Jon "Sheer" Pullen wrote:
> [Paul G" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:]
> >
> > I would certainly prefer a vehicle that properly folded up
> > in such a violent accident ("properly" - as much as possible
> > without intrusion into the passenger compartment). Yeah, you
> > would have had to buy another Insight to rebuild your
> > soundoff sniffer, but likely too that you could have hit the
> > windshielf pillar about 10mph slower.
> >
>
> No, he wouldn't have.
Get real Sheer. Think about what Neon just wrote and realise that it
makes perfect sense. No matter how much you think of the Insight'
crashworthiness in other types of impacts, it is a simple fact of
physics that in this rear-end collision, had the spacious rear of the
Insight crumpled (like many other cars would have, by design), the
deformation would have absorbed *more* of the energy transferred from
the striking vehicle. This leaves less energy to accelerate John and
his Insight, therefore, as Neon states, John and his Insight would not
have accelerated to as great a speed and John would not have struck the
interior of his car with such force. Period.
> Now comes the bad part. John isn't wearing his seatbelt, and
> a rearend collision does not detonate the airbag. Because his
> e-brake is set and his foot is probably on the brake, the car
> comes to a stop almost instantly. John's body is brought to a
> stop - from 45 mph - by whatever happens to hit first. In
> this case, probably his head.
Lets try to be realistic here; John says the car that hit him was doing
45mph; he also says his Insight was parked in neutral with the e-brake
set and was pushed about 7 car lengths (with him bouncing around inside
it, so likely *not* with his foot calmly on the brake), and came to a
rest without striking anything else (implied by the lack of body damage
other than at the rear bumper).
It is *highly* unlikely that John hit anything at 45mph; both his
Insight and the striking vehicle absorbed impact energy through
deformation (the striking vehicle to a greater extent; I wonder how John
would have fared had it been another wonderfully rigid Insight that had
hit him, given that it would likely not have deformed as greatly and
would have therefore bounced John around even more severely than the
vehicle he mocks for self-destructing to protect him and its occupants
from the impact?), and his Insight had the e-brake on, so it is likely
that 2 wheels were locked and scrubbing off energy as the car was
pushed, 4 wheels at least initially, if John did have his foot on the
brake. All of these factors mean that only a fraction of the kinetic
energy of the striking vehicle was available to accelerate John and his
Insight, and it had to overcome the e-braked pair of wheels to do so,
with the net result that they almost certainly did not accelerate from
0-45-0 in 7 car lengths with nothing but the e-braked wheels dragging to
bring the car to a halt.
Cheers,
Roger.
