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To: jonrick46
The air bags and seat belt saved him.

No disagreement with your conclusion. However, your math assumes no initial vertical component(s) to the vector(s) of the sign part(s) immediately after the vehicle is no longer in contact with those parts.

Also, stricken parts would still have most of their horizontal velocity when initially hitting the pavement, and would to some degree slide, skip, tumble, or bounce.

No doubt corrections for all the above can be estimated by experienced investigators if they have time to do a thorough enough investigation. Angle of impact onto pavement seems like it could be "interesting" to try to determine.

I have great respect for what can happen: In one case, I witnessed the aftermath of a stricken pickup truck that was knocked by a slightly larger pickup truck over 100 ft., right in front of my house. The stricken truck had pulled out in front of the other and got t-boned. Path after impact = ~25 ft. of pavement, over a medium width ditch, across my front yard including a "bounce" @ the yard edge of the ditch, where the P.U. went airborne again, came down, took out a ~ 6" trunk dogwood tree, slid further -- just past the corner of my house, and impacted a roughly 14" dia. hickory tree with enough velocity to sink the hickory tree trunk it ended up "wrapped" on about a foot into the front end of the stricken pickup truck. The "striker" was slowed considerably by the impact but still veered slightly right across the intersection and about 75 deg. into the ditch "corner", coming to rest with the front end buried into the soft mud on the opposite side of that ditch. Amazingly, no one was seriously hurt. The speed limit at that spot is 55 mph, but the striker was not ticketed, only the "stricken" was, for pulling out into the path of the striker. (I suspect the striker was speeding, however.)

260 posted on 02/24/2021 5:15:31 AM PST by Paul R. (You know your pullets are dumb if they don't recognize a half Whopper as food!)
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To: Paul R.

E = MC squared.

When a car is moving downhill, with the energy is gains because of it’s mass, I bet its relative weight becomes magnified, multiplied by some number. Like TNT with a lit fuse.

My daughter launched a car in these Pennsylvania hills, speeding down a hill. Every window blown out, all air bags deployed. By some miracle, she didn’t have a scratch. She was sitting in an ambulance, in shock, about 18 years old. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a broken bone. Thank god.

But these hills, with a car, dangerous as hell if you speed. One bounce, the wheels are in the air, and thats it. A runaway train with no steering.


267 posted on 02/24/2021 6:21:16 AM PST by PA-RIVER ( )
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