Everyone is concentrating on the crumple zones and safety at the crash. Remember that modern cars have features that make it easier to avoid the crash in the first place. Antilock brakes. Traction control. Lane assist/warning. Better headlamps, adaptive headlamps. Better suspension and handling. All things to avoid crashes.
All good reasons to avoid the 70’s car.
The 70s car might beat the modern car. For the people inside the vehicles, the story is quite different.
Which do you want as a crumple zone: the car or you?
In this economy? Idk man
Damn…
Here is a fictional scenario, you hit a tree at 30 miles and hour your 2026 Volvo is totaled.
Your dad hits a tree at 30 miles an hour in his 1970 chevy, you replace the windshield and hose it out and you can drive that chevy.
Yeah, but the people in the Volvo get to walk away.
Walking away is a lot harder than being hosed away
“fictional”. Op is ded
Dad would be proud to see his beloved Chevy live on.
The thing you got to understand is that the energy of the crash has to go somewhere. The same energy will apply to both cars, the modern car will absorb a lot of it by deforming, the old car won’t absorb any in that way because it’s a hard piece of metal. And you have to wonder, what is more important to you, the car chassis or the people inside? You might as well ask “why do we put packing peanuts if nails are a lot tougher” or “why do we ship eggs in weird cardboard boxes if a metal square would be more resilient”
The cylinder must remain unharmed
If you’re in an old car with no crumple zones, my intuition says it’s better to hit a modern car because then you also benefit from the other car’s crumple zones. Colliding with another rigid car would basically be like hitting a brick wall. I think the effect on the driver ends up the same in both cases.
If it’s two old cars with rigid bodies colliding, it’s exactly like hitting a brick wall. Even if the car itself is unharmed, the driver isn’t. It’s how quickly you stop that makes the impact dangerous, and in a car like that you stop almost instantly.
On the other hand, when two modern cars collide, there’s 2x the crumple zones, so the impact is the lowest there.
If two 70s cars collided, all the energy is transferred to your body since the solid construction of the car wouldn’t dissipate much of it.
It’s not the speed that kills you. It’s the rapid deceleration.
Your car would receive a lot more damage, but the driver in the older car would be much more hurt than you.
Also, modern vehicles are far more reliable and efficient
The car would win. The driver would lose.
The car from the 70’s survives accidents better because more of it is rigid, but this makes it more dangerous as more of the force of the accident is transferred to the driver.
Modern crumple zones are placed intentionally so that while the car will crumple, the driver will not.
If I have to pick only one, I’m going to go with modern crumple zones
But man, I do wish we had some kind of magical smart metal that could be as rigid as an old car for low speed collisions, but still crumple for more serious impacts.
Because when you drive an old shitbox like I do, pretty much any damage is enough to total it, and having to get a new car really sucks when the accident was minor enough that no one was going to get hurt anyway.
Reverse Newtonian metal sheet. I think that’s doable in my lifetime.
Get EV. Make it do the skateboard design idea where the chassis/drive train is a skateboard under the cabin/cargo body. Delete the bolts that join the halves, replace with bungee cords. Done.
I had a toy car at some point that had plunger bumpers that reversed motor direction on impact.
I direct you to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck
Tldw: cars today are designed to keep the driver safer in a crash, and by having crumple zones and such, the driver is protected more from the forces that are at play.
Edit: aw drat people beat me to the explanation as well as the video! Well shucks at least I had fun commenting lol
Yes, the 70’s car would “win out”. Its driver, on the other hand would fare much worse than you.
Ideally, people wouldn’t treat possibly fatal transit collisions as a sports game. And also ideally, most people would see the uselessness of looking at which car is less damaged. Realistically, I know neither of those are universal, but I do hope they are common.
Yup. Any impacted component that survives means that the force was transferred to the driver instead.
Modern cars look worse after a collision for a reason: If it collapses/crumples, it means that it absorbed some of the forces applied to it rather than transferring it on.
The amount of energy absorbed by the cars is the same for both drivers. (What makes that car existence a risk to both parties.)
The problem of the old car is that it transmits the extra force to the people inside in some of the worst possible ways.
The car might sustain less damage, however, the occupant will receive more damage. People buy newer, safer cars, presumably because they like being alive and would prefer to keep doing that.
Modern cars are designed to break before their drivers do, because you can’t replace you, but you can buy a new car.
thank you for the question . it was interesting reading through the responses.
“70s car wins …but you still lose” lol
I know it’s a much older car for the example but same idea:
My late grandfather liked to restore Model T and Model A cars. One day he got T-Boned in an intersection by my house at 70 km/hr driving a Model A and Grandma was with him.
The 2005 era van that hit him was a wreck with the front smashed in. The driver was uninjured.
The Model A had a slightly bent fender front-right side and a minor paint scuff. My Grandparents went into the back of an Ambulance.
They survived but had raccoon eyes and were more bruises than healthy flesh for awhile.
How did he get T-boned by your house???
Sorry, I’m a dad, I can’t stop it.
Listen Dadeo, that was traumatizing in a way I’m not going to explain for comedic effect. There’s only one thing I can do now…
