HOLY CRAP...car explodes after being hit by a truck on icy highway

[sethnintendo]

lestatdark said:

kowenicki said:
How can that happen...?

Must have been a very old vehicle for it to just disintegrate like that. Modern safety standards would stop that. But two vehicles colliding at a combined 100mph is never going to end well.

Horrible... really horrible.

Even the most modern and sturdy built car would have a similar outcome to that one. The kinetic force of a moving truck is in a whole different scale than moving cars, we're talking 10^3 to 10^4 orders of magnitude, so the outcome would probably always be similar.

Not only that, had it been a frontal impact, the engine compartment would have absorved most of the shock, but if at high enough speeds, that still wouldn't be enough to save the compression of the habitacle in most cases. This accident is even worse because the truck caught the car completely on the side, on the weakest parts of the structure...only a massive Jeep-category car would have a chance to resist such forces without shattering into pieces, but the G-forces from the impact alone would be enough to cause massive trauma if not instant death to the passengers.

Either way, it is indeed a horrible accident and i'm sad to say that I have witnessed a similar accident when I was a child...it was not a pretty sight at all.