http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-35322843

So, this guy was driving along the M11 on Wednesday, and his car just blew up in the middle of the carriageway…

I don’t know much about cars – is it possible that this was just the result of poor maintenance, some fault not picked up on his last MOT?

Or is it more likely that he was transporting a badly made bomb?

If so, am I wrong to feel a little less sanguine about the whole terrorism thing that’s happening at the moment?

[case open]
the driver was Mr Islam
[case shut]

Maybe he’d been ignoring something for a few miles, brake fluid is quite flammable.

A lad I went to school with (briefly) died when his car burst into flames after hitting a motorway bridge after being hit/avoiding and engin block that fell off a truck in front.
Not quite the same I know but they can go bang.
I struggle to see how it could happen without outside influence mind….

–

Well it was big news around Cambridge last week because it blocked the M11 and A14 all day, but wasn’t picked up nationally. Not sure why.

I’m more inclin d to think it just ‘caught fire’ rather than ‘exploded’ to be honest, and for so,e r as on he didn’t get out fast enough.

i’m struggling to think of a reason for a car to burst into flames in the cabin in such a short time as to kill the occupants in a non impact scenario?

I’m more inclined to think it just ‘caught fire’ rather than ‘exploded’ to be honest…

It would explode eventually… Having seen it first hand though, there’s a fair bit of time between car catching fire and car exploding.

Rolling meth lab

Caught fire and then a few things popped they can catch fire very quickly but rarely explode. Never seen one explode and rarely seen them catch fire after an RTC but it does happen.

Rather strange. Would have to guess its something highly flammable being carried inside the vehicle

What? Like petrol? 😉
Diesel doesn’t go bang unless compressed.

and his car just blew up in the middle of the carriageway…

I don’t think it blew up in the sense of bomb-going-off exploded. Witnesses and headline writers are using ‘exploded’ in a figurative sense in that the fire happened very suddenly. If it had exploded in a literal sense there would be multiple fatialiies, a crater in the M11, it would be international rather than regional news and STW wouldn’t have waited 4 days to start a thread about it.

Cars are very unlikely to explode of their own accord, like they do in the movies, as the fuel in the tank would need to be mixed with a lot of air to do that. However they can go up in a big ball of flame pretty suddenly partly because they’re got several gallons of fuel on board and the cabin is full of plastics and foam, once thats burning it burns like absolute crazy, and don’t need to be old or poorly maintained to do that. My pal Andy’s new Audi went up in a spontaneous ball of flames last year – being in stop start London traffic rather than motorway traffic is why he was able to escape and isn’t toast unlike the poor soul in the OP.

i’m struggling to think of a reason for a car to burst into flames in the cabin in such a short time as to kill the occupants in a non impact scenario?

In Andy’s case being near stationary meant the fire in the engine bay initially went straight up but had engulfed the whole car in no time at all – travelling at speed I’d imagine theres not encouragement needed for fire and fuel to be sent back through the car – through the plastic ventilation system and fans for instance.

Bomb Disposal teams don’t normally go to car fires.

and there was no collision in this incident

We don’t live in normal times.

Don’t buy a Merc … 😆

AT 70mph, a modern car take under 5sec to stop. If you can’t get the car stopped and get out in say 10 to 15sec, then you’re doing something wrong. Even a significant engine bay fire will only lead to minor lower limb burns, and even then, it takes more than 10sec for the firewall to be breached! (usually the rubber boots around the steering rack and pedal box fails first)

A fire at the back of the car (fuel tank, which never happens outside of the movies) has to burn through the steel floor of the car to get into the cabin, and again, that doesn’t happen in seconds.

Finally. most explosion in car fires are the tyre or rim failing and the air pressure in the tyre causing a sudden “explosion”…

I’ve had a significant underbonnet fire at ~180mph and had time to stop, and get out just a minor amount of smoke in the cabin.

Here’s a pretty big fire in an Exige race car:

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A37hlSAW51c[/video]

Plenty of time to get out of that!

Bit weird but Thursday night on my way up the A1 I saw a truck fully blazing on the South bound carriageway somewhere near Grantham…
First time in all my driving years I’ve seen a full on blaze.

I’ve had a significant underbonnet fire at ~180mph and had time to stop, and get out just a minor amount of smoke in the cabin.

A 180mph incident sounds like a race track scenario. Its true that cars have various safety features such as fire walls. However the designers of cars can only design the car and not what people put in it.

(in the name of art) I spent some time blowing up pieces of commercial airliner a few years back. In each instance we had a big bang, spent a hour pick up the debris and then blew up another bit. For the final blast of the day we included packed bags of luggage – suitcases, clothes, toys, toileties, perfumes, portable electrical appliances – all the things that are in a plane that the plane manufacturers didn’t put there themselves. Not fire rated, not class 0, not self extinguishing.

And instead of the big bang then tidy up, we had a bang followed by an immediate, massive ****-off acrid black-smoke belching inferno of nylon baggage and polyester clothing and polyurethane trainers and polyethylene polystyrene electrical goods, ethanol perfumes and butane deodorants……….. I’d imagine you didn’t have all that crap in your car. 🙂

I had a car go up on me about 10 years ago, I was doing about 70 at the time – I didn’t notice it starting, luckily my passenger did as dripping burning plastic dropped on her leg – I managed to bring it to a stop and threw 2 bottles of Coke into the airvents in a panic, but it did nothing – the car was completely engulfed less than a minute later. If I had be driving alone I would have been in real trouble I think, I couldn’t guarantee that I could have got it stopped and out of it before the cabin filled with smoke.

Saying that despite my car being about half-full of fuel it never exploded, there wasn’t any noticeable ‘bang’ when the fuel caught, the seats and tyres burned the most violently.

It’s hardly a rare thing though, happens every day to someone I guess.

This might be one of those cases where the press know more than they can report – like when they’re all over a house where a teenager goes missing, dozens of teenagers run away every week, but somehow the press seem to only report on the ones when the poor girl turns up dead a week later and they’ve stuck the killer in front of a press conference.

Plenty of time to get out of that!

Your assuming mobility. My grandad used to take about five minutes to get into the car and about ten to get out.

but somehow the press seem to only report on the ones when the poor girl turns up dead a week later and they’ve stuck the killer in front of a press conference.

Actually, sadly, the press are very selective in their reporting of even that.

It wasn’t a Zafira, was it?

A plausible innocent explanation would be a fuel leak under the bonnet that catches fire, but the driver doesn’t notice until the engine cuts out due to lack of fuel. The brake booster uses vacuum from the engine, so the brakes would be much less effective and the driver might struggle to stop the car and lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen or carbon monoxide poisoning.

However, the bomb squad are investigating, so they might have other theories.

A fire at the back of the car (fuel tank, which never happens outside of the movies) has to burn through the steel floor of the car to get into the cabin, and again, that doesn’t happen in seconds

Not necessarily, my Civic had direct access to the tank from beneath the rear bench.

Diesel doesn’t go bang unless compressed.

But it will burn.

Actually, sadly, the press are very selective in their reporting of even that.

Yes, much more common to get media coverage of a missing person if that missing person is white, female, from a good home,and pretty.

white, female, from a good home,and pretty.

and they know her and the family’s mobile numbers

@ben many teenagers are reported missing every day, there are 10 people killed on our roads every day. Not all are going to make the news

Lorries seem to catch fire listening to radio road reports fairly regularly, maybe cars do happen but less common?

Very curious to hear the outcome of this one.

As for reporting stories, the press is very selective. Two kids were killed by family members in the UK the week Sarah Payne was abducted and murdered, only one of those horrific events made headlines.