect having an economic impact on Western society. Silkworms probably run a close second, with the silk they make. Of course, other insects help decompose all kinds of organic matter so that they, and other creatures, can recycle it. Some insects produce stuff we use, such as ‘lac’ from the lac insects which is used as a resin or lacquer for violins, or cochineal (a scarlet dye used to colour food, which is derived from the dried bodies of the female scale insect). And, of course, insects eat pests, and many organic farmers and home gardeners use mantids, ladybird beetles and the like to control other critters.

The bee is probably the only creature (other than the cow) whose ‘secretion’ we regularly eat or drink – and who doesn’t like honey? To make just one kilogram of this secretion (honey)? bees have to travel a distance equal to ten loops around the planet and visit ten million flowers to get the nectar.

And they are one of the very few insects that appear in advertisements in a flattering light.

The Claims

Royal jelly is Big Business, and the marketing claims about it are big as well.

It’s been claimed to fix appetite (too much or too little), blood pressure (too high or too low), mental state (depression or overstimulation), sexual desire (any kind), wrinkles, influenza, enfeeblement and, of course, ageing. Cellulite, heart disease and stroke are also included in the list of illnesses that can be cured. The immune system can be ‘boosted’, while skin disorders and bacterial and viral infections can be tamed. And just to cover all possibilities, it could cure chronic and incurable disorders.

As a skin product, it will supposedly rejuvenate, renew, refresh or regenerate the skin. As a cream or ointment, it is used to heal burns and other wounds.

If you are healthy, there is still a place for royal jelly in your life. It will supposedly make you better at sports, improve your memory and ability to learn and, as a bonus, improve your self-confidence.

It’s available in many forms—added to drinks or yoghurt, refrigerated or frozen, as a paste or pills. It’s more commonly sold as a 1-3% mixture with honey, or freeze-dried.

The list of celebrities whom it is claimed take royal jelly is extensive. It includes Hollywood stars, royal families from around the globe, politicians and world leaders, sports stars and super models. The list even covers more than just the human race. No, royal jelly has not been credited with giving the UFO Space People their superior skills. But the prize show winning abilities of greyhounds, racehorses, homing pigeons and even cats have been attributed to it.

And the unbelievable logic behind the outrageous claims is always the same. Surely, if royal jelly can turn an ordinary bee into a queen bee, it has to be able to do something equally wonderful for you.

The Scientific Claims

The ‘scientific’ claims are usually blessed with meaningless pseudo-scientific gibberish. For example, ‘it is an adaptogen, a food that helps the body to help itself, and creates a balance’.

Royal jelly is claimed to have all the amino acids that we need in our diet. That is absolutely true—but then, so do meat and soya beans.

It is also claimed that royal jelly is very rich in vitamins. Unfortunately, this is blatantly incorrect. Royal jelly has hardly any vitamin C, and even less (if any at all) of vitamins A, D and K—though it does have some rather strange fatty acids. It was originally thought that there would be lots of vitamin E in royal jelly, thanks to the enormous fertility of the queen bee. But no, there is virtually none.