In fact, if there was a head-on crash between this car and Mercedes E-Class, and you're planning to be in one of the cars, I would advise you to chose the Mercedes.
For an extreme case think of a low speed collision between a bowling ball and a ping pong ball.
In a mismatched collision, the smaller vehicle needs to withstand a higher delta-V than the larger vehicle.
Also, in many cases the bumper heights are mismatched so the larger vehicle's strong structure runs into higher, weaker parts of the small vehicle, further exacerbating the problem.
> victim blaming
It's an exercise in reducing risk, not assigning blame.
> the law says I can cycle on those roads
The law can't bring you back to life, but if you want to take the risk that's your decision.
Since it's your car that does the killing in an accident, not the cyclist. Right?
"You" is plural for motorists. A single motorist deciding to own and operate a soft-and-safe-mobile will not affect your (singular or plural are interchangeable here) risk appreciably.
It doesn't mean you're wrong, and you (singular) can pick your battles, but I think I'd prefer to be alive than correct.
Where does this number come from?
I knew I would get responses about "why don't cars just..." e.g. why should I change, they're the ones who suck. I'm not suggesting or opposing public policy changes here. I'm giving practical advice which makes cycling much safer than the statistical average.
If you do all of what I say, it's a reasonably safe and healthy pastime.
Please, try to get some high-visibility clothing. The difference in visibility is between hundreds of meters with high-visibility clothing and meters without.
> It doesn’t seem to me that the sentence for that should be death.
Maybe not death but severe injuries. Being visiblevin the night is a game changer.
You just changed the problem.
If you had to change the problem, it shows you were avoiding the uncomfortable truth.
Also, just to clarify, how did I change the problem? The problem with car crashes is rapid deceleration which injures you, and lighter cars are worse in that aspect compared to heavier cars.
Imagine sitting in a large truck vs a kei car and driving into a brick wall. One has the chance to deform the wall which decreases the speed comparatively slowly. The other one abruptly stops when hitting the wall.
Unless the collision target doesn't deform at all, the higher momentum is better. And if the target is completely solid, a larger typically has a larger crumple zone which is better, too.
I cant come up with any reason to prefer the smaller car/momentum, except in very constructed scenarios (driving over a cliff with a weak fence for example).
The problem is that a “fixed” solid object has effectively infinite mass. This applies when the collision displacement of the obstacle can be measured in fractions of a millimeter. In these cases, the ratio of the lightweight vehicle to the effective mass of the obstacle is effectively the same as with the heavier vehicle vs the obstacle. Here, mass pays no dividends. Only the distance / time covered during the sudden deceleration, and the integrity of the passenger compartment. Of course, the efficiency and extent of restraint systems will also play a major role. But it’s not an automatic win for heavier vehicles in this case.
Notably, most collisions are not with immovable objects, but with other vehicles. In that case, mass is going to win almost every time, since the acceleration experienced by a subcompact vs a full sized SUV is about 2x, which means the forces imparted on the passengers in terms of static loads on their bodies and bones will be 4x.
For passenger survivability in most accidents, the incentives fall heavily towards using the heaviest well constructed vehicle that you can afford.
If the object is completely fixed and effectively inelastic, the main determinant in survival is the distance over which the deceleration of the occupant occurs, assuming a lack of cabin intrusion.
So the mass of the vehicle is ideally fixed in relation to its rigidity, and it’s not better to have less, or more, mass except as the ideal ratio to the rigidity of the vehicle.
What you want is a vehicle that decelerates as slowly as possible over the greatest possible time/distance.
A light vehicle that is very rigid is equally terrible as a heavy vehicle that is very rigid. What matters is how many millimeters it takes for each vehicle to come to a complete stop after colliding with the immovable object.
There are a lot of combinations of vehicle mass and rigidity that meet the ideal here, and it is not sensible to assert that a massive or a lightweight vehicle will be ideal in this case.
What you want is a vehicle that, at the speed of the collision, deforms the most completely and to the longest distance possible without incursions into the passenger compartment.
Ideally, the vehicle would have a very long and well engineered crumple zone in front of the occupants. Here, assuming similar material engineering of the impact absorbing structure, length is king. All things being equal, a car with a stubby front profile will expose its occupants to twice the acceleration as one with a 2x longer hood.
Still, the vehicle must have enough mass that the crumple zone is fully compressed at the speed of the collision. If it’s too light, it will decelerate before the impact absorbing distance if fully used.
If it’s to heavy, it will still be moving when the crumple zone is fully exhausted, and either a sudden peak of acceleration or a cabin intrusion will occur when the passenger cage becomes involved in the deformation zone.
I’m going to guess that on average, you’re still better off in a full sized SUV than In a more sensibly sized vehicle, hitting an unmovable object at speed.
You say you have a background in vehicle safety, so maybe you know something I don’t. Please explain where I’m going wrong here?
I still haven't seen a single argument why a smaller car would be better in a collision.
Being a skeptical Socrates doesnt change that the momentum is significantly higher, and you arent moving that pole any significant distance.
I'm not sure why there is such a strong denial of reality here. Is it ego?
Momentum doesn't matter. It matters in a vehicle on vehicle collision, but since the pole is essentially infinite I'm not sure why you're bringing it up. Acceleration is what impacts the human body, and it's determined by speed and distance. For the same speed, a larger car will have a longer distance to stop, therefore lower acceleration, and less force on the body.
Ford F-150 Raptor length 232.6" width 118" height 80.7" curb weight 5,540 lbs.
Sherman Tank length 247" width 103" height 108" mass ("curb weight") 66,800 lbs.
So in terms of size, sure, they're kind of comparable, although in a head-on collision I think I'll still take my chances with the F-150.
For safety, we should be limiting the size discrepancy of vehicles where we can.
recently it has become a selling point to have a 5 star safety rating for cars in the market, which has finally made basic aspects like airbags part of the cheaper trims.
The personal moral dilemma here is crazy. Are you willing to risk your own life and the lives of anyone else in your car over the lives of the people in the other car? It's so terrible but you also can't fault anyone individually for choosing a larger car for safety reasons. (Those reasons being, I would prefer to kill someone else than kill myself or others in my car.)