How is the newer cars are more fragile during an accident but are more safe for the passengers
In: Physics
They design them to be. Cars nowadays are designed to destroy themselves to take the brunt of the damage. The thinking (and rightly so) is a human is worth a lot more than a car. Seems kindof simple, but in the 50s and 60s, even though every car designer would have agreed with that sentiment, the knowledge on how to do that simply (so it could be made well but cheaply) and safely just didn’t exist. I mean the solution back then for an uber survivable car before lapbelts then Volvo’s 3 pt seatbelt, then airbags in the 80s would have been to fill the inside of the car with foam or wrap the passengers with bubblewrap.
And not that the concept of crumple zones didn’t exist.. its just it took a lot of experimentation (build and test) on how to fold, bend and cut metal so that when it received a great impact force, it would warp and deform in a way to send the force away from the passengers. With the advent of computer modelling this got a LOT easier to model, thus a lot cheaper. Also more energy absorbing materials (i.e. plastics, foams etc.) became feasible.
The old cars from the 50s and 60s are like giant rigid metal tanks; the most deformable part is the big void in the middle where the squishy humans live. Modern cars, the strongest part of the car is the safety cage with the squish humans – the rest of the car throws itself literally under the bus to sacrifice the humans. Yay car.
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