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"It might seem that the strength and mass of a truck would help protect passengers in a crash, but body-on-frame pickups tend to be more rigid than unibody passenger cars and as a result do not collapse as easily in a front-end collision. They end up transferring that energy into the passenger compartment."
[url]https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2019/04/02/pickup-safety-lags-behind-cars-suvs-safety-ratings/39291477/[/url]
Interesting but with a head-on collision the vehicle with the smaller mass is already absorbing a lot more energy of the crash to start with. Not sure if there is much they could do to improve, trucks would need more rigidity by default.
When death rates for different type vehicles are compared, cars have far higher death rates than either suvs or pickups. And the smaller the car, the higher the death rate. The highest by far is a small sedan in a head-on crash with a full size 4 door pickup.
This is a discussion very similar to arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin... I failed a statistics course once. The final exam presented all the data on number of flights per year, number of passengers, number of crashes and number of fatalities. The question was, what are your chances of dying in a plane crash?.. I put: Simple 100%-- if the plane crashes, You're gunna die...
There's maximum. There's minimum, and there's optimum. In calculating the mechanics of a crash, heavier and stiffer is better up to the point where compressibility (absorbing kinetic energy) and expulsion of parts (taking away kinetic energy) is compromised. All vehicles can't be all things.
All crashes involve three phases: primary- when vehicle hits whatever; secondary, when occupants fly forward and hit the inside of their own vehicle; and tertiary- when your internal organs fly forward and hit the inside of your chest & abdominal wall and burst like water balloons-- That's what kills you.
When death rates for different type vehicles are compared, cars have far higher death rates than either suvs or pickups.
AFAIK the vehicles with lowest death rates are large sedans, full size SUV's do well but pickups are quite high. There is lot of things to consider other than raw stats, Mustangs for example probably have higher fatality rates than a Prius but that doesn't mean the Prius is a safer car. The variable being discussed here is another thing that needs to be considered. In a head on collision the mass of the larger vehicle may offset rigidity when hitting a smaller vehicle. However if they are both driving into a wall it becomes a whole other ballgame.
Doesn't mean the front end is optimized for energy absorption
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