----- Original Message ----- From: Emily Smirle To: The GURPSnet mailing list Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 3:33 PM Subject: Re: [gurps] GURPS 4E MVA
Eric Funk wrote: > Does this seem right in both senses? The thing that rings most false to me is the lack of serious damage to the vehicle. Humans, deer, large dogs, and other common MVA victims tend to leave REALLY big dents in cars, break windshields, and otherwise cause expensive body damage. At 80-100km it's really serious, but even at 60km I'd expect more than a 2 HP dent (relative to 53hp, 2hp is pretty trivial). Not enough to stop the car from driving, but enough that you take it to a shop to get fixed, instead of driving off and living with the dent. 5DR seems pretty high for a car, actually. TL7 cars were made with more metal than they are today, but considering that side-panel resistance to runaway shopping carts has actually gone up since cars switched to plastic doors, I'm wondering if that means modern cars actually have higher DR? -- Emily Smirle - Gal Dynamo <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l Well, let me relate an incident I once had myself with colliding with a deer when I was just learning to drive. I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and had a long, 15 minute commute to Los Gatos along Highway 17, even at 60mph (or higher... even if the speed limit on that highway is 45... hah!). It was 4am and I was opening the Los Gatos McDonald's on New Years Day. I was driving past Lexington Reservoir and had just passed the dam. Now at this point there's a sheer cliff to my right... I also had a speeding Ferrari to my left that was passing me (I had moved to the right hand lane to let him pass... it's 4 am, and on the northbound lane's it was just he and I, and I had no intention of trying to outrace a Ferrari in a 1971 Dodge Demon with a mere 225ci slant 6 under the hood... Hah! again). At the moment when I had the Ferrari to my left, and the cliff to my right, a local buck (6 pointer so 3 years old) climbed up the near sheer cliff and right into the space oh, 6 or 7 feet in front of my vehicle. At this point I had 3 choices. I could swerve to my right, and sail off the cliff (not likely with that guard rail, but the Demon did weight about 4k lbs... so it's possible at 60mph) and fall to my death... Uh uh... no thanks. I could swerve to my left and smash into the Ferrari which would have killed both of us... no thanks again. Or I could plow into the deer at 60mph. I chose the last choice (actually I don’t' think I had much choice as the Demon had manual drum brakes and took hundreds of feet to stop at 30mph... and it wasn't the nimblest beast either.) At this point you're probably thinking that I'm dead, and writing to you from beyond the grave... but the fact is, there was little, if any damage done to the car. The Demon had a rather unique design feature... in that it's front bumper was rather high and had and underbody panel that slanted backwards from the top. This caused the deer, when hit to slide *UNDERNEATH* the car... his legs taken out from under him by the 4k+ lb car slamming into him at 60mph. After I hit him, I slammed on the breaks (while feathering so as not to lock the wheels), and took about a 1/4 to 1/2 mile to stop... where I found an access culvert that the San Jose Water System used to maintain the dam... allowing me to pull off the highway. What I found was that the deer had passed completely under the car, and had his antlers get caught in the rear axle... I had dragged him for that distance in the time it took me to stop. Took me nearly 20 minutes to pry him off the back axle of my car as the Highway Patrol pulled up (because he saw headlights on the side of the highway. End of the story... Deer Smashed, Road-rashed and very, very dead. 1971 Dodge Demon... slightly dented bumper... maybe about a *half* inch (remember those bumpers were half inch steel...) This was a 3 year old deer and probably weighed about 150 to 160 lbs, and the collision speed was about 60mph. From my own experience this does indeed sound right... provided the car was not one of the tin coffins that people drive these days but a real car, made properly. Most terrifying incident in my life I might add too. But from that day forth, I have never owned a car made after 1972... they just don't make em sturdy enough anymore for my tastes. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
