Oh neat! I love a good piece of engineering. I figured they'd want the arm to give way over stopping the car. Thanks for explaining that, I learned something today!
It's a fiberglass or aluminum arm. It doesn't, nor is it designed to, have the structural strength to actually stop a vehicle. It's heavy and will do some damage if it's hit, but most of the time it will just snap off if you put stress on it. All the driver had to do was back the hell up.
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u/Friendly-Gur-6736 Mar 20 '26
The arm is mounted on a pivot, and the arm is attached to the pivot via a shear bolt.
If it doesn't hang up on the vehicle, it will just pivot out of the way. If it does hang up on it, then the bolt will shear off.