Dave Sullivan
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• Kitchener, XX, Canada |
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• Registered on 2/27/2003 |
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• 199 posts |
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 Posted:6/20/2004 20:17 |
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I think we need some input from someone who is familliar with this sort of thing.
My training / information on the subject is many years old and vehicles have changed big time.
The age old example of trackter trailers cruising up onto and over smaller vehicles is similar to what you describe between
the lighter car and your expedition.
What if we make things equal and say expedition hits expedition head on at 60 mph each?
What if we say the expedition hits a wall or tree or what ever, and comes to an imediate stop? Does it matter if its an austiin mini instead?
What if the expedition is hit from behind by a smaller, same size or larger vehicle? Or from either side?
There are many situations to take into account and I'm not sure we can say that smaller or larger is better in terms of survivability.
While there may be some situations where the larger vehicle has the upper hand, (as in the tracter trailer example above), I believe that for the most part,there is no such thing as a safer vehicle simply because it is larger and weighs more.
Two real life situations.
First, a 10 ton truck with a large tubular bumper hits a full size 9 passenger van head on.. The passenger side of the 10 ton truck hits the passenger side of the van. Damage to the van is extensive and passenger in the front seat is badly injured.
Damage to the 10 ton truck is a broken bumper ( temps that day were minus 40 deg). Nobody in the 10 ton truck was injured. Perhaps because the frame on the van was missed and the passenger side took the crunch. The people in the 10 ton truck noted that they would have been thrown into the window were it not for their seat belts holding them back.
In other words, they felt that the impact was sufficient enough to put them into or thru the window despite the difference in size of vehicles.
Second.
A small pickup truck hits a small suv. It was raining. The suv was making a left hand turn onto a highway.
The only damage to the suv was the drivers door was torn off clean. No other damage including scratches on the remainder of the vehicle. The 18 yr old driver of the Suv sustained internal injuries from the impact. I suspect he died as a result of becoming unconcious and his lungs filled up with blood and he subsequently drowned. Unfortunately I got there too late and was unable to revive him. Had I been there when the accident happened, It might have been a different story. The point of this story is that the issue was impact and not a mass vs mass or crumple zone vs crumple zone or a center of gravity..
Perhaps someone with some real statistics or up to date info can better answer the question of wheather or not bigger is safer.
Dave S.
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