Powershift posted:

Powershift posted:

Powershift posted:

The Door Frame posted:

I would argue that the massive Bro-Trucks and giant SUV's are the problem in that equation. I hate not being able to buy any of the super cool, tiny, foreign cars for fear of becoming paste under a truck driven by someone who has no need for, and doesn't pay enough attention to safely use, a vehicle that obnoxiously large. It's a lot of the same problems that motorcycles and scooters have, the vehicle itself is pretty safe as long as you aren't a moron and wear helmets, jackets, etc, but the real danger in riding is almost exclusively from other drivers on the road who won't bother to look before swerving into your lane and smashing your vehicle beneath them. Even if a FourTwo collided with a modern sedan, the sedan would crumple, making the occupants of both vehicles significantly safer than if it hit a larger vehicle that was structurally reinforced to handle the weight of the vehicle, the torque from the engine, and the stress of towing.


My anecdotes are much more tame, but my sister's Baby-daddy has an F-250 super duty that he parks at our place on his visitation days and parking behind it makes me really uncomfortable because his license plate is about level with the dash in my Civic. He could just back up on top of my car with no problems if he were so inclined, or just didn't look before reversing. My car is stock USDM with no adjustments to the ride height and his only has dealer upgrades, no real aftermarket stuff. My car would be perfectly safe if I were to hit or be hit by a normal vehicle, even vans and most SUV's would be ok because my car would take the hit in a crumple zone and safely buckle, keeping the majority of the force from reaching the cabin. Hell, I was able to smack into a ~110lb buck at 85 miles an hour and then drive for 400 miles after forcing the panel back out of the wheelwell because the crumpled metal deflected him away from the interior of the car instead of holding shape and sliding him over the hood.
No matter how safe I should be on the road, all of the crumple zones in the world can't protect me from a bumper that's just going directly over the safety features of my car in a crash

um excuse me posted:

I don't disagree this is part of the equation. I never understood the whole big vehicle craze. Then again I'm young and have plenty of time to grow into it. However at a certain point any sufficiently small car becomes dangerous to operate at highway speeds because of the forces involved if you get into an accident.

Powershift posted:

The Door Frame posted:

I was going to be an rear end post the NHTSA crash test data where Miatas of the same year outperform Jeep Cherokees for a whole generation, but after looking at the tests themselves, the National Highway Traffic Safety Association doesn't seem perform tests at highway speeds. The closest I found is the full frontal 35mph which is supposed to simulate 70mph collisions, but is extremely unhelpful considering that a wall behaves very differently than a car would on impact and it doesn't accurately reflect the effect that two vehicles would have on one another.

Powershift posted:

eberbs posted:

saw this at a local 711,Not sure if that mongoloid bumper is terrible or awesome

xzzy posted:

Not actually true, in a head on collision both vehicles are coming to a rapid stop. The effect is that they experience the collision as if the other object were a solid wall. You only start to see differences if the two bodies have significantly different masses, because the larger body has more momentum.. which I believe means the smaller body is going to recoil in the reverse direction somewhat.

xzzy posted:

Not actually true, in a head on collision both vehicles are coming to a rapid stop. The effect is that they experience the collision as if the other object were a solid wall. You only start to see differences if the two bodies have significantly different masses, because the larger body has more momentum.. which I believe means the smaller body is going to recoil in the reverse direction somewhat.

Powershift posted:

If all you want is mangled metal, here you go. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7dG9UlzeFM

some texas redneck posted:

Meanwhile on reddit...

some texas redneck posted:

Meanwhile on reddit...

Powershift posted:

CommieGIR posted:

It's like something that was left at the bottom of a lake for a decade and then rolled out under its own power.

The Door Frame posted:

I was going to be an rear end post the NHTSA crash test data where Miatas of the same year outperform Jeep Cherokees for a whole generation, but after looking at the tests themselves, the National Highway Traffic Safety Association doesn't seem perform tests at highway speeds. The closest I found is the full frontal 35mph which is supposed to simulate 70mph collisions, but is extremely unhelpful considering that a wall behaves very differently than a car would on impact and it doesn't accurately reflect the effect that two vehicles would have on one another.

The Door Frame posted:

Then, I looked at IIHS and NCAP tests, and it looks like no one really does tests (or at least doesn't like to publish the results thereof) at actual highway speeds for all of the cars that are intended to drive on the highway, for reasons that are frankly beyond me. It's like they realized that there were no universal, cost effective safety measures that were reliable enough above 55mph and collectively chose to quietly ignore the fact that cars go faster than 35mph to improve the perceived safety of what they're selling

mekilljoydammit posted:

Former crash testing lab / accident reconstruction guy here, whose dad is still in the industry - so I'm not as immersed in it any more but I keep track a bit.

...

That's... actually not far off. They cloud it in justifications like "most accidents happen at lower speeds", which is, by far, true. Even on highways, a car hitting something at full speed without the driver having done anything to slow down is pretty rare, so 35mph isn't unreasonable. But hitting something at freeway speeds without slowing, there's just too much loving energy. It gets to a completely different strategy for saving the occupants because the "use structure as crumple zone" idea stops working when there's enough energy to crumple everything between the bumper and trunk.

spog posted:

Is there a single speed where, no matter what vehicle you are in, if you exceed it and hit something solid, the occupants will die?

i.e. doesn't matter if you are in a Volvo or a F150, if you hit a wall at >x mph, you will die?

spog posted:

Is there a single speed where, no matter what vehicle you are in, if you exceed it and hit something solid, the occupants will die?

i.e. doesn't matter if you are in a Volvo or a F150, if you hit a wall at >x mph, you will die?

some texas redneck posted:

Meanwhile on reddit...

xzzy posted:

The crazy wrecks that F1 drivers have gotten themselves in to and walked away from suggests that speed is a lot higher than anything we'll ever see on public roads.

Maybe look at airplane crashes to figure out the always-lethal velocity.

spog posted:

Is there a single speed where, no matter what vehicle you are in, if you exceed it and hit something solid, the occupants will die?

i.e. doesn't matter if you are in a Volvo or a F150, if you hit a wall at >x mph, you will die?

mekilljoydammit posted:

From looking at real world accidents, honestly, not really - crap gets really really flukey anyway. Think of glancing hits and stuff going cartwheeling or whatever instead of coming to a stop in one hit. In a frontal crash test scenario, well, it gets to a point where everything will be mangled past the driver compartment, but that's not like a single speed.

F-1 and such are an example of completely different crash safety strategies. Crumple zones in street cars aren't that much stiffer than the rest of the structure really, so stuff just keeps yielding. Modern car chassis, the central tub is fantastically strong and surrounded with all sorts of stuff that will deform first - there's actually engineered chunks of honeycomb in the front and rear to absorb a lot more energy than production car crumple zones will, but the idea is when you get past that nothing should be deforming. And the drivers are strapped in tightly enough that they basically decellerate at the same rate as the rest of the chassis, vs production cars where it's a lot more... variable.

And 65G isn't always fatal. G forces aren't G forces, it depends where it's applied and how long. For that matter, I *think* (it's been a while so don't quote me) that 65Gs isn't even that bad of a crash rating in a side test.

Siochain posted:

Ignoring the frame, I saw something similar up here. Jacked up F-350 rolling with I think 21's or something. Looked loving silly.

spog posted:

Sorry, I meant in modern road vehicles, not specialist ones such as F1/planes - a quick google says 65G is always fatal, but I'll bet a mass-produced commuter box isn't going to protect anywhere near that and you;ll die because the steering wheel has become intimately acquainted with your brain

Throatwarbler posted:

If you don't wear seatbelts in a car with a bunch of airbags and crash will the airbags be more dangerous

Powershift posted:

That's becoming somewhat common here when guys run out their first $4,000 set of the 44" tires that fit their lift, and see chinese 35x12.5s for $1000.

I've got 34"x11"s on a stock 2wd. you can imagine how small they would look on a truck with a 14 inch lift.

xzzy posted:

The crazy wrecks that F1 drivers have gotten themselves in to and walked away from suggests that speed is a lot higher than anything we'll ever see on public roads.

drgitlin posted:

Not really a fair comparison. For one that an F1 car's crash structures dissipate a huge amount of energy as they disintegrate, plus the driver is extremely securely mounted in the car and is wearing a helmet and HANS device.

spog posted:

Is there a single speed where, no matter what vehicle you are in, if you exceed it and hit something solid, the occupants will die?

i.e. doesn't matter if you are in a Volvo or a F150, if you hit a wall at >x mph, you will die?

Powershift posted:

Listed as a "caprice rat rod"

A 4 door turned into a 2 door the ugly way.

Boaz MacPhereson posted:

Man, at that point, why not ditch the trunklid entirely and rock a Capricamino?

mekilljoydammit posted:

And 65G isn't always fatal. G forces aren't G forces, it depends where it's applied and how long. For that matter, I *think* (it's been a while so don't quote me) that 65Gs isn't even that bad of a crash rating in a side test.

IPCRESS posted:

I would be OK with a new set of laws saying that if you're going to have a tall vehicle, your crash structure may be no higher than <x> to prevent underriding. They already enforce this on commercial trucks & tractor-trailers.

Throatwarbler posted:

If you don't wear seatbelts in a car with a bunch of airbags and crash will the airbags be more dangerous

mekilljoydammit posted:

If you're not wearing seatbelts, understand that all the variables get really weird for obvious reasons. All the crash safety stuff (crumple zones, where they put the bracing, air bags, etc) is based around the driver and passengers being in basically the right place. So basically, in a real crash, who knows? I seem to recall though that they did change some of the airbag parameters quite some time ago to try to account better for unbelted occupants but it's kind of a stupid concept IMO.

quote:

Beginning September 1, 2003, 20 percent of each manufacturer's vehicles intended for sale in the United States must meet NHTSA's advanced frontal air bag requirements. The percentage will increase to 65 percent by September 1, 2004 for 2005 Model Year vehicles and to 100 percent by September 1, 2005 for 2006 Model Year vehicles. All passenger cars and light trucks produced after September 1, 2006 will have advanced frontal air bags.

Bismuth posted:

http://i.imgur.com/8tJny7Y.jpg

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