Crash test video - cannot find

[snousle]

Recently, somebody posted an interesting video of a crash test between a modern car and a larger, older one, in which the older car fares rather badly. I can't for the life of me find it again. If it was you, would you mind reposting it in a comment? THANKS!

Update: Thanks Furr and Polecat for the prompt answer! I'm trying to explain to Bill that cars aren't safer just because they're big...

Comments

[p0lecat.livejournal.com]

Found it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHp1GAFQzto

[p0lecat.livejournal.com]

Heres the came crash but with internal cameras.
Can you say Wheel To The Face?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xwYBBpHg1I&feature=related

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I believe this may be the one you're looking for: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xwYBBpHg1I

[danthered.livejournal.com]

That crash vid is certainly spectacular, but it's not the right evidence with which to support your (correct) assertion that size (mass) is not the primary correlate with safety performance. For one thing, the video is an apples-to-ballpoint-pens comparison meant to illustrate only the progress that has been made in safety performance over the last fifty years. There are far, far too many variables for this video to do anything else — the '59 Chev is body-on-frame (and a particularly poor frame design at that); the '09 is unit-body. The '59 has absolutely zero safety engineering -- not even lap belts -- while the '09 has extensive such safety engineering. The '59 was not built to comply with any safety regulations, the '09 was built to comply with extensive current Federal safety standards. The state of absolutely every art, technique, material, and field of knowledge involved in car manufacture advanced immensely between the construction of the '59 and the construction of the '09. And the '59 has 50 years' worth of fatigue, corrosion, wear, and other such degradation (did you see the giant cloud of rust upon impact?), while the '09 was brand new. Too, there is some thought amongst observers that the '59's engine may have been removed prior to the crash. The two cars are just plain not comparable, and the spectacular result is utterly predictable.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

If you hadn't deleted that_dang_otter, I'd point you to a previous comment I left there, but you did, so here's the text again:

There are much more significant factors in crashworthiness than vehicle size/mass. A great deal of real-world crash data, here in North America as well as abroad, demonstrates it very clearly. Take a look at this. See especially pages 7-11. Sure, the laws of physics are the laws of physics. But, slide 9 doesn't tell us what we might like to think it tells us about being in a crash in a recent Civic vs. an old Polara or Valiant. And the safest crash is still the one that doesn't happen. Small cars are generally considerably better than big ones at enabling the driver to avoid a crash.

The safety hazards presented by pickup trucks to their occupants are largely because trucks have a high centre of gravity and are therefore tippy. The hazards trucks present to others are due primarily to mass and rigidity combined with poor maneuvrability.

There's a testosterone effect posited for trucks' greater crash involvement than cars. These data don't support it, but neither do they refute it, specifically, as a cause of trucks' greater risk. Take another look at the chart: pickup trucks are outliers on the Y axis (high risk primarily to others), while sports cars with a known-high testosterone factor are outliers on the X axis (high risk primarily to their occupants). Trucks' risk to their occupants is right between that of compact and subcompact cars.

That said, if you take a look at pp. 13-14, there's an interesting comparison of the Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis. These two cars are identical except for minor trim and decorative elements. Virtually all police cars are Crown Vics, and virtually all Grand Marquis buyers are grandmas and grandpas. Police duty serves as a workable proxy for the kinds of risky driving attributable to testosterone poisoning; look at its effect: it pushes the Crown Vic way up the Y axis! So, perhaps thoughtless behaviour behind the wheel does influence the safety performance of trucks.

In any event, it's still trickier than it seems to figure out how to engineer, build, and pick the safest car. Just picking a bigger vehicle doesn't do it, nor does relying on star ratings; automakers who want good star ratings on the US NCAP tests and good star ratings on the Euro NCAP tests have to design and build any given model differently. Optimising for one test makes the car score poorly on the other and vice versa. So the star ratings are, at best, a rough guideline based on simulation on only one or only a few of many different kinds of crashes.

Fortunately, catastrophic car crashes are relatively rare events...which is why focusing on crash avoidance makes a lot of sense. The primary error of North American auto safety regulation is the almost singleminded focus on crashworthiness: Assuming a catastrophic crash is going to happen and designing the car as a crash cell, with relatively very little attention paid to crash avoidance. The safest, lowest-cost crash is the one that doesn't happen, but the American regulatory structure requires cost-benefit justification for every mandatory provision of every safety standard, and it is mathematically impossible to determine the cost of a crash that does not happen (means dividing by a zero). One can estimate or project such a cost, but the law requires calculation, so regulations based on risk analysis of projected cost savings are not allowed, so we're heavy on crashworthiness regs and lax on crash avoidance.

Other countries, with a greater focus on crash avoidance, have better highway safety stats than ours, per vehicle distance travelled and per vehicle registered. And they do it while getting between double and triple the overall vehicle fleet fuel economy.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

I cannot disagree with any of this, you just have to understand that I'm talking about a basic "old = big = good = safe" mentality that needs some updated perspectives. The specifics are not really important!

[danthered.livejournal.com]

And here is the French perspective on auto safety vs. country of origin:

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