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A 2009 car vs. a 1959 car in a crash test.


Pat Donnelly

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Check this one out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dI5ewOmHPQ

It is open to interpritation on the maths/physics/body position/impact force/etc side of things, but I know from experience only very, very lucky people walk away from high speed/dead stop impacts. Drive safe.

Nice video find.. He states the car hitting the wall at 120 is the same as two cars hitting each other at 120 at about 16 sec into the Video.. Cool.

Also when you see the crash of the two vehicles at 20 Sec... you can see that imaginary line I talked about above. (Although the video appears to be a mirror image trick at that point.. or I don't think they crashed two identical vehicles into each other - it was a bit of video photoshopping.)

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When comparing statistics such as these, keep in mind that DOT standards for vehicles in the US does not necessarily apply to vehicles/manufacturers in other parts of the world.

there's no significant amount of cars in Russia in 1959. I mean statistics from influential Wilde works on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_homeostasis - and his research is on US, Canada & Europe. if you didn't read his "Target Risk" book - you definitely should

and my wisdom is with Wilde: there's definite increase of man's risk acceptance when additional protection is in place. safer cars -> faster driving -> ...

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I've had younger (16-25-ish) students in performance driving schools that didn't understand that there were any potential risks at 50 mph. They were certain that it was like video games where you just bounce off stuff and keep going. Scary.

Most people don't understand that the videos we've all seen with the crash-test dummies are done at only 40 mph. The cars are not usable again after a crash at those speeds.

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draw a free-body-diagram and you will be enlightened

<iframe id="dit-video-embed" width="640" height="360" src="http://static.discoverymedia.com/videos/components/dsc/c1ecfb3418504be88dd64d244bbfd16359c286ca/snag-it-player.html?auto=no" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>

while MythBusters uses energy to explain the results, conservation of momentum (linear and angular) is the time-tested method, recognized by SAE, State courts and Federal courts and 99% of the technical schools, in automobile accident reconstruction.

Conservation of energy becomes too sticky because, in theory, you should account for all forms of energy [potential, kinetic, light (sparks), sound, etc...]

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