An incredibly strange accident, but my wife and son are fine.
Two weeks ago, Liz and Ryan were driving to school early in the morning in a midst of a rain storm when a pine tree blew into their path and impaled their 2020 Buick Envision. The tree was about 24 feet tall, passed through the headlight, through the engine, through the firewall, through the dashboard and extended several feet into the passenger cabin, between the front headrests.
By some miracle, Liz needed only four stitches on her hand, caused by a ring that had to be cut off her thumb. And my 12-year-old son, who was in the front passenger seat, was completely untouched. Numerous people from firefighters and policemen to tow truck drivers and insurance adjusters have said they’ve never seen anything like it.
After people processes the shock of the accident, and the relief that everyone is okay, most people look at the picture of the interior and have the same reaction: “Wait, why didn’t the airbags deploy?”
The airbags did not deploy. And everyone has a theory about why.
Theory #1: The airbags didn’t deploy because they failed. The airbags should have deployed, but must have been defective. Most people who believe this want me to share a picture of the damage with Buick and complain. “They should have to compensate you” is a common refrain. “You should sue.”1
Theory #2: The airbags didn’t deploy because the tree missed the sensors. This theory was floated by the tow truck operator. Because the tree went through the headlight where there are no airbag sensors, the airbags didn’t deploy. In this scenario, the headlights are essentially a weakness in the car’s safety design.
Theory #3: The airbags worked as designed. They should not have gone off because the accident wasn’t a typical head on collision. The car was immediately spun around in a lateral motion. The physics of the accident were weird and disorienting. It’s worth noting that my wife’s iPhone’s crash detection didn’t trigger either despite the fact that it was thrown to the floor from the center console. Several people have theorized that the force of the airbags could have made injuries worse.
My gut reaction is that the airbags behaved as designed, but I also could understand if the car wasn’t engineered to withstand such a strange, one-in-a-million accident.
Here’s the thing, though. I don’t know how airbag systems work. Most people don’t, but that hasn’t stopped us all from speculating. We imagine the airbag systems in modern cars to be this protective cloud that inflates around us, but I know it’s more complicated than that. We want to know why the airbags didn’t deploy because we want to be reassured that if it happens to us, we’ll be safe. But it’s just not that simple. There are too many variables.
We’ll never know why the airbags didn’t deploy, but Liz and Ryan are lucky to be alive and I’m incredibly thankful for that.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
📷 Micro.Blog April Photo Challenge #7: Wellbeing. A view from my back deck. Breeze blowing. Birds chirping. A little lizard running along the deck rail. Taking time to relax.
Liz and I walked a couple miles in the park behind our house. Everything is starting to turn green. The birds are out in force. And the pollen. Springtime in South Carolina.
I’ve gotten back into designing shirts and I’m sharing them on Cotton Bureau. Today’s shirt is a salute to the 3.5 inch floppy disk. As a student, I swear I could fit an entire semester worth of work on one of these.
On April 8, a solar eclipse will occur over the middle of the United States. If you are going to be near it this time and want to celebrate the occasion, I updated my shirt from the 2017 eclipse and you can buy it on Cotton Bureau. But order soon to make sure it gets to you before the big day.
Electric truck and SUV manufacturer Rivian announced their new R2 SUV today, but surprised everyone with a smaller R3 version as well. I love smaller cars and I’ve been waiting for new smaller EVs to hit the market, hopefully at a lower price point. The R3 looks adorable and it reminds me of a VW Rabbit, which I used to drive.1 But Rivian didn’t publish any specs so it’s hard to gauge how big R3 is.
Thankfully, they provided high res imagery and it’s easy to see the tire details — Pirelli Scorpion MS 235/55 R20. So based on a 20-inch rim size, and with a nice profile shot,2 it’s possible to estimate the size with a little bit of simple math.
These numbers are rough, obviously. But here’s what I got:
Rivian 3
Length: 149 in.
Height: 55 in.
Wheelbase: 102 in.
That length looks a little short, but as you can tell from the picture, there is very little overhang in front or behind the wheels. For a point of reference, I compared those numbers with the specs of another EV model that I like a lot:
2024 Hyundai IONIQ 5
Length: 182.5 in.
Height: 63 in.
Wheelbase: 118.1 in
The Rivian R3 looks to be a good bit smaller than the IONIQ 5 in all dimensions. In fact, the R3 looks closest to the size of a four-door gas-powered Mini Cooper:
2024 Mini Cooper Four-Door
Length: 158.5 in.
Height: 56.1 in.
Wheelbase: 101.1 in
Of course, there are lots of caveats to this comparison. My numbers are rough, the car is a prototype, and things can change as the car moves to production. Who knows when it will be available to purchase, but I’m excited about the Rivian R3. I’m not in the market right now, but my next car purchase will be an EV. That size is actually perfect for what I want – a small EV to commute back and forth to work. Now we’ll see where the price falls.3
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. And Bob likes small cars.
Many of you know my wife is an amazing kindergarten teacher, but this summer, she will add another role: part-time Ph.D. student. Yesterday she was accepted to the @uofsc Teaching and Learning Ph.D. program. This is something she’s wanted to do for a long time and I’m so proud of her for taking this next step to being Dr. Wertz.
Honda showed off two new EV concepts under the new Honda Zero brand at CES — the Saloon and the Space-Hub. Most of the coverage is focused on the futuristic looks of the concept cars. As someone who grew up going to the Chicago Auto Show and seeing the cars of the future, I’d temper any expectations that the final designs will be this radical.
The current Honda “H mark” has a long history, dating back to 1981. In launching the next-generation EVs, Honda designed a new H mark, to express the company’s determination to undergo a historic transformation as well as the ability to constantly pursue new challenges and advancements. This new design expression, which symbolizes two outstretched hands, represents Honda’s commitment to expand the possibilities of mobility and continue to meet the needs of its customers. The new H mark will be applied on future Honda EV models, including the Honda 0 Series.
The logo simplifies Honda’s current H, removing the outer bounding box and reshaping the mark. It does feel like a more modern mark and seems appropriate on the futuristic vehicles. As logo introductions go, this might be the slowest roll out in the history of visual branding since the first Honda Zero cars won’t be released until 2026. And since the logo is intended for just electric vehicles, that means that Honda is choosing to fragment their brand for a period of time.
It’s worth noting that the Honda Zero brand had its own mark at introduction. I’d be surprised if this is used in marketing when the models debut in 2026. I’m not sure what’s going on here, since the elements don’t really match anything.
Electric car branding is fascinating to me. VW and BMW add a letter or letters to the model number. Hyundai is using the Ioniq brand name for most, but not all of their EVs. Many vendors are rolling out EVs alongside their internal combustion engine lineup. VW is resurrecting the old Scout brand for a line of electric SUVs.1 But to my knowledge, Honda is the first company to create a version of their corporate logo especially for electric vehicles. As the transition to electric vehicles continues, it will be interesting to see how EV branding continues to shift and evolve.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
Scout SUVs will be manufactured just north of my hometown – Columbia, South Carolina. ↩︎
I always pull together my favorite eight shots of the year (as a contrast to those algorithmically generated “Best Nine” posts). I love that it gives me an excuse to go back over all of my images from the last year and relive a lot of great memories.
Our oldest decided to attend the University of South Carolina and had a great first semester.
Liz and I are notably bad a selfies, but this outtake was better than the actual selfie and I love it.
The girls were a little excited about seeing Taylor Swift in concert. (It was an amazing concert and I’m glad we all got to go.)
We have a high school graduate.
This is a big kitty yawn, but it looks so fierce.
Ryan is still playing lacrosse and bounced back after some adversity this summer to have a great rec season.
We attended my nephew’s football playoff games. This was the final play in overtime that sent them to the state championship. They won that game, and won a state championship.
Birthday hike for my oldest included a stop at Looking Glass Falls in Pisgah National Forest. It was so cold, that the rocks were covered with ice.
This is the fifth year I’ve done a Favorite 8. You can see my previous posts from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 on my other site, Sketchbook B. And I posted my 2022 here on bobwertz.com.
Bob Wertz is a creative director, type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina.
