Thread: 2nd Christmas fatality involves Defender towing trailer.

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Couple weeks ago there was an head on accident here near Hobart with a small jap car and a new Toyota troopy. The car was destroyed and the french driver killed. The driver of the Toyota is Ok even if the toyo have a considerable damage including bent chassis.

Without far far more information it is impossible to get anything meaningful out of that. There are so many questions from that I can't even begin to start saying "can you clarify".... One I will mention.. how old was the jap car? A 1980's corolla? A 2009 Lexus IS250? Did it hit the troopy and then plunge into a 2000 ft valley? Was the small jap car killed by the umbrella on the parcel shelf? etc etc etc...

Accidents always involve luck. Usually large quantities of good and bad. An acquaintance of mine had a head on with a truck. It sliced through his magna and cut him in half. Horrible business. It left his wife in the passenger seat completely unharmed. If he had hit the truck on the passenger side he might have got out without a scratch. Would that make a Magna an ideal car to have a head on with a truck?

Good car design just gives you better odds. Sometimes far better odds.

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

Was the small jap car killed by the umbrella on the parcel shelf?

Let's face it the tests will never match real life accidents.

A mate crashed is parents car a week before christmas. 50km/h into the back of a stationary truck. The airbags didn't deploy and due to his swerving it only wiped out the passenge side of the car. The trucks tray took out the bonnet, guard windscreen, A pillar and door.
Only guess the airbags didn't go off due to the impact being above the bumper.

This is an interesting thread does anyone actually have a picture of a Defender or know of a case where all the negatives of the Defender design have caused fatalities.
Its great to hear opinions and theories but does anyone actually have any evidence.
I also hear that in a rollover the older Counties and Series were better off.

Originally Posted by djam1

This is an interesting thread does anyone actually have a picture of a Defender or know of a case where all the negatives of the Defender design have caused fatalities.
Its great to hear opinions and theories but does anyone actually have any evidence.
I also hear that in a rollover the older Counties and Series were better off.

The series vehicles had more solid windshield surrounds & brackets, Counties went to the alloy surround which I thought stayed the same up till now..

Having a trapped parent pass their child to you from a burning wreck, and to watch helplessly as the fire engulfs the vehicle and the parents, is something no person should have to deal with...

Originally Posted by numpty

I disagree, as you haven't taken into account that both vehicles are moving towards each other at whatever velocity they have. The wall, on the other hand, is standing still.

It therefore stands to reason that the impact would be more acute, as each vehicle is trying to push the other vehicle backwards, in addition to colliding with it.

Sorry, Numpty, BigJon is right here. It's Newton's Third Law: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." or in other words, if the car pushed harder than the brick wall could push back, the wall would fall over. Striking an immovable object at 75km/hr is equivalent to a direct head-on with an identical vehicle.

On the other hand, hitting a heavier object can be worse than hitting an immovable object. Hitting a defender (apx mass 2ton) towing a double-axle trailer (600kg) with a Commodore (for simplicity, say 1400kg) in a 1600kg Subaru, assuming both vehicles are travelling at the same speed, results in the transfer of 2.5 times as much energy to the Subaru as is absorbed by the Defender. or in other words, the defender is slowed down, but the other vehicle comes to a rapid halt and then is accellerated in the opposite direction. At 75km/hr Defender might lose about 1/2 it's speed in the initial impact, Subaru is accellerated through 110+km/hr in an instant.

Safety measures now take this into account, referring to "aggressivity" in real-world crashes.

EDIT If you look at the original photo, it is clear that the accident that pretzeled the Defender's chassis did not stop it continuing on its merry way off the road.

I guess if both vehicles were equally well designed for crash safety, and both were traveling at the same speed, and if they hit exactly head on, then it would come down to vehicle mass and luck. But the real world is different.

I was surprised last year when a Commodore ute ran into the back of my Disco stopped at traffic lights. The front of the Commodore was totalled. The Disco had a scratch on the bumper not even worth fixing. Not sure what that proves, but it was interesting.