'09 Malibu Vs. '59 Bel Air Crash Test 496
theodp writes "To celebrate their 50th anniversary, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety crashed a 1959 Chevrolet Bel Air into a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu. Hate to spoil the ending of the video, but if you find yourself participating in a similar car-jousting contest, pick the Malibu over the Bel Air. (Not that you'll be complaining afterwards if you don't, or doing much of anything.) Guess there is something to those crumple zones after all."
Classic Cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would the pointlessly ruin a 1959 Belair? It's not like they make those anymore.
YouTube Commenters strike again (Score:5, Insightful)
The comments on the video are rather telling. A number of people claim the video must have been faked, because "The Chevy would have barely gotten scratched."
Notably, a number of the panelists on the hearing about the sinking of the Titanic expressed serious doubts that mere ice could have torn iron. In other words, time marches on, but ignorance of physics remains a constant. (Also see, "This is the first time in the history of mankind that fire has melted steel.")
Patiently waits (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Classic Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
And this repels morons? (Score:5, Insightful)
My friend, many motorcyclists care deeply about their bikes, but that does not prevent surgeons from referring to them as "organ donors".
Re:Classic Cars (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure why everyone keeps bringing this up.
Then you have no soul. Old classic cars are not good *cars* as such, but they are classics, and that one in particular looked like it was in pretty good shape. Old cars make us smile not for being better cars, but because they are rare, and a 59 Bel-Air is one of the rarer of the rare.
Re:TopGear (Score:2, Insightful)
"Really says to me that any speed limit over 40 mph on any single-carriage way road is just insane."
Typical nanny-state goodthink from the UK, amirite?
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:4, Insightful)
I was in an accident in it, a guy in a 1981 Toyota ran a red light and I t-boned him, going about 30mph. His frame was bent, axles were snapped, all side windows, the windshield, and rear window were broken. The frame damage snapped a few of his engine mounts, and also broke his radiator. His car was totaled. My car had the frame holding the headlight pushed back about half an inch, and scuffed the chrome bumper.
My observations were that I'd much rather be in an old tank like that in a minor accident. Anything major, and I'd rather be in a modern car with things like seatbelts, crumple zones and air bags.
Re:Classic Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:that would be Fifth Gear (Score:4, Insightful)
Is *anybody* here under the illusion that watching Top Gear will help them choose their next car? Sheesh.
Re:YouTube Commenters strike again (Score:5, Insightful)
The YouTube stupidity wasn't limited to claiming it was faked. Here we have an actual YouTube commenter trying to draw a comparison between Hitler's Eugenics program and the engineering principles behind car safety. It's like crazy in a can.
Re:YouTube Commenters strike again (Score:4, Insightful)
All cars now also come with seat belts and most people wear them.
Re:Pointless Sensationalism (Score:4, Insightful)
And why do they collide at an angle, because that definitely favors one style of construction over another - frame, engine placement, driver's side vs. passenger side, body materials, bumpers, etc.
Because in the real world, cars collide at an angle just short of 100% of the time. Getting an actual, straight, head-on collision is a very difficult task that requires a great deal of setup and effort on the part of the people doing the testing. In the real world, drivers don't arrange their crashes with such mathematical precision. "at an angle" is pretty much a given...
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Classic Cars (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Crumple zones (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nothing to do with cheapness (steel girders are a lot cheaper than all the R&D needed to design good crumple zones) it's to do with safety and weight reduction.
Crumple zones are safer. If you're sat in a rigid box then you take a much higher G-force peak than if you're sat in something that deforms. What are you more worried about in a head-on, yourself or the car?
Crumple zones mean weight is only added where it's needed, body panels can be thinner/lighter. Less weight means better performance and fuel economy. I realize a light car is unpatriotic in the USA but the savings in fuel, tires and insurance (light car=smaller engine) will more than offset the slightly higher number of dents from not lugging 2000 pounds of useless steel with you everywhere you go.
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:5, Insightful)
Old car crash: $50 to mend scratch on bumper, $7500 for head injury, untold lost earning power because now you're an idiot, total: $7550+
Re:Classic Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I call shenannigans! (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a hard time believing that you can predict that. Why do you think the Bel-Air's block would "cut through the Malibu" instead of cutting through the Bel-Air's cabin, like it essentially did in this test?
Re:Classic Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
If the frame stays intact, but the body shears away in a shrapnel of sharp metal, then the frame is useless. The frame of the car in the video could have stayed 100% intact, but all the bodywork and engine and all crashed inside the passenger compartment ... then all of them are dead anyway. A tank is useless if in a 30 mph crash the engine flys off inside and kills all the crew.
Modern cars are safer by miles. Deal with it.
Re:How about some REAL bumpers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mainly because they don't look as nice.
That said, a car accident has a massive amount of energy involved even at low speeds. That energy has to go somewhere. In a new car the energy goes into destroying the vehicle or parts of it. In an old car the energy goes into throwing the driver around. Essentially, at some people people decided that losing a car is preferably to losing their life or suffering life long disability.
Re:Speaking as a non-car-freak (Score:4, Insightful)
I assumed it had to do with offset collisions being very frequent. Engine to engine crashes are fairly rare, but someone drifting a little over a center line isn't uncommon at all.
Re:And some follow up comments (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, so if you have a collision, you have kinetic energy that WILL be dissipated. It's is going to go somewhere; it cannot just be swept under the rug.
If you make the car 100% rigid and ensure that the driver is tightly secured - as some NASCAR feeder series cars were in the late 80s and early 90s - then that energy is fed into the occupants. Subject them to 50Gs and you start ripping hearts loose in chest cavities and inducing massive concussions as the front of the skull decelerates the brain. This is suboptimal for survival.
So the car's structure has to be designed to dissipate that energy to a survivable level. Plus street cars don't have the luxury of securing the occupants as tightly as race cars (and putting them in helmets and HANS devices) so secondary impacts within the cabin are a real concern.
A properly-engineered crumple zone not only dissipates the energy of the crash, it crushes the structure in such a way that nothing intrudes into the passenger compartment, that doors remain closed, but yet the door frames remain mostly intact so the doors can be opened more-or-less easily post impact. Granny in the back seat isn't going to be crushed by a flying engine block that winds up in her lap, and little Jimmy isn't going to bleed to death while the EMS crew watches because it takes a hydraulic ram to wrench the door open to get at him.
The crash engineering really is amazing. It is incredible just how well the structures are tuned to maximize occupant survivability.
And pedestrian survivability as well. Almost a third of "Unsafe at Any Speed" (credit the devil, Nader wrote a groundbreaking book) was dedicated to discussing vehicle-vs-pedestrian impacts, and how decorative designs like the "missiles" on the hoods and bumpers of the cars at the time were inflicting horrible wounds on people struck by them. While being hit by a car is always going to be a serious, traumatic event, you are much better off being struck by a modern car than by a "classic".
In every measurable way, modern cars are so much better than cars of just 20 years ago that it is utterly amazing - and cars 50 years ago are, in comparison, steam locomotives.
DG
Re:Classic Cars (Score:3, Insightful)
As a restorer, I think it's a waste of a car.
As a mechanic, I think it's a pretty invaluable display of safety innovations in 30 years.
As a driver, I think they need to point out that the idea is to NOT CRASH.
Try slowing down, hanging up, and being sober. No amount of safety features can save a moron.
Re:Classic Cars (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that classic cars have (emotional) value for most of us.
But your argument makes no sense. By that rule, child raping chainsaw murdering Arabian black Jewish gay Nazi women [radiantempire.com] would be the best, and make us smile the most, because they are so rare. ;)
It rather is, because they are a piece of old art. Designs that you can't buy anymore. Technology that shows us what we once did badly or even better.
There's no reason to not include the crash test into that beauty.
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:4, Insightful)
"Minor" accidents are something like 5 mph. Around 1980, regulations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumper_(automobile)#Strengthening_standards [wikipedia.org] actually required the bumper to handle that. I once had a 1989 Opel Vectra whose bumpers still seemed to match that requirement, and it has saved me a nice chunk of money.
But I agree that you should not expect the bumper to handle a 30 mph crash.
Re:Classic Cars (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:STUPID STUPID STUPID..... (Score:2, Insightful)
It shows how far we have advanced in the past 50 years (which seeing some of the comments on here, it apparently isn't clear to everyone that a modern car is more safe than an older one).
What this does is keep advancements in safety technology at the forefront of the publics minds so that government programs and private car companies will continue to invest in advancements in crash safety.
Re:Classic Cars (Score:2, Insightful)
I just wish they showed the cars up close afterwards. While both are trashed, it's clear from the video that the A pillar just collapses on the Bel Air and the driver is probably crushed to death. Showing that (or whatever you can film) versus the still mostly intact cockpit of the Malibu would have driven the point home really well.
It isn't really a fair comparison. Years of rust, fatigue, grinding and polishing. The Bel Air is a graceful but very old lady. Then you put it against a newer Malibu is like having a 17 year old go after the 95 year old grandmother. Who do you think will win?
But in any case, pretty safe bet not many of today's Malibu vehicles, if any at all, will make it 51 years in running order. It certainly doesn't have the class.
Re:Speaking as a non-car-freak (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about some REAL bumpers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, IANA Physicist, but I'd bet that they don't make bumpers like the ones you describe, because they're so rigid. The energy of the collision would be telegraphed through the bumper, into the frame, and eventually into the driver and passengers. Modern bumpers absorb more of that energy (when they get crushed), and that much less of it gets into the cockpit.
It might make sense to swap out a modern bumper for a steel monster if you know you're going to have a minor crash (let the passengers absorb the energy and save money on bumper replacement), but most of us don't have that kind of foresight.
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:2, Insightful)
It can be if the (typically polypropylene) tank is squeezed and fuel is aerosolized...
And there's always the risk of "explosive fire". Not a true explosion in the sense of detonation, but a fire that engulfs a car in 10 seconds is just as dangerous as a fire that does it in a 10th of a second. Especially if you're trapped in the vehicle.
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:3, Insightful)
I was in an accident in it, a guy in a 1981 Toyota ran a red light and I t-boned him, going about 30mph. His frame was bent, axles were snapped, all side windows, the windshield, and rear window were broken. The frame damage snapped a few of his engine mounts, and also broke his radiator. His car was totaled. My car had the frame holding the headlight pushed back about half an inch, and scuffed the chrome bumper.
In other words, his car sacrificed itself to save both you and him.
My observations were that I'd much rather be in an old tank like that in a minor accident. Anything major, and I'd rather be in a modern car with things like seatbelts, crumple zones and air bags.
If you could always count on crashing into a modern car that would take the damage for you, sure. But if the next red-running idiot took your viewpoint to heart and had an 'old tank', then the outcome of this 'minor' accident might not be as nice for you.
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:4, Insightful)
My brother works in an emergency room. He notes how fragile the human body is compared to the interior of a car. A patient of his was admitted from a minor car accident where he was rear-ended at least than 20 mph. The patient, who did not have his seat belt on, slapped his head against the steering wheel. That opened up a gash that required dozens of stitches.
You can very easily be in a heavily-built car but suffer severe injuries in a relatively minor accident if you are not buckled up. A newer car would crumble to absorb the shock. The tank would hold its shape, then slam into you as you're held in place by inertia.
Re:The crash video is a bit misleading (Score:2, Insightful)
This was a perfectly legitimate test. The two standards for front-end crash testing are full-frontal, which simulates a 35mph crash into a wall, and 40% offset, which simulates drifting over the centerline and hitting oncoming traffic at 40mph. It wouldn't make sense to simulate a crash into a brick wall by substituting a car for the wall. Even if it did make sense, it doesn't make sense to cherry-pick the one situation where your car doesn't crumble like a cookie. In fact, the reason they do an offset test is because it's the one that cars traditionally do worse on.
Of course, even if they had done a full-frontal crash with a '57 Chevy, the results wouldn't have been much different. The front bumper attached to the Bel Air's frame rails would have uniformly crumpled the Malibu's front end, allowing the Malibu's driver to walk away. And the Bel Air's driver, instead of being crushed by the encroaching engine compartment, would have died by becoming a 170-pound missile flying through one or both of the cars' windshields.
Re:And this repels morons? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, being an attentive and skilled operator of your vehicle can and will reduce the chances of an accident drastically. I have several horror stories about coming within inches of a major accident, only to dodge it. Mainly because I take my cars to track day and know exactly how far they can be pushed.
Whereas I have only minimal training (almost didn't pass the driver test as a kid, never did donuts in empty parking lots, etc), and yet haven't even come close to a "major" accident (and only a single minor incident shortly after barely passing the test, went half off the outside of a curve at maybe 5-10mph the first time I drove in snow (very wet snow that was coming down rather quickly... and when I tried to get back on the road the car slid sideways and got a minor dent from a tree).).
Perhaps if you weren't certain you're above average, you'd pay more attention to avoiding situations where that matters?
Re:Classic Cars (Score:3, Insightful)
you people really chap my ass. its ONE damn car. we're not talking about a Deusenberg for Gods sake, its a Chevy. i'm a car enthusiast and i think its GREAT that they demolished this thing. sure i love classic cars, and i've worked on restoring some _very_ rare ones. i'm about ready to slip into a tirade about how SEMA lobbied to have the C4C program limit cars to a certain year because they didn't want 'classics' getting junked. how stupid is that? if its a 'classic' car its worth more than the C4C program would have offered, instead people turned in perfectly decent cars that had a ton of usable life left, cars that perhaps _would have been_ classics if there weren't siliconed to death. if you were a classic car enthusiast you'd be thankful for this video; because you know what, they dont build em like they used to and i'm damn glad for that.
Re:Classic Cars (Score:5, Insightful)
And no-one expected a Bel-Air to last 51 yeas either. If they did, why do we have all these complaints about wrecking a car that is so rare? Could it be that overwhelming majority of 51 year old Bel-Airs are in the heap, and only few are still around? I bet same thing applies to modern cars in 50 years. Overwhelming majority are gone, and few remain.
People look at old things and think "they build those things to last!", while they fail to understand that most of them have failed over time, and only handful remain. And since the thing in question (be it car, radio or whatever) is so rare, the few remaining are taken good care of, giving us the illusion that they are somehow more durable.
Re:Speaking as a non-car-freak (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Have a look at race cars (Score:4, Insightful)
I really like formula-derivative cars for demonstrating the point of "destroy the car, not the driver" idea. You see an F1/Champcar/Indie car collide with anything and its just parts flying everywhere. I point out to people "each chunk of metal flying away from the crash is a bit of mass, and velocity not flying towards the driver".
I think that's the coolest thing about car-design safety in racing. It's made drivers much more likely to survive, and vids to watch just HELLA way more cool...
I mean, when a girl gets excited watching cars blow up into a million pieces (because I obviously didn't know the person in the car) you know it has to be impressive!
Re:the wunnerful 50's, not (Score:2, Insightful)
Also if you look at a 50's car, the bumpers are massive but held up by a couple thin pieces of mild steel stock-- a strong toddler could bend them out of place.
You have no idea what you are talking about. I used to lift the car to change the tire using the bumper - using a bumper jack. There were bumper hitches to allow you to tow a trailer. If a toddler could bend that bumper out of place, you must have a grown Mike Tyson as a toddler. I doubt even he could do it. The front is also strong, sometimes a tow truck would hook up to that and if they went back to the frame, the sling would be over the bumper with most of the weight on the bumper.
I also think we saw some hog wash. I think they removed the engines. It could also be they hit off center so they would miss the engine and to maximize the damage to the Bel Air.
Re:Classic Cars (Score:4, Insightful)
If the US wanted to copy Europe on anything w.r.t. driving, it would be the standard of testing. Turning on the ignition, driving around the block in an automatic and parking again shouldn't get you a licence.
Then you need to abandon the concept of driving being a right, rather than a priviledge. But this might not be compatible with US suburban sprawl.
Re:Speaking as a non-car-freak (Score:3, Insightful)
While IIHS tests offset the feds test all cars with a full front end crash into a very unforgiving concrete wall. The Malibu received the highest rating from the feds for front impact. The Bel-Air in the federal test would end up killing everyone in the front seat. The Bel-Air isn't going to hurt the Malibu anymore than a solid wall.