A bit off topic perhaps, but nevertheless for car guys like us it's interesting stuff.

 

Not off topic at all Wayne, good stuff. At the 7:05 mark they crashed a yellow 4-dr sedan, the car completely collapsed...would not want to have been in that vehicle. My buddy has a nice 55 F100 and after watching one of these videos he started to rethink driving his truck on the freeways. There wasn't much he could do about the vehicle itself but he did install seat belts and he listened to his wife a little more when she nagged about is driving.

 

Pretty amazing how some of the cars folded up.....It's a sobering reminder of how violent crashes really are! With the quiet, comfort and speeds of today's vehicles, this should be a must watch for everyone.

 

Sobering stuff. Thanks for sharing.

 

Another one...disproves the myth that more iron surrounding you protects you.

 

This puts some perspective on how nice it is to work from home right now instead of fighting New Jersey traffic to get to the office everyday.

 

Being impaled by steering columns used to a big thing. The rear facing wagon crash was horrible. 2 lane county roads is a better idea for older iron. The test dummies had the same IQ of someone texting on a cell phone.

 

Thanks for sharing Wayne! It’s incredibly how the safety of the cars has been increased during the years. But on the other hand it’s incredibly too, that in many spectacular accidents with that old cars the occupants weren’t hurt or only slightly. Once I found that video from the German race course “Nürburgring” where private people can drive their cars over the course for fun an action since decades until today. There are some spectacular crashes (nobody was badly hurt in that video) with overturned cars where the occupants simply crawled out of the car as if nothing happened. All this without safety belts, head rests and so on. I hope the link still works:

 

Important info right there about seat anchoring. The seat is actually pushing the driver into the dash and steering wheel, even the rear seat is helping. Even if the poor schmuck had a seat belt, the seats' weights would be forcing him against the belt. Seats (like stock 48-52's at least) that fold forward with no latch are almost as bad. You can also see how important headrests are in many of the other crashes. I got rear ended in an '88 extended cab truck that didn't have headrests at about 40 mph, my head bent completely backwards. My neck hurt for 3 yrs at least.

 

One of the worst crash videos I’ve seen was a rollover with a camera inside. 3 of the 4 occupants were in seat belts, one guy in the back seat wasn’t. He flew to the ceiling and came down elbow first on the woman next to him, then over the seat to the front. The woman in the back was killed instantly, the man in front had his neck broken. The driver and the unbelted guy both walked away. Since I’ve seen that, I ask people to wear their seat belts in the back.

 

Also think about anything that is not fastened down in your vehicle. Think of a bowling ball sitting on the floor in your back seat, your car comes to an abrupt stop the bowling ball doesn't. It basically turns into a 12-15 pound cannon ball. The littlest projectile could become deadly. I drive a full sized pickup and usually have stuff in the box and I think about this pretty much all of the time but I figure, like driving these old trucks, you can't worry about everything all of the time or else you'd never leave your home, where the stats say is also a dangerous place.

One thing I do try to take care is when I'm hauling a car or truck on my trailer, especially the old relics I tend to drag home. I do a walk around and look for anything that is loose or hanging. An old bolt coming off my trailer as I'm traveling 60 mph down the road will hit an oncoming car at 120+mph, like have a bullet hitting your car. I pull every loose piece off I find and either toss it in the trash or stash it someplace I know it would go flying.

Lots of things to worry about but you have to live your life.

 

My teenager just bought a '67 scout. After crawling it over, I made the appraisal that I didn't think it was constructed as well as my mid 50s Ford trucks.
We had an honest conversation about how driving that truck on modern roads is only very minimally different from riding a motorcycle.
All the more reason to be right with the Creator!
JML

 

This is turning into an interesting thread. Driving is dangerous, no doubt about it, but I’ve survived 70 years without a major injury, I just hope some clown texting doesn’t run me down. One of the parts of driving the 48 I don’t like is pulling out in traffic. Acceleration is not it’s strong suit and people are not too patient, yeah, I know your $90k Mercedes is fast, I don’t care.

With these old trucks there’s only so much we can do to make them safer. One of my first tasks was to install 5 point seat belts. I also plan to eventually install front disk brakes. I’m thinking about headrests too, perhaps I can scavenge some from a junk yard and fabricate bracket to connect to the seat.

@bobj49f2 Back in 2005 I bought myself a brand new Volvo. About a week later a truck the a load of scrap metal was in front of me and a piece about 6” long flew off. I thought it was going to come through my windshield and take me out, but it bounced off my hood before it hit and glanced off the windshield. So my brand new car had a dent in the hood and a cracked windshield. My RAM 1500 has a tonneau so stuff in my bed doesn’t fly out,

@Waygonner i haven’t commuted in NJ traffic in many years. I remember it being a scary experience everyday. For a long time my commute was to EWR and the drive to the airport was the worst part.

 

I always have caps on the back of my trucks. For business I haul items that can't get wet if I have to drive in inclement weather. However most stuff I have in the box isn't strapped down and normally wouldn't cause a problem but if I'm driving along at 60-75 mph and the truck comes to an abrupt stop whatever is in the box is not going to stop, it's going to come flying forward with great velocity. I would bet in the right situation your tanneau cover isn't going to hold back any object with considerable weight. No way can a person prevent every bad reaction from happening.

In my 40 years of driving I've been in about half a dozen accidents, believe it or not, not one was my fault. Most were simple little fender bender type accidents but one early in my driving days I T-boned a lady who pulled out in front of me while I was doing 45 mph. How do I know the exact speed? A few seconds before I passed along side a cop and I checked my speed to make sure I was doing the speed limit. A few second later, the cop still behind me, the lady pulled out and I hit her. It all happened in a few seconds but seems like minutes. To this day, 40 years later, I can still see the hood trim pieces on my car fly off, tumbling in the air in slow motion and turning and watching my brother fly into the dashboard. Luckily no one was hurt. I was able to turn my car to miss smashing into the woman's driver's door and probably killing her. I missed up your front end pretty good though. Lucky for me the cop was right behind me and saw the whole thing and gave the woman the ticket. This stuff happens so quickly and stuff goes flying every which way.

 

Makes me appreciate my modern iron with a few safety features.