Quote:
Originally Posted by 1.5Ldave
Weight has no bearing on how well a vehicle will do in a crash. Size for the most part doesnt either, granted to dont end up underneath one of the collosus vehicles people drive to "feel" safe. Ill choose quality engineering over some big heavy box for safety any day of the week and twice on sunday.
f150 and mini cooper 40 mph crash comparison
Both of these vehicles hit the exact same off-set barrier at 40mph. Now keep in mind that this is not a test of how the two cars would fare in a head-on collision with each-other. This is simply how the cars did versus an off-set crash test. In fact all you have to do is look at the dummy’s legs and you can get an idea of what would happen if you hit a wall in either car. The MINI had almost no intrusion which “indicates that the driver’s survival space was maintained very well” - the F150 on the other hand had “Major collapse of the occupant compartment that left little survival space for the driver.” |
I beg to differ with this argument. Weight and size do have a big part of how vehicles do in a crash.
Take the vehicles in that video. Mini Cooper maybe weighs 2200lbs. F-150 weighs approx 5000 lbs (guessing). You wouldn't think that at 40mph the Ford would carry more momentum into the crash than the mini cooper? What if we took an f150 made out of Nerf and crashed it into a wall at 40mph? Do you think it would have the same effect? I doubt it would crumple further than the front bumper.
Size also matters. Take a number two pencil. Snap it in half. Then take that half and snap it in half. Then take the smaller half and snap that in half. It gets increasingly harder each time.
Finding the balance inbetween all of this is why engineers get paid the big bucks.
Physics....
P.S. First time poster. I'm going to post in the welcome forum but I found this thread through Treehugger.com (actually found Aerocivic and there was a link to this thread). I'm intrigued by all of this so I will be posting more often.
-Eric