On 29 May 2003 10:30:22 -0700, David Masten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Modern automobiles are tested in straight-on collisions at moderate >speeds and designed to keep the driver and passenger alive. Moderate being about 35 mph into a fixed barrier, which is the median crash speed in this country. You're talking about 220 mph, just under 40x the energy, into a fixed barrier - not survivable - or a head on collision with both cars doing 110 mph. At those speeds/energies, it doesn't *matter* what kind of restraint systems you have in the car; if isn't a built on race car frame, then it, and everything in it, is going to scatter into several large pieces. I saw the aftermath of a broadside high speed collision once. The victim car was a Chevy, good solid car, still recognizable as a Chevy even though it was in two pieces 50 feet apart. The impactor car was some kind of import; I couldn't tell what kind because only the context allowed me to identify it as an automobile. The cop was complaining that he was going to have to wait for the coroner's report to write his accident report, because he couldn't tell how many people had been involved. Needless to say, no one survived. And the speed in that collision was no more than an import could achieve on Willow Pass Road, in town. Don't look to automobiles for your crash survival systems. You could, however, look to automobiles for your crash -prevention- systems. -R -- "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Wilensky, UC Berkeley _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
