Reply to 3 killed in crash on River Road

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I guess BMWs are pretty sturdy cars?  It is amazing that the other driver wasn't more badly injured considering how devastating the impact was for the other car.  [/quote]

It's mostly related to direction of impact. The BMW likely hit head-on, so you have the entire front of the car to absorb the impact. The front is designed as a crumple zone for that purpose. Then on top of that, seatbelts and airbags are oriented towards a front-end collision.

On a side impact, there's much less "car" there to protect you. Just the doors, which do have side protection (typically beams) built in as it's required by federal law, but that's just a lot less mass and material compared to what's at the front of a car. The laws of physics come into play.[/quote]

The other law of physics is the relative speed of the two vehicles.  A Chevy Volt accelerates very slowly, so traveling ? less than 25 mph, perhaps much less.  The BMW was in a 45 mph zone.  So with that difference in speeds, the Volt would thrown farther.  Think pool balls. [/quote]

Interesting, I would think that a car being broadsided would travel further if it had some acceleration going on as opposed to barely moving or stationary at the time of impact.[/quote]

NP here. Vector diagram -- it would depend on the direction and speed of the cars. There's no reason the broadsided car would go further in the direction it was hit if it were accelerating (as long as it wasn't in the direction of the force that hit it) vs. stationary. It might go further in the direction it was moving/accelerating already. But not along the direction of the force of impact.[/quote]

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