On a typical A road, cars usually travel 60MPH or above, and frequently they pass quite close. Say 2 cars travelling on a road like this were doing 60 MPH and they crashed head-on (ie. 120MPH impact). If all passengers/drivers were wearing seatbelts, what do you think the chances of survival are for them ?

 

this is a serious question.

Well I guess it depends on the size of the cars involved, (If I was running at 4mph down the road and Duffer was running at 5mph towards me Duffer would snap under the force of all that MASS! But if Tooley was running towards me then I would bounce!:D

Well I happen to know someone who did exactly that about 20 years ago and yes she did survive but at the cost of a number of months in hospital, a few days in a coma, many broken bones and a distinct personality change afterwards ! She had an old Triumph, a Toledo or something like that, don't remember what the other car was.

 

 

 

Originally posted by Nelson MainFella

On a typical A road, cars usually travel 60MPH or above, and frequently they pass quite close. Say 2 cars travelling on a road like this were doing 60 MPH and they crashed head-on (ie. 120MPH impact). If all passengers/drivers were wearing seatbelts, what do you think the chances of survival are for them ?

 

this is a serious question.

Yes, mass :eek: has a lot to play I guess. With a seatbelt, the most vulnerable area might be your neck ?

Severe whiplash = broken neck = potentially fatal or paralysed ?

Might start training my neck now ! (oh no, there I go again, answering my own question;) :D )

 

It's amazing how close (& often) we are to death in our cars. I reckon cars should be made tougher, like F1 cars. More crashes sure, but less deaths/serious injuries.

Airbags would play a major part in determining the outcome of the accident and also the mass of the cars involved.

Age too, in theory newer cars should be made from lighter stronger materials, interiors are designed to minimise injurys during impacts and crumple zones are understood and used.

There has been millions spent imporving impact survivabilty in the past few years.

 

 

In short I'd rather crash in a new car than an old one.

a similar crash i know of 10 years ago involving a metro and a lotus sunbeam hit head on, driver in metro died, driver of sunbeam serious facial injuries broken leg, 2 passengers in sunbeam both suffered facial injuries, now these are 2 similar sized cars but the metro driver died, all were wearing seatbelts except rear passenger in sunbeam.

When we start talking about this we have to take into account things like air bags, crumple zones and yes even you favourate of mass.

 

As we all know that force equals speed times mass. So a ZX traveling at 60mph will have more force than a Corsa traveling at 60, and a head on collision would end up with the Corsa going backwards because of the un-equal forces. This is why when you see a crash with a small car and with a 4x4 car, the small car is totalled and the small car is a mess, because the heavy 2-3 ton 4x4 carry a lot more force than a small light weight car.

 

Also with a car such as a ZX there is a long way from the front of the car to the start of the engine, where the impact would be absorbed before hitting the hard engine and main chassis. This would benifit both cars though, but the more space you have from yourself and the engine the better as a lot of people at a crash like that are seriously injured or killed by the engine crushing them.

 

As for the breaking neck. The human body is a lot stronger than people give credit for. There are tendens and muscles stopping your neck from snapping with a ferce forward movment. As you can guess whiplass is when you tendens and muscles stretch because of the movment, and you neck muscles may even dislocate very slightly.

When you hear of people having thier neck broken by twisting their neck, its not, they have broken the spinal cord.

 

But we have to remember that most accidents are not like this. Most are around 30mph-40mph mark and not head on. The weakest part of a car is the side, where you only have a few inches from youself and the impact area.

 

Front quater to front quater impacts are not very good either as most cars ended up with that part of the car just disintergrating and often ended up with the impact acutally reaching the feet of the person on that side of the car.

 

There are many things that make a car safe, such as crumple zones, air bags, strong chassis and seat belts to name a few. There are also many things that make dangerous, like speed, driving like a pr*ck and a badly maintained car.

 

You cant effect how save other drivers are, but you are in total control on how safe you are. Please drive carfully

 

Stuart

I think theirs a bit of luck involved, even if impact points are slightly different it could cause a different section of car to pass through your head.

 

my dad was hit up the rear in a pug 106 a while ago, the car hit him at 40mph and it was enough to bend the roof into an arch!

 

it also depends on the vehicles and if one is braking and one is accelerating as that will raise and lower the height of the vehicle

 

I reckon putting a wedge like a 300 zx under a jeep at 120mph would be enough to cause the jeep to take off most of the roof and drivers head.

 

seatbelts don't cause whiplash really, its ill fitted and non existant head rests and seats. if you have a headrest and get hit up the arse the insurance company probably won't pay out for whiplash.

There was a preview on tele last night for a programme with Count Quentin and Tiff Needel (Why does he have a girls name??) coming soon on Channel 5 where they crash a bmw (5 or 7 series) into a large volvo head on. Might be on next wednesday or wednesday after.

That might assist.

Nick

:cool:

Originally posted by zcar

coming soon on Channel 5 where they crash a bmw (5 or 7 series) into a large volvo head on. That might assist.

Nick

:cool:

 

Hopefully the drivers of those cars will still still be in them! That would be a great assistance!:D :D :D

another factor is loose objects being carried in the car -they can turn into lethal missiles

 

when I moved house recently, I had a car & van full of stuff (which wasn't secured properly) which, had I crashed badly, would probably have killed/seriously injured me.

 

funny thing about humans is, we do tend to take risks. It's in our nature. We have to make a serious effort to make things safer. Also, part of the adrenaline rush of driving fast is due to the danger isn't it ?

Two cars travelling towards each other do not have the same energy as one travelling at the combined speed. It is the energy that must be dissipated in a crash situation and this is what crumple zones are designed to do.

 

Energy=1/2xMASSxVELOCITYxVELOCITY - in other words velocity squared.

 

So your energy goes up with the square of the speed.

 

Say each car weighed 1 ton=1000kg. The velocity must be in m/s. 60mph is 25m/s.

 

Each car has 0.5x1000x25x25=312500 joules. Add these together and you get a total energy of 625000 Joules to be dissipated.

 

Now, if it was one car travelling at 120mph, the total energy would be 0.5x1000x50x50=1250,000 Joules.

Exactly double the energy.

 

So combined speeds in head on crashes are complete b0ll0x I'm afraid.

 

CheerZ,

 

Andy

Originally posted by andyduff

So combined speeds in head on crashes are complete b0ll0x I'm afraid.

 

CheerZ,

 

Andy

 

 

Very good - are you trying for Pedant of the year ?!;) :D

yuh you should never store a road atlas on rear parcel shelf

 

a 1kg weight traveling at over 15 mph hitting your head will probably kill you.

Apparently a common biking accident in summer is when two bikers, heading towards each other, both take something approximating the racing line through the apex of a corner, unfortunately, at the same time.

 

Now as you know, when riding a bike (sports anyway) and cornering you look through the corner and past the bike, this has the unfortunate side effect of causing a literal "head-on" collision when the above situation occurs!

 

What do you think the chances of surviving a helmet to helmet collision are, with a theoretical `closing` speed of say 140mph?

 

I wouldn't fancy your chances.....of keeping your head attached to your body! :(

 

hmmm..... might slow down a touch... (although I always go slow into a corner and fast out, just in case.)

not very high!!

 

 

one of my dads mates drove past his freind who was riding a bike once, he was driving at 35mph and thought it would be a laugh to hit his freind on the head,

 

had the effect of breaking several of his fingers and sending the biker flying off his bike.

Went to an incident a while ago where a biker's foot rest got clipped by a car coming out of a corner, went straight through his foot, because he tucked his foot behind the rest! OUCH

 

 

Metros are one of the unsafest cars on the road, you can cut through them with a tin opener!

 

Most engine mounts these days are designed to collapse on serious impact, hopefully tucking them out of the way of passengers!!

 

Be safe out there;)

 

Mark

When we had the accident in the Escort, the engine actually dropped to the floor and want back, so it went literally under the driver and not trought he fire wall.

 

Strange thing is with motorbike is I have seen people come off them at 140mph they slide along on thier arse for a while and then just get up and walk away. But I have seen people on a mophead being hit or hitting a car at less than 30mph and getting badly injured.

 

I watched a program about the history of car safty, because they where built with no though put into it.

One test they got a car of the time (50's/60's) and drove it right at a lampost at 30 mph. The car ended up in 2, no joke.

 

Stuart

Originally posted by SRRAE

Strange thing is with motorbike is I have seen people come off them at 140mph they slide along on thier arse for a while and then just get up and walk away. ....

 

It isn't the initial impact with the ground that does the damage (unless you go over the HIGHSIDE:eek: :eek: :eek: OUCH!!!) as if you fall off a bike you're only falling a couple of feet. With the right combination of helmet/gloves/leathers/boots you can come off at 200mph and walk away.... no, its the sudden stop of hitting things like trees, lamp posts, street signs, kerbs and on-comming traffic that screws you up. These things tend to be absent from race-track environments, where they generally tend to slide till they slow down enough to stand up (that can be funny as fook if they've got their speed wrong.....ever seen legs try to run at 50mph? LOL!!!!!:eek: )

Yeah, the worst accidents I go to are usually where cars hit trees or lamposts, they usually don't move!!

 

Hence the car bodywork and human bodywork moves!!

On the matter of how cars have changed in the past few years I have seen it first hand working in a car factory press shop. When we first made Bluebirds about 16 years ago now they may have looked like tanks but they wernt built like them, most of the car body was pressed from 0.7mm steel, the only real reinforced panel I can recall was inner sills at 1.5mm.

On current Almeras and Primeras there is loads of internal parts now made from steel thicker than 2mm which is like armour plate (Cant be good for mass ;) ) In fact the first Almeras we made failed the NCAP crash test so an additional thicker floor had to be welded in as well as the normal floor.

 

God thats boring stuff isnt it :D:D

Paul

Originally posted by andyduff

Two cars travelling towards each other do not have the same energy as one travelling at the combined speed. It is the energy that must be dissipated in a crash situation and this is what crumple zones are designed to do.

 

Energy=1/2xMASSxVELOCITYxVELOCITY - in other words velocity squared.

 

So your energy goes up with the square of the speed.

 

Say each car weighed 1 ton=1000kg. The velocity must be in m/s. 60mph is 25m/s.

 

Each car has 0.5x1000x25x25=312500 joules. Add these together and you get a total energy of 625000 Joules to be dissipated.

 

Now, if it was one car travelling at 120mph, the total energy would be 0.5x1000x50x50=1250,000 Joules.

Exactly double the energy.

 

So combined speeds in head on crashes are complete b0ll0x I'm afraid.

 

CheerZ,

 

Andy

 

Sorry mate. Pedant here. You can't just sum the individual energies of the cars. Nelson is right here unfortunately. You have to sum the velocities separately first then calculate the energy of the crash. Velocity is totally relative and there is only one velocity in the calculation.

 

If you want another way of viewing this, imagine the objects crashing in space away from any other object. There is no way to measure the velocity of either object without taking it relative to another object considered as "stationery". With the absence of anything else, you would have to take one of the objects as a reference point which means the combined velocity would be applied to the other object.

 

Now crashes next to a large mass, such as the Earth, do have significant extra parts to the calculation. However, to calculate the simplistic energy of the impact, you must still use the combined velocity in the initial calculation.

 

I thank you.

Originally posted by andyduff

Two cars travelling towards each other do not have the same energy as one travelling at the combined speed. ........

So combined speeds in head on crashes are complete b0ll0x I'm afraid.

CheerZ,

Andy

 

Andy you could not be more wrong you are the one talking rubbish

 

The relative speed, (note not velocity which is speed in a given direction), is what is important, so two car travelling towards each other is exactly the same as one car hitting a brick wall in the example given by Nelson.

 

Also this is wrong,

 

Originally posted by SRRAE

As we all know that force equals speed times mass.

 

Momentum is mass times velocity, ( momentum is a vector so velocity is correct not speed), Force is Mass times acceloration.

The olnly thing i can recommend is dont ever hit a talbot samba, I head on'd one back in my boy racer days and due to then having a spare wheel under the bonnet theyre like hitting a wall!! I was impressed with the vauhall astra that i was driving at the time, as most of the impact was transfered to the roof putting great big ripples in it. Both me and my passenger were stupid enough not to be wearing seatbelts both car were doing approx 50mph each, i broke my nose, cracked the windscreen with my forehead and bent the steering wheel i was holding on to. My passenger got servere facial cuts but nothing broken, the people in the other car got different injuries because they were belted in.

 

And the tosser who rammed my car and made me crash got a 6 month ban.

To tell you the truth I am confused, but also really not wanting to know the answer!

 

If you were in a head on I doubt if you could remember too much about it!

 

If i have a choice between crashing and not crashing, I choose the latter!

 

LOL

 

Mark

Originally posted by Zimon

Andy you could not be more wrong you are the one talking rubbish

 

The relative speed, (note not velocity which is speed in a given direction), is what is important, so two car travelling towards each other is exactly the same as one car hitting a brick wall in the example given by Nelson.

 

Also this is wrong,

 

 

 

Momentum is mass times velocity, ( momentum is a vector so velocity is correct not speed), Force is Mass times acceloration.

 

Got to agree with duffer on this one, you say its like hitting a brick wall at Xmph, but this is not true.

 

Say you are in a fiesta doing 50 mph and hit a truck doing 50mph for the truck it would be more like hitting a cardboard wall at 100mph, and for th fiesta more like hitting a lead wall at 100mph.