I’m thinking specifically about how breakable safety glass is important so that you can escape through a broken window if your car falls into a body of water, or how crumple zones are designed so that it’s the car that gets smooshed, rather than your brain and organs. But official state cars, like Cadillac One/”The Beast,” have bodies that are way stronger/heavier than a normal car and bulletproof glass windows, so how do they protect the occupants if there’s some kind of freak accident?
(I realize that the best plan is to avoid such a situation in the first place, but given that Cadillac One is hermetically sealed to protect against gas attacks and has electrified handles to keep people from getting in, I can’t imagine that no one has ever considered “what happens if the car accidentally ends up in a lake?”)
In: Engineering
Armored cars are usually built on a much sturdier frame than most ordinary cars. This is nescessary for them to carry the weight of the armor. This sturdier frame greatly improves the vehicle’s odds of retaining it’s shape in a crash.
Armored cars are also often built to resist explosives to a degree. And that requires the vehicle’s hull to withstand extreemly high pressure differentials. Coincidentally, that requires the hull to be very sturdy & rigid.
Additionally, most armored vehicles are relatively slow and can barely achieve highway speeds. This means that a high speed crash is unlikely to occur in the first place.
Armored cars that transport VIPs are also typically escorted by a motorcade down a secured route. This means that the odds of a crash occurring are much lower, since traffic is restricted.
Finally, another safety feature of armored vehicles is that they typically have very few, and very small windows made from bullet resistant glass. These windows are unlikely to shatter or break during a crash. So it is unlikely that the vehicle’s occupants will be harmed by broken glass or ejected from the vehicle.
There are some drawbacks to armored vehicles though that can make them less safe under certain specific circumstances though.
One of the biggest problems is that mine resistant armored vehicles specifically tend to be very top heavy, and this can make them prone to rollovers just like an SUV or a truck. But, those vehicles are more like trucks than cars.
In some armored vehicles like the humvee, a rollover can be especially dangerous because the struts may not be strong enough to support the vehicle’s weight when it is upside down, and this can cause the crew cabin to be crushed under the weight of the vehicle.
If we go back to what i said earlier about the windows, that can also be a problem if the vehicle becomes submerged in water or engulfed in flames. Windows in a normal car can be intentionally broken to provide a fast way out of the vehicle. But that would be next to impossible in an armored car.
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