Re: 7 Series into Concrete Abutment

[John Fulford-Brown <jfb@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 22:21:59 -0700
> From: "Chao, Harvey" <harvey.chao@domain.elided>
> Subject: 7 Series into Concrete Abutment
>
> Caught the closing scene of "Millennium" tonight where a 7 series is
> deliberately accelerated into a concrete bridge overpass support as
> supposedly somewhere around 80 mph.
>
> Anybody else see it?
>
> A subsequent shot shows the car at rest with a very convincing "U" that
> matches the radius of the impacted concrete pillar - looks like a slightly
> right (passenger side) of center impact, with the bumper/grill/hood pushed
> back about 1/3 the original length of the hood.
>
> IF they ran a real car into the pillar as it appears to the viewer, it is
> notable that the passenger compartment appears free of collision intrusion
> and they (gave the impression?)  showed the driver opening her door and
> managing to exit the car (bad guy in passenger seat w/o seat belt lying
> halfway out onto hood through where the front windshield was)  [curiously,
> windshield is totally absent - supposedly it "popped" out, but more
> realistically, I would have thought in reality the bad guy would be halfway
> through the shattered safety glass.]
>
> I suppose that they could have  (probably did) staged the real collision by
> running an empty car into the concrete pillar at any speed they wanted and
> then placed the actors in place.  None the less, it would be interesting to
> know what actual speed created that damage - the show's story line aside -
> and still left the passenger compartment and front door frames intact and
> w/o intrusion.
>
> Any comments/ideas . etc.???
>
> Harvey

Well, personally I don't see anybody walking away from a head-on into a
concvrete
abutment at 80 MPH.
Survive?  well maybe.  That big old MB that Princess Diana was in was doing
around 60MPH (according to a just released police report in today's paper)
when
it went concrete, and we all know what that mess looked like.  I saw a show on
Discovery channel last week on crash test dummies where the NTSB were testing
'luxury cars': MB, BMW, Volvo & Lexus were four I saw going into a simulated
vehicle head-on (steel block with aluminum attachment to simulate another
car),
they were going into it at 30MPH and I can tell you those cars were pretty
well
bashed in.  The BMW (an E36 I think) did well  -- as did they all, but
still the
whole engine compartment ended up about 50% original size, the hood was
crumpled
up to the windshield, which also smashed.  Airbags inflated, seatbelts
fastened,
the dummies came out OK! They 'walked away'.  It was a good show, really
showed
the benefit of side-airbags in a T-bone situation.

John.

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