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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."
Why would the pointlessly ruin a 1959 Belair? It's not like they make those anymore.
The comments on the video are rather telling. A number of people claim the video must have been faked, because "The Chevy would have barely gotten scratched."
Notably, a number of the panelists on the hearing about the sinking of the Titanic expressed serious doubts that mere ice could have torn iron. In other words, time marches on, but ignorance of physics remains a constant. (Also see, "This is the first time in the history of mankind that fire has melted steel.")
Actually I am a lab rat in an elaborate plot to take over the world.
My friend, many motorcyclists care deeply about their bikes, but that does not prevent surgeons from referring to them as "organ donors".
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
My first car was a 57 Ford Custom 300 (Full size sedan). This was in 1995. The bumpers were massive and thick steel, and were bolted directly to the frame, nothing that a strong toddler could bend.
I was in an accident in it, a guy in a 1981 Toyota ran a red light and I t-boned him, going about 30mph. His frame was bent, axles were snapped, all side windows, the windshield, and rear window were broken. The frame damage snapped a few of his engine mounts, and also broke his radiator. His car was totaled. My car had the frame holding the headlight pushed back about half an inch, and scuffed the chrome bumper.
My observations were that I'd much rather be in an old tank like that in a minor accident. Anything major, and I'd rather be in a modern car with things like seatbelts, crumple zones and air bags.
Is *anybody* here under the illusion that watching Top Gear will help them choose their next car? Sheesh.
No sig today...
And why do they collide at an angle, because that definitely favors one style of construction over another - frame, engine placement, driver's side vs. passenger side, body materials, bumpers, etc.
Because in the real world, cars collide at an angle just short of 100% of the time. Getting an actual, straight, head-on collision is a very difficult task that requires a great deal of setup and effort on the part of the people doing the testing. In the real world, drivers don't arrange their crashes with such mathematical precision. "at an angle" is pretty much a given...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Nope, sorry but I would MUCH rather spend $1k than have my neck suffer 23G's of acceleration (what can occur in a 15mph crash without cushioning). That $1k represents a fraction of the monthly earnings for the average first world family, it's much cheaper to fix the car than fix the person.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Modern car crash: $1000 for bumper and $0.10 for bandaid, total: $1000.10
Old car crash: $50 to mend scratch on bumper, $7500 for head injury, untold lost earning power because now you're an idiot, total: $7550+
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I have a hard time believing that you can predict that. Why do you think the Bel-Air's block would "cut through the Malibu" instead of cutting through the Bel-Air's cabin, like it essentially did in this test?
After all, I am strangely colored.
Mainly because they don't look as nice.
That said, a car accident has a massive amount of energy involved even at low speeds. That energy has to go somewhere. In a new car the energy goes into destroying the vehicle or parts of it. In an old car the energy goes into throwing the driver around. Essentially, at some people people decided that losing a car is preferably to losing their life or suffering life long disability.
I assumed it had to do with offset collisions being very frequent. Engine to engine crashes are fairly rare, but someone drifting a little over a center line isn't uncommon at all.
OK, so if you have a collision, you have kinetic energy that WILL be dissipated. It's is going to go somewhere; it cannot just be swept under the rug.
If you make the car 100% rigid and ensure that the driver is tightly secured - as some NASCAR feeder series cars were in the late 80s and early 90s - then that energy is fed into the occupants. Subject them to 50Gs and you start ripping hearts loose in chest cavities and inducing massive concussions as the front of the skull decelerates the brain. This is suboptimal for survival.
So the car's structure has to be designed to dissipate that energy to a survivable level. Plus street cars don't have the luxury of securing the occupants as tightly as race cars (and putting them in helmets and HANS devices) so secondary impacts within the cabin are a real concern.
A properly-engineered crumple zone not only dissipates the energy of the crash, it crushes the structure in such a way that nothing intrudes into the passenger compartment, that doors remain closed, but yet the door frames remain mostly intact so the doors can be opened more-or-less easily post impact. Granny in the back seat isn't going to be crushed by a flying engine block that winds up in her lap, and little Jimmy isn't going to bleed to death while the EMS crew watches because it takes a hydraulic ram to wrench the door open to get at him.
The crash engineering really is amazing. It is incredible just how well the structures are tuned to maximize occupant survivability.
And pedestrian survivability as well. Almost a third of "Unsafe at Any Speed" (credit the devil, Nader wrote a groundbreaking book) was dedicated to discussing vehicle-vs-pedestrian impacts, and how decorative designs like the "missiles" on the hoods and bumpers of the cars at the time were inflicting horrible wounds on people struck by them. While being hit by a car is always going to be a serious, traumatic event, you are much better off being struck by a modern car than by a "classic".
In every measurable way, modern cars are so much better than cars of just 20 years ago that it is utterly amazing - and cars 50 years ago are, in comparison, steam locomotives.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
"Minor" accidents are something like 5 mph. Around 1980, regulations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(automobile)#Strengthening_standards actually required the bumper to handle that. I once had a 1989 Opel Vectra whose bumpers still seemed to match that requirement, and it has saved me a nice chunk of money.
But I agree that you should not expect the bumper to handle a 30 mph crash.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I love it how you claim that a test by an organization with 5 decades of experience doing this is "bogus" just because of your uninformed "intuition" about old cars.
... and then they built the supercollider.
My brother works in an emergency room. He notes how fragile the human body is compared to the interior of a car. A patient of his was admitted from a minor car accident where he was rear-ended at least than 20 mph. The patient, who did not have his seat belt on, slapped his head against the steering wheel. That opened up a gash that required dozens of stitches.
You can very easily be in a heavily-built car but suffer severe injuries in a relatively minor accident if you are not buckled up. A newer car would crumble to absorb the shock. The tank would hold its shape, then slam into you as you're held in place by inertia.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I really like formula-derivative cars for demonstrating the point of "destroy the car, not the driver" idea. You see an F1/Champcar/Indie car collide with anything and its just parts flying everywhere. I point out to people "each chunk of metal flying away from the crash is a bit of mass, and velocity not flying towards the driver".
I think that's the coolest thing about car-design safety in racing. It's made drivers much more likely to survive, and vids to watch just HELLA way more cool...
I mean, when a girl gets excited watching cars blow up into a million pieces (because I obviously didn't know the person in the car) you know it has to be impressive!
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS