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10-12-2010, 05:13 PM
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Steals terrorist's lunch
Drives: 2007 Yaris Liftback Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Reno, Nevada, USA
Posts: 1,299
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Most small cars are built as one giant crumple zone. Impacts are dispersed laterally along the chassis meaning that the vehicle itself absorbs and then dissipates the energy of a collision. This is why small cars are often "totaled" in even lower speed impacts but you rarely hear of small car fatalities, or even loss of consciousness events. Conversely, big vehicles are all solid steel and hardness and unibody construction and don't crumple or dissipate by any other means much at all. The result of this is that the vehicles come through impacts often looking near perfect or having only single-panel damage, but guess what happens to the occupants? That's right, all of the energy from an impact rolls right into and through the cabin rather than around it, and is then absorbed by the occupant's bodies. This is why a big vehicle can look pretty good but the occupants may not walk away, or do walk away but with significant soft tissue and organ bruising. Look at it this way: I have 2 well-off buddies that work deep within the auto insurance industry. Both drive vehicles that weigh less than 3,000 pounds and rent the same when they travel. They don't even like to ride in the bigger vehicles when we have road trips.
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- Brian Share the Road I often carry 2 carpool passengers and mountain bikes or snowboards/skis over a 4,500 foot elevation difference. Click the graphic above to see my detailed mileage logs. |
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10-12-2010, 05:19 PM
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#2 | |
 Drives: . Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: .
Posts: 1,931
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Hybrid Mode
