Google Smart Car accident first.
Posted on 07/11/2017 12:48:34 PM PDT by Conserv
Last night I passed a fatal accident involving a smart car.
The smart car was rear ended and then sent flying....
eventually ending up on its side. The driver of the smart car was killed.
http://wgxa.tv/news/local/warner-robins-police-investigating-deadly-two-car-accident
The safety agencies have their test procedures, but mine’s a lot simpler: would my wife let our daughter learn to drive in one?
I didn’t realize kickball was played with cars now.
Smart Cars are very “safe” from a structural standpoint. I think they’re ugly and stupid, since they’re no more economical than a number of far more practical small four door sedans, but they are well engineered. What happens in real life, though, is that their light weight does cause them to basically bounce off of heavy impact. That’s what you’re seeing there. They also have a bit of a higher center of gravity compared to most small cars. To me they look vaguely like a phone booth on wheels, they’re as tall as they are long, and taller than they are wide.
We call’em Fart Cars...because you’ve got a fart’s chance in a windstorm if you get hit while riding in one.
“Exactly. Crash testing is done at a specified speed into a stationary wall. The opposing force is always equal to the mass X speed of the vehicle hitting the wall.”
Wouldn’t the survivability be a bit more complicated?. If a motorcycle, small car, and large truck hit a concrete barrier at the same speed I don’t think the survivability would be the same for each.
Am I the only one who envisions one little software glitch causing the public road version of "the big one" at a NASCAR restrictor plate track, like Daytona or Talledega? Utopia is awesome until reality unexpectedly intrudes, then it becomes hell on Earth.
That would only be a true statement if there were zero small trees along the road. Since there are small trees along the road, the statement is false.
A low mass car will come to a potentially fatal complete stop when it hits a tree which would snap and only slow a larger vehicle down.
Big trees will stop even large vehicles.
As Trump might say, "Not smart."
In a collision between a small car and a big vehicle, the small car loses. It’s simple physics. When an object collides with a much more massive object, the smaller object bounces.
One of our adult offspring drives a Ford F250 and got a big SUV for his wife and kids. He is an engineer and knows the laws of physics.
At first his wife had a little left wing shame in driving a not really fuel saving nor small vehicle. 18 years later after seeing neighbors and friends seriously hurt and worse after wrecks. She just reshod her big SUV and is keeping it. She is really conservative now and hates the dangerous plastic semi aluminum cars.
One of our adult offspring got an early inheritance 10 years ago, my OJ Simpson full size Bronco. At first he was going to trade it in for a smaller and more fuel efficient car. His traveled roads can be very dangerous. After the first year with seeing multiple fatalities/serious injury wrecks on the roads, he drives, including a family member of one of his workers. He decided to keep the OJ Simpson Beast.
10 years later. He will keep it as long as it is running. His local Ford garage told him as long as he changes the oil, gets new tires when needed and regular maintenance, it should last another 100K miles. He has been able to max out his 401K by not having car payments. That is a triple win.
I don't care what safety features those "smart cars" have, there's just so little mass to absorb any impact from a normal-sized vehicle.
One might as well be driving a motorcycle...
They’ve got to rely upon structural rigidity as there is no space for crumple zones front or rear to absorb energy from an impact. So, they “bounce.”
KE = 1/2mv^2 The kinetic energy of a moving vehicle equals half times the mass times velocity squared. After a collision, goth vehicles end up splitting the kinetic energy, based on the ratio of their masses. The guy with the lowest mass loses.
You’re right, they “bounce”, but long before that bounce has the opportunity to cause injury the occupants have likely already been hurt or killed by the rigid structure transferring all of the force (minus whatever little the airbag can contribute) to their internal organs. There’s no engineering magic here. To provide the occupants the greatest chance of survival, the vehicle must to the greatest extent possible slow the rate of deceleration to a survivable level. No crumple zone means that much of that safety margin is removed and your body comes to a much more sudden stop as a result. The only way to avoid that is with space between you and the object hit, which requires a larger vehicle.
Not really. Most crashes are single vehicle. In a single vehicle crash, the severity is mostly determined by the "crush space" between you and whatever you hit. Little cars don't have much crush space.
Smart Cars remind me of a teed up golf ball.
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