Jul 2, 2012
The terrifyingly devastating effects of getting rear-ended by a truck
In this crash test, an empty dock truck runs into a row of 2 cars from behind at about 45 mph. The result will make you realize how irrational our blasé sense of safety is when we buckle our kids in and get behind the wheel.
The video is in German, but it’s not that hard to get an idea of what’s going on…
(via Doobybrain)
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Great. Now I have to walk everywhere.
I don’t think that dent can just be popped out.
http://xkcd.com/1075/
Like I always say: Some day we’ll wake up, collectively slap our foreheads, and say: “Internal combustion engines? What were we thinking?”
For even more reasons in addition to the hellacious ones depicted here.
but that’s assuming that their is a solid wall in front of the front car – if the wall wasn’t there then the cars would not stop so soon, nor be crushed in the same way.
Oh, well I feel much better about it all then. Tra-la-la!
The part of the solid wall could easily be played by the back of a semi.
Toward the end of the video I think they are showing a truck equipped with a device that senses a stationary object and automatically applies the brakes. I think they have already begun to put this technology into some cars. It could definitely save some lives.
It’s a good thing I drive a big ass truck.
Wow, and that’s only at 43 mph… can you imagine if it was on the highway?
Scary but a bit misleading, as noted above. The fixed wall at the front certainly makes the result worse than if there has been nothing, or 5 more cars. Also, compact cars offer much less protection than larger vehicles. I know the stat is not exactly what I read a week or two ago, but something like a 2% increase in vehicle crash fatality for every 100 pounds less your car weighs. Even 500 pounds makes a big difference. Pay the difference in gas and be safer.
Isn’t anyone else troubled by the thinking that seems so acceptable here? It goes: “I must protect myself by driving the biggest, heaviest vehicle I can afford.” The unspoken but obvious subtext is: “I must try as hard as I can to be the driver whose vehicle crushes the people in the other car, not to be the one crushed.” Church ladies and Boy Scout troop leader dads across the land hold to this axiom without the slightest moment of doubt about the lizard-brain dominance of this thinking and our cultural acceptance thereof. This is how we run our transportation system.
With our kids strapped into their NHTSA-approved car seats. Vroom.
kill or be killed yo