Lorry Driver Shunts Smart Car Down Motorway

A lorry driver shunted a tiny Smart car two miles down a busy German motorway because he didn’t know it was wedged to his truck.

Klaus Buergermeister only stopped, allowing the Smart car’s terrified driver to escape, when he was flagged down by police.

“I couldn’t believe it when I got out of the truck and saw there was a car stuck on the front of it,” he (the driver) said.

He added he had felt a slight bump, but said he thought he had simply driven over a stone in the road.

Instead he had hit the Smart car and its bumper had wedged on the truck’s radiator grill.

I love the thing..I am six three and 260 and the damn thing is great in a congested city. My wife loves it and prefers it above any of the other cars. Acceleration is not..brisk, but in a crowded city you don’t notice it. The passenger seat folds flat for hauling stuff. It is safer than it looks..an immensely strong rollcage basically..which is why insurance is very cheap. ALl the worries about them being wiped off the Canadian hghways by vast SUVs have not materialized. Yeah, the gearbox is rubbish, but at low speeds you forget about it after a while…..
It will probably the car I keep for the longest time.

Read what I write before responding.

Splattering your brains all over the sidewalkl would be shear.

However, if you landed on one of those stunt-guy air-filled pillow things, you would live. Hell, you would jump up and do it again.

Why?

Because of the two forces involved in an accident, deceleration does not kill humans — only shear does.

If you know a corner well, about two seconds before the desired shift point, notch the lever. The car will then – miraculously and much to the amazement of your passenger – shift exactly when you want it to.

Sad, but it works. Too bad BMW didn’t develop the thing…

As the nation becomes more crowded, more regulation will be inevitable. (Europe is around 2-3 times more crowded than the US.) We currently have a population of 300 million–up from 150 million when Eisenhower became president, and when rush hour traffic didn’t exist in places like Seattle. If present trends hold, we’ll be approaching half a billion by mid-century. To put it another way, the population is increasing by the equivalent of more than four New Jerseys every decade. This more than anything threatens our automobility. More info on the main cause of this problem at http://www.cis.org.

This is America, my friend, the home of individualism, no politician would be that stupid or that arrogant and self righteous to even consider something like that. Keep your left wing Euro trash nanny state neo-fascist beliefs to yourself please. If the American public desires more fuel efficiency (and they do), they will buy more efficient (not necessarily smaller) cars

“If you decelerate 70mph as the result of a brick wall, over significantly less of one-fifth of a second, and you can bet your body is going to be hurting.”

I have absolutely no argument with that conclusion. None. The point is, that it can be a survivable event.

I was simply agreeing that if one is properly affixed, one’s body can absorb a lot of g-force. In fact, more than is generated running head-on into a very thick concrete wall at 70 MPH.

Impalement, or parking lot belly-flop from the seventh floor is a somewhat different type of event.

Several people have survived free falls from over 10,000 feet without a parachute.
(Since the person falling achieves terminal velocity of approx. 120 MPH after falling about 1000 ft, the altitude is kind of a moot point beyond that. But still…)

I actually do care quite a lot – spend a lot of time in the woods on horseback where it seems time has stood still and surroundings are unsullied.
Hard to balance a love of horsepower and combustion with concern over their effect.

everybody – including pistonheads [and i am one myself] – needs to ‘give a shit about the environment.’ and people in your position – people who attempt to influence others for a living – ought to be leading the way.

“properly applied” forces mean applying a stop with something much less rigid than metal or stone. The straps on captain stapp’s chair are a good example of that, or a seatbelt.

If you decelerate 70mph as the result of a brick wall, over significantly less of one-fifth of a second, and you can bet your body is going to be hurting.

To slow a 100lb person from 100mph takes 100 * 5280 / 100 = 5280 ft-lbs of work. That work can be done in less time, requiring a higher instantaneous force, or more time, decreasing the instantaneous force required.

Seat belts are important not only because they keep you in place, but allow the deceleration to take a few fractions of a second more, in order that you don’t get demolished.

You could argue that seatbelts, crumple zones and the like effectively eliminate the chance of being killed from deceleration, but it’s certainly not impossible to die from such. Shear may be a more deadly phenomenon, as it exposes your body to rapid ablation, but ask any motorcycle driver: would they rather shear off their leathers, or run headlong into a median?

http://www.ejectionsite.com/stapp.htm

There are limits to what the human body can handle, and they are often very much higher than people understand – IF the forces/abuse are imparted to the body correctly.

Humans can survive in spaces well over 200F for much longer than one might think if certain rules are followed.

Oh yeah, if we’re into Isettas, don’t forget the Messerschmitts…

Deceleration cannot kill human beings. This has been proven time and time again, most noteably by the Air Force in the 50s where they ran people at over 500 miles an hour into brick walls and they survived.

Why?

Because there was no sheer.

Accidents involve two and only two forces.

Sheer and deceleration. Sheer kills. Deceleration does nothing.

Prevent sheer and humans live. This is why NASCAR drivers can hit walls at 180mph and live. There is no sheer.

Sheer is putting your head through a windshield, getting a steering column through your chest, have the car catch on fire, etc.

Read your “Unsafe at Any Speed,” people.