Safety doesn’t seem to be a major factor for a farm truck. “The front won’t fall off” seems to be a non-issue based on his 1 year update.
They must’ve cut corners, but if you’re not taking this on public roads they’re not corners you care much about anyway. At $2000 you’re not going to do much better.
See the points in the article about various items having to come from DoT registered factories to make a street legal vehicle. Compliance with those regulations comes with costs, so there is one avenue of cost saving. Edit: As other posters are pointing out that 'DoT Factories' thing is incorrect. Welp that's what I get for trusting the source.
Not that I am saying it appears to be replete with crumple zones or ride-over protection or side curtain airbags or other safety features we would appreciate. But then I wouldn't expect to get T-Boned by an inattentive driver in a lifted F-550 when I'm tooting around my own property clearing fallen branches after a windstorm.
Alternatively (or in addition), one of the most effective knobs you can turn to increase the efficiency of delivering products/services is the human suffering knob.
Safety at a blistering speed of checks article 25 mph? Who in their right mind would design for safety if the thing can't even outpace a professional cyclist?
25mph is where lethality starts to go up, but that doesn’t mean things going 24mph harmlessly bounce off of pedestrians (good news, you’re not dead. Bad news, you can’t work for long enough to go bankrupt). This still weighs a lot more than a cyclist does and it’s reasonable to say that there should be a safety bar to reduce serious injuries even if that’s a lot lower than a vehicle which can go 100mph.
If you think 25mph is safe, try smashing your face against a tree at 25mph. Or run as fast as you can face first into a brick wall. I bet you can't run 25mph.
Why run? I've hit a brick wall going downhill on a bike. It hurts like hell, but it just hurt like hell. 25 mph is not enough to even guarantee a serious injury (even though it can lead to that, and yeah, in freak accidents can even kill you). However, this vehicles absolute top speed is 25 mph, unloaded. That's why I called out the top speed. It's not going to go 25 mph 99.99% of the time, it'll be going 10 or 15.
Yeah, but the odds of the thing ever actually going top speed are basically zero. Even with a load in the back it's never in a million years reaching that speed.
Or a bike accident. Yeah it's going to hurt, you might even break some things, but for it to be any more than that would be the definition of a freak accident.
They must’ve cut corners, but if you’re not taking this on public roads they’re not corners you care much about anyway. At $2000 you’re not going to do much better.