What happens when you hit a concrete wall with your car at 120 mp/h?
 

well, have a look yourself... :)

Just as I suspected, the concrete wall wins.

This video would be so much more interesting if it weren't for

- The utter sissy-ness of the host. "It makes the hairs stand up on my neck! oooOOooo"

- The 10 or so different filters and colour corrections they have on the images.

- The stupid overly dramatic music and sound effects.

Shows like this can be really interesting if they didn't treat the viewer like they were complete idiots who's attention can't be maintained for more than 1 second without a catchy video-edit.

I watch a lot of PBS, The new SCI channel etc, and almost all of them now follow this fucking annoying format.

The worst is "POP SCI: THE SCIENCE OF...." If you've never seen it, they have some really interesting subjects, dumbed down to near hillbilly level. Another show, "The Science of the movies" is super informative, but you just want to punch the host in his face because he can't stop making stupid jokes. ARRGHH.

Good thing they have crumple zones. :helpme:error

Yep. The only great car show is the original Top Gear.
But I disagree with these points, watch an episode of the original Top Gear show, these special lenses and effects they use make the show amazing.

well, it is completely crumpled

I'd like to see the same test with onedree on a motorcycle.

.

Amazed a Focus could hit 120mph. Is it one of the SVT ones or something?

almost any car bigger than a Smart nowadays is that fast. but in this case the car was pulled and didnt drive by itself

if you watch the video, it was pulled by a winch.

Ouch.

In 1984 I had a head on collision in my parent's Renault Alliance. We were both driving about 35mph. No one was seriously hurt. However, on my car... The engine was pushed back onto the passenger seat. If I had a passenger, at the very least they would have lost their legs.

Makes you wonder.

Makes me wanna go do some fast driving!

Ryan Dunn?

did his seatbelt work

You'd want to be in the boot for this one.

If that was a semi, it would break the concrete.

this car was pulled...
I think that self running car would hit even more than pulled one...

?? 120mph is 120mph regardless of how it's propelled

That host is clearly not a physics major.

Worst case scenario he says "Two cars colliding head on at 120mph".

Physically speaking the test they did is nothing close to two cars colliding into each other with BOTH of the cars moving at 120 MPH.

By crashing the car into a stationary object, to get the impact that two cars traveling at 120 mph would generate you'd have to get the sole car up to 240 mph, wouldn't you?

Speaking from a pure linear momentum perspective, what the host said they were going to demostrate is not what they did with that test.

Also, the mass of the wall is completely different than the mass of a vehicle, not to mention stationary and immovable. Changes everything.

Ah, just watched it. Like smashing a pop can with your shoe. :Oh crap

a ford focus can go 120 mph?

hahaha. i was just going to type the same thing. this is non-sense. It will take 2 miles to get a focus to go that fast!!

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Watching the video to see that the car is "pulled on a winch" at 120mph and
not driven 120mph might make more sense.

Remember when we did Whistler to Squamish in 15 minutes?

http://innocentenglish.com/daily-bre...cs-picture.jpg

Note to Self: Avoid hitting concrete walls (or other objects) head-on when traveling 120 mp/h

ADG

You beat me to it. To simulate what the host is talking about you'd have to either have a similar stationary vehicle in place of the block and drag the crash car at 120mph, or have two cars head towards each other at 60mph.

What they did is prove that if you drive your focus into an immobile object at high speed, you're going to have a really bad day. It doesn't in any way simulate the effect of a head on collision of 2 cars traveling at 120mph each.

Still cool to watch though.

I noticed he said that too.

But if you want to get REALLY technical, I don't think you could reproduce 2 moving cars in a head on collision using a stationary object? Taking into consideration the laws of motion...?

No. Laws of motion only apply up until chaos theory takes over.

Also, the mass of that concrete =/= another vehicle, not even in the same ballpark. If you took a concrete block of similar shape and mass it would be CLOSER, but still not very accurate as the block is not designed to be altered, as a vehicle crashing is.

Think of it this way (porn terms)

Your girl wants to get fucked by a dude with a cock the size of a cucumber. In order for that to happen, you have to find a dude with a cock the size of a cucumber.

That not being an option, you just use a cucumber.

Still has a similar effect, but it isn't really replicating what would happen if said dude was pile driving your girl with a cucumber sized cock.

I was thinking that too, but it's just a "hype video" so I let it slide.
They weren't even allowed to have real crash dummies. :1orglaugh

What? No... that show is a joke. They don't review cars, they drool over cars they are paid to drool over and shit on the rest.

http://www.teslamotors.com/teslavstopgear

And, technically, isn't Fifth Gear actually the 'original top gear'?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Fo...rst_generation)

top speed - regular 1.8l (gasoline) - 123 mph (198 km/h)

Don't forget, Ford Focus is a badass racing car ;)

car @ 120mph + immovable concrete block = car gets all the damage and ends up like the one in the video

car @ 120mph + car @ 120mph= both cars share the damage and both end up like the one in the video

presenter was wrong saying it replicated 2 cars doing 60mph each
you're wrong saying they would need 240mph + concrete to replicate 120mph+120mph crash.

Yep, physics takes over.

you're taking that far too serious - i just think it's impressive to watch. and the only way in reality something like this happens is probably when someone tries to kill himself - which looks like a pretty safe way.

the Smart at 70 mp/h took it much better

The lack of damage to the passenger side is impressive.

Can remember seeing the Smart at the British Motor Show in 1998 and a large part of the display was a crashed one and a crashed Mercedes S Class and the presentation about it was that it was as safe in an accident as the much larger car.

true, was the first thing i thought too.

Shit! Not nice!

Would you please stop pointing out the truth about things like this..

You take away from the Dramatic effect that the guy was making with his filters and music.

Ouch....i guess same would happen with Mercedes or so?

i am pretty sure at that speed it really makes no difference with what kind of car you hit the wall. your only chance is probably to avoid a full frontal impact

That's kind of what I was trying to say, I think.

Using a concrete wall the car absorbs all the impact, using 2 cars going 60mph the impact is shared between both cars and wouldn't wreck the cars as badly as that car hitting a solid wall at 120mph.

Good luck getting a Focus up to 120 MPH. I could probably arrange a video where the occupants of the car could be killed at 40MPH.

Give me the budget and a fancy British accent and consider it done.

What a bore
 

Reality TV, like talk radio, they have to repeat everything at least 3 times to fill airtime. This guy is a Geraldo wantabe.
He should have been out with my GF & me on Sunday. Stuck on roller coaster roads behind 30 cars, lead by several farm combines. Nobody would pass, so my GF decided to pass as many as possible, in each passing zone. Was just hoping nobody, coming the other direction was speeding over the hill. Then there was the pickup that drove slow in the left lane of the freeway, who sped up every time somebody tried to pass him on the right.