That’ll T-cut out

There’s been a few threads on here recently about new cars having issues where I’ve thought about being happy with running older cars and that I’m not really ‘missing out’.

However this accident happened near to me on a regular dog walking route. I googled it and found the Lancashire fire & rescue report that one casualty had been taken to hospital.

If anyone knows Rawtenstall the road is the incoming dual carriageway A56 – it’s 50mph…..
The car has for some reason come off the road dropped down an embankment, ploughed through an amount of substantial wood fencing, launched out of the dip, glanced off a large tree (you can see the marks on the trunk) before going through a dry stone wall and coming to a stop.

The car is absolutely smashed to bits but the passenger cell is still intact and presumed the driver survived.
If that had been my 20year old Berlingo I’d be squashed dead into the ash tray.

Alongside Appleplay I’m guessing that’s why modern cars are ‘better’ with their plethora of airbags and safety systems.

Ironically that yellow sign says ‘slow down save lives’

I have absolutly nothing to base this on but that happened from doing a max speed of 50mph?

I suspect that was traveling at a shade more than 50mph, but yes, modern cars do a good job of keeping the squishy bits inside intact.

Did you check the center console for loose change ?

I came across this one whilst riding home a few weeks ago.  No attempt to make the corner was evident, no braking seems to have occurred, just SLAM – straight into a hedge.  The front end is a mess, all the airbags had gone off, but the passenger door seemed to be just fine.  I couldn’t get to the drivers door.

Oof. I can’t even tell what kind of car it is in the OP! Medical incident maybe, driver collapsed at the wheel and gone straight on?

Driver in the OP needs to get a lottery ticket for Wednesday’s draw. Possible BMW 1 series?
Lack of braking in the second suggests driver falling asleep or seizure/etc.
Edit: beaten to it by Woody

Given the height of the damage on the tree, I guess the car was airborne when it hit it?
Presumably it went down the dip & took off as it went up the other side?

Assuming the driver survived, I can’t imagine they’d have been in a good way!
Ouch!

Thing is, that vehicle must have come to a relatively gradual (albeit rough) stop after ploughing through lots of successive obstacles. Simply hitting an immovable object is less spectacular but unfortunately much less survivable.

Get the front callipers off that Kia and onto eBay sharpish

Accident occured Saturday morning @01:30am. I don’t know anymore details but that would have been a scary accident if they had nodded off and woke as the car left the road.

There’s been the rear end of Z4 sticking out the hedge at the bottom of a steep 90° bend  near us for about a month now.

I’m assuming the Police tape means they’ve checked for the driver

That’s a job for Chips Away.

I have thought about this a lot and it’s a key reason I tend to want more modern cars.  Much as I now appreciate my Merc it will quite happily let me drive into another car or a wall if I am looking at the satnav or in that classic situation where the car in front of you moves off, you turn your head to look down the road you’re pulling onto, and they then stop.  My much newer Hyundai won’t let me do that, at least a large percentage of the time.  It will also try to stop me veering off the road if I lose attention for some reason.  Of the two minor accidents I’ve been in (not claiming to be a great driver, I’ve been pretty bloody lucky a fair few times) one would have been avoided had the other car had modern safety features; the Hyundai would not have let my wife have the accident she had.

Annoyingly, the person who originally bought the Merc could have specified this feature but didn’t (along with virtually everyone else who bought one at the time), but they did spend over two grand on a body kit and some ridiculous skinny tyred wheels.

These features would not have prevented the accidents in this thread of course.

There’s this too…

https://news.sky.com/story/two-adults-and-two-children-survive-after-tesla-plunges-75m-off-cliff-along-pacific-coast-highway-in-california-12778835

@Molgrips

My Berlingo doesn’t even have ABS – it was an option that came with air conditioning in the £800 ‘comfort pack’!

Admittedly it wouldn’t be fast enough to get ‘air’ like the BMW did but it would be squashed flatter than a Rizla.

20years of advancements between certain death and survival.

The car that the Passat replaced was also a Passat from 1994. It had nothing beyond a driver’s airbag, again not even ABS. The a-pillars were like sticks, and the windscreen felt like it was six inches from my face.  That started to worry me a fair bit, and was one reason I justified the spend on its replacement.

Jaysus.
Honestly though, if we removed the ability to use a mobile phone inside a car – say, a big Faraday cage, or the car just won’t start if the driver is paying any attention to a mobile phone – we’d cut about half of accidents I’d say. It’s absolutely staggering how many people I see out and about on their phone while driving; and there’s zero enforcement

Honestly, I think phone usage is responsible for a lot of traffic bumps and perhaps a few motorway crashes, but I suspect that on roads like the ones in this pictures it’s possibly just shit driving or lack of concentration.  I once saw a woman in a Fiat 500 leave the road after taking a big, flat, open, completely sighted roundabout with two main exits much too fast.  She just didn’t know what speed was appropriate and what would happen if that speed was exceeded.

Is that first car a Model 3?  It’s not a hatchback, and it has a very curved roofline.

That’s a Stinger. Truly fast car, usually driven with skill by people who think and generally know better. Wonder if it had been nicked?

Somebody drove straight through the bend at the top of Ditchling Beacon a few years ago – cuts and bruises….

Woman somehow walked out of this crash with just a few scratches

Driver obviously saw a squirrel, do you think they caught it?

Phones?? I regularly see cars at the front of the queue at traffic lights not moving off for 5 or 6 seconds after green until I toot my horn.  Obviously on the phone.  Presumably further back they see the car in front  going off in their peripheral vision because it is mostly cars first in line.

I have after it  happened at the second set of lights in a row with the same car just driven round him and left him to it.

Alongside Appleplay I’m guessing that’s why modern cars are ‘better’ with their plethora of airbags and safety systems.

The parachute deployed, you can see it sticking out of the back window

Rule number 2: There’s always a tree

@daviek @flicker The posted limit on that bit of the A56 might be 50, the actual traffic speed is usually 70ish.

The car in the OP is a BMW F30 3 Series Saloon.  You can tell be the rear window line and the swage line which runs through the door handles.

When I walk the dogs round the local rounds there are a few places where the footpath is above the road and I’d say between 1/4 to 1/3 of drivers are on the phone. Usually in one hand below the window line where you can’t see them. Kinda terrifying as a road cyclist
This is what our profileration of speed cameras etc is missing ..

I’m sure I saw a phone/seatbelt camera somewhere recently? Maybe on social media from some other country though.

@daviek @flicker The posted limit on that bit of the A56 might be 50, the actual traffic speed is usually 70ish

That’s an impressive distance to cover even at 70, that second to last picture has gouge marks in the left hand tree with what looks like a piece of vehicle in it, maybe 4 metres off the ground.

I didn’t know safety cells etc had come on so much in 20 yrs (says driver of 20yr old car 😬)

I’m sure I saw a phone/seatbelt camera somewhere recently?

Trialed in Devon and Cornwall in 2022. Used successfully in Australia https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/acusensus-expands-uk-operations/

Always amazed at the smashed up things that people crawl out of.
That camper van the other week, got blown down a hill,while a family and two dogs rolled around inside.
The photos looked grim,yet they all got out (relatively) unscathed.

There was some footage a few years ago from the Paris/Dakar.
This rally car goes hooning past a camera crew,hits a dip,flys over the sand,digs in and then rolls/somersaults for about 200 metres,ends up on it’s roof.
Lots of noise,dust and the shouts from the camerapeople.
Then,after what only seemed a few seconds,you hear them trying to restart the car!!
Always made me 🤣😁🤣

Thing is, that vehicle must have come to a relatively gradual (albeit rough) stop after ploughing through lots of successive obstacles. Simply hitting an immovable object is less spectacular but unfortunately much less survivable.

That’s the lesson from motorsport crashes.  The big, spectacular rolls with bodywork flailing all over the place are fine as long as each hit doesn’t cause a deceleration of ~50G.  A solid stop against a tree or concrete, neither of which have much give, are the fatal ones.

The only fatality on rallies I took part in was on a bend called as “flat right maybe” on the Plains in 1985. Several cars were off the road and one had hit a tree sideways. As reluctant jumper says crashes that look like aircraft crash wreckage you usually walk away from because the deceleration is progressive.

Having rolled an 03 plate Berlingo down a hill sideways, I can report that the passenger area doesn’t crumple – it gets properly squashed and dented but stays intact.
At the time it wasn’t a brilliant experience but once it was done, I was rather pleased with it as externally the car was fair dented, but apart from the rolling over 3.5 (or maybe 4.5) times, it was an okay experience!
So worry less @RustyNissanPrairie!

Seen a few MK1 shape bingos crash.

Passenger cell stays robustly in tact mostly.

That’s not a good thing largely though as the body does the deceleration not the crumpling….

I rolled a suzuki baby 4×4 back at 55mph bn the early 90s.  No injuries. Passenger cell pretty much undefomed

Driver thought it was the Haslingden slip road.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-dies-in-a33-crash-while-three-people-are-arrested-in-connection-with-the-incident/ar-AA1nqAFu

And the obligatory local news follow up with the family:

http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/news/family-of-car-crash-victim-pay-tribute-to-smart-and-funny-9363324/

I’d put money on a Berlingo not being able to fast enough to cause that accident in the first place.

Somebody drove straight through the bend at the top of Ditchling Beacon a few years ago – cuts and bruises….

Whereas I saw the remnants of a Renault 19 a school friend end over ended after going to the pub to celebrate passing his test. And the other school friends in the car carry the damage to this day – two have used crutches all thier life…