How is the newer cars are more fragile during an accident but are more safe for the passengers
In: Physics
Going fast doesn’t kill you in an accident.
It’s the sudden stop.
It’s why you can fall onto an airbag from 50 feet and be fine, but fall onto concrete and you won’t be.
Older cars yes usually were more solid, not crunching or crumpling in the accident. But in an accident when those cars would suddenly stop, your soft fleshy body would still go shooting forward/backwards/sideways depending on the accident, and smash up against that hard, solid car.
We’ve invented airbags that deploy to help prevent this from happening, but we’ve also done what you said, made our cars crumple.
That’s because when our cars crumple, instead of stopping suddenly, the crumpling of the car means you slow down over a longer time, even if that time is only half a second, it can drastically reduce the force on your body during an accident. The crumpling of the car absorbs energy from the accident, meaning there is less energy to do damage to your body.
Cars could be made as a solid block of steel impossible to break, but cars aren’t designed to protect the car, they’re designed to protect your soft squishy body inside.
Latest Answers