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'09 Malibu Vs. '59 Bel Air Crash Test
theodp writes "To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crashed a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. Hate to spoil the ending of the video, but if you find yourself participating in a similar car-jousting contest, pick the Malibu over the Bel Air. (Not that you'll be complaining afterwards if you don't, or doing much of anything.) Guess there is something to those crumple zones after all."
Right around that year GM went to a wild X-frame design which allowed the door sills to be moved down several inches, making the cars easier to step out of. But the X was not very strong-- there were plenty of news photos showing Impalas broken in half by not very hard accidents.
Also if you look at a 50's car, the bumpers are massive but held up by a couple thin pieces of mild steel stock-- a strong toddler could bend them out of place.
A few people were calling shenanigans, claiming there was no drive train or that the IIHS used a vehicle with a rusted out frame.
So a writer for the NY Times caught up with "David Zuby, the senior vice president at the institute's crash-test center in Virginia"
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/more-details-about-1959-bel-air-crash-test/
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/more-details-about-1959-bel-air-crash-test/
"We didn't want to crash a museum piece," Mr. Zuby said. "We were not looking for one that had been restored for museum or show quality." But the vehicle had to have a solid structure, although a little surface rust would be acceptable.
They found what they wanted in Indiana. "The frame was sound and all the body panels were sound," he said. It had a 3.9-liter 6-cylinder engine and was in driving condition.
The car was bought for about $8,500 and had about 74,000 miles on the odometer, which was broken. It was trucked to the test center in Virginia.
They've also contributed greatly to the field of psychology and neuroscience by demonstrating what parts of the brain is responsible for what cognitive function.
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They did: 09 Malibu and 59 Bel Air. RTFA and all that jazz.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
How often do two vehicles on the highway hit each other dead-center head on? Front left fender vs front left fender is a more realistic approximation of a highway accident in my opinion. I'd take the Malibu.
I'm an orthopaedic surgeon, and wind up taking care of a lot of people from car accidents. Even a 10 MPH crash is enough to cause whiplash.
Car repairs are much, much cheaper than hospital bills, and there are some things that we aren't still good at fixing like cartilage damage, and whiplash - who likes chronic pain?
..........FULL STOP.
They did the test that way, not because they were rigging it, but because that's their standard offset crash test. It was done to simulate their crashes. The NHTSA did full-frontal crashes against a stationary barrier for years, and the IIHS called bullshit on that test. And the IIHS was right and the government was wrong. This test is a recreation of the offset crash test. That's much more likely to happen in the real world, and much harder on the cars.
And you are wrong about what would happen. My guess is that the engine would be stopped by the Malibu, and the Bel Air would end up collapsing around the engine, making the test that was fatal for the driver suddeny fatal for all occupants of the car. The Malibu, a leg injury for the driver, would turn into a foot and leg injury for the two front passengers. If you did the test they did with a full car, you get one dead person in the Bel Air and a minor injury in the Malibu. Make if full frontal and you get two minor injuries in the Malibu and five dead people in the Bel Air. And yes, though never employed as such, I have taken classes in traffic engineering and accident reconstruction.
Learn to love Alaska
Your physics makes no sense. Why is this modded informative? The ground is not a magical reference point!
If two cars travelling in opposite directions at 40 MPH slam into each other, that's exactly equivalent, in terms of energy dissipation and momentum transfer, to one car travelling at 80MPH slamming into a stationary vehicle. Each vehicle, in its own reference frame, sees another vehicle travelling at 80MPH.
Think about it: if two identical cars crash, and one is stationary, then for a moment (before they come to a stop due to friction against the pavement) they'll be moving together at half the speed of the moving car before the crash. One car goes from 80MPH to 40MPH (40MPH difference); the other goes from 0MPH to 40MPH (40MPH difference).
This is exactly equivalent to going from 40MPH to 0MPH (40MPH difference).
When you're working out simple kinematics like this you should be starting with momentum, which is linear with velocity. You can work out how much energy is released afterwards; you'll see that it works out:
(1/2) * (1500kg) * (36m/s) ^ 2 = 972 kJ - Amount of kinetic energy in the moving car at 80MPH
(1/2) * (1500kg) * (18m/s) ^ 2 * 2 = 486 kJ - Amount of kinetic energy left after the crash: 2 cars at 40MPH
972 kJ - 486 kJ = 486 kJ - Amount of kinetic energy dissipated in the crash
(1/2) * (1500kg) * (18m/s) ^ 2 * 2 = 486 kJ - Amount of kinetic energy in 2 cars at 40MPH
(1/2) * (1500kg) * (0m/s) ^ 2 * 2 = 0 kJ - Amount of kinetic energy left after the crash: in 2 cars at 0MPH
486 kJ - 0 kJ = 486 kJ - Amount of kinetic energy dissipated in the crash
(Yes, kinetic energy is 1/2 mv^2, not mv^2!)
Reading TFA, they paid $8500 and made sure the engine and frame were in good order.
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