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Just because it was a Lexus doesn't mean it's going to handle that type accident any better. The cars today have all these safety features but against a hummer? I seriously doubt a similar car of another brand could have had a different outcome.
... you can see the crash location relative to where the sign warning that there's a stop ahead and that wood telephone pole are located. That's a pretty good length between the location of accident and the nearest stop light/sign. Now, my knowledge of PCH from having lived in Venice/Santa Monica for years and being an avid racer who knows the canyons like the back of his hand is that PCH traffic can be amazingly bad, because for most of it, you've got four lanes that can bottleneck depending on construction and it's a main artery for people who live in the hills and also the Valley via canyon roads. You do have to be careful because traffic can go from fairly free-flowing to stop-and-go for no discernible reason.
Now, what he was doing is obscured by the mirror and the glare of the windshield, but in this picture, it looks like he was putting his fingers out the window:
... and from the picture from the moment of impact as well as this (which is quite jarring to look at because you can see the expression of the face of the poor woman who will be dead in the next four seconds):
... you can also see that he wasn't holding a phone or doing anything particularly distracting with his left hand; it can be presumed that he was using the right hand to steer the Escalade. It also appears from the second-to-last photo I posted that he wasn't hardly "tailgating" the lady in the Lexus: it's not visible in the picture, and if you look in the reflection of the bumper on the Escalade, it is at least a few couple car lengths ahead and doesn't have its brake lights on.
If traffic was moving, but slowly, he may have simply misjudged the speed that it was moving at and the distance, etc between him and the Lexus. It could have been that he was, indeed, slowing down, but then the Prius in front of the Lexus stopped completely and he just didn't stop soon enough.
I'd be interested to see the video from the oncoming bus that was behind the Hummer.
*deep breath*
Now, as far as the OP goes...
No, the Lexus LS is quite safe, and earned "good" safety ratings from the IIHS, just like a 7-series or S-class of the same year. If the car had only been rear-ended, I'm sure she would have been okay. Because she was knocked into the Hummer, which was travelling at speed and oncoming, she experienced a pretty heavy frontal offset crash - and it just so happened to be one of heaviest cars on the road.
As you can see in the last pic I posted, she was wearing her seatbelt; and, as you can see from the photos of the crash aftermath, despite the force of the crash, the Lexus' passenger compartment barely deformed. The things is that she experienced a massive shift of kinetic energy from getting rear-ended and then front-ended: all of that force that pressed her back into her seat was then transferred forward and met with the combined, heavier force of the frontal impact. As they say when it comes to crash tests, if you crash at 35mph, your guts are still moving at 35 mph when the seatbelt and airbag hit you (this is why crumple zones exist: to reduce the impact of kinetic energy in a crash). In this poor woman's case, she got hit from behind and was immediately accelerated to probably about 30mph, and so everything inside her was moving at that speed towards her back. Then, a second later, it was moving in the opposite direction. The car spun, which moved everything in another direction, towards the right of her body.
You also have to figure into account her age: she was an older lady, and older peoples' bodies tend to be more frail. I got rear-ended by a Suburban going about 35-40mph while sitting in a mk4 VW Jetta and plowed into the van in front of me, meaning that I was subject to a similar rear impact, immediately accelerated into about 30mph, and then straight into the back of the van that was stopped in front of me; I yelled "OUCH," got out and looked at the damage, and that was that. I spun my S2000 on a wet canyon road trying to avoid a deer at about 50mph and the front passenger's bumper hit a tree, which swung the car around and into the dirt embankment on the other side; I yelled an expletive, then me and my friend in the passenger's seat laughed and shared a smoke as we pondered what to do next, since there was no cell service around there and it was after midnight. I was 23 in the first accident, and 27 in the second; my friend was 24. No, neither accident was into oncoming traffic, but both were pretty major and the police involved afterwards both said that they'd seen people die in similar circumstances. Robust young men tend to whether trauma a lot more than elderly women. Please don't mistake my saying this as an excuse for the accident - a lot of it as also sheer (bad) luck.
Each accident is like a throw of the dice, and there are so many variables that what could or should have been a guaranteed fatality ends up leaving a scratch and a headache, and one that should have been fairly minor ends up being fatal.
Add in traffic and everyone coming to a sudden stop from 55MPH & over, you can understand why the Prius slowed down when it did.
Btw, Brucilla was smoking prior to the crash, which explains why he was sticking his hand out of the window. So not only an inattentive careless driver but a litterer too.
It also depends on how she died. Photos don't show the cabin being compromised, so she could have died from the airbag deploying (sitting too closely), heart-attack or just from being old and frail.
Btw, interesting fact about the old lady..... she once appeared in a movie with Elvis.
Add in traffic and everyone coming to a sudden stop from 55MPH & over, you can understand why the Prius slowed down when it did.
Btw, Brucilla was smoking prior to the crash, which explains why he was sticking his hand out of the window. So not only an inattentive careless driver but a litterer too.
Has anyone else noticed that THIS THREAD, with great links and some really good analysis, is the most comprehensive source of information on that crash, to be found on the Internet? This is why I get my news from City-Data.
Thanks for advancing that information about the stoplight. And thanks for that sickening photo. Your post offers confirmation of two things, for me:
1) Stoplights and high speed limits DO NOT MIX. The result of the mix is predictable. This is the result.
2) Athletes make LOUSY ROLE MODELS. While America, during his heyday, may have seen Jenner as an apple-cheeked bundle of wholesome goodness, what was lurking inside, apparently, was just a stupid, sleazy, irresponsible old cigarette-smoking White Trash woman.
Brucilla... What a totally perfect name for this frankensteinian, go-cart-hauling, cig-puffing, SKUZGRANNY.
Not many vehicles would survive this type of crash. The rearend and resulting frontal crash were perfectly survivable. The crumple zones did what they were designed to do. It's the second impact from an oncoming vehicle that killed the driver. The safety cage was already compromised from the front and rear impacts. A well engineered car can only take so many impacts before something gives.
There seems to be a level of suspicion about the crash being an assassination; I haven't found out much else about it, but, basically no one disputes the safety of BMW's and here's one folding like a beer can with no resistance.
A 2005 Lexus LS430 has a curb weight of 3900lbs. A Hummer H2 has a curb weight of 6400lbs. A 2014 Escalade has a curb weight of about 5600 lbs. Both outweighed the Lexus by a fair margin. Again, the Lexus itself technically "survived" the crash in that the passenger compartment wasn't compromised, but the occupant didn't survive, and I'm willing to bet that it was probably at least in part because of the forces of physics against the body of an elderly woman. As someone else pointed out, it could have been a heart attack, etc as well.
It's the same reason that although some doofuses shed tears over the good old days of gigantic land yachts that could ram headlong into a tree at 50mph and just need a new bumper, grille, radiator and hood, those cars weren't actually safer because although the car could be repaired and put back on the road, the occupants' bodies were in various states of mush because while the reinforced steel body of the car went from 50-0 in one second and just bucked around a bit, their not-steel-reinforced bodies and all the soft, goopy stuff inside them didn't fare so well...
At the end of the day, though, the crash was basically caused by inattentiveness. I agree with GrandviewGloria that high speeds and stoplights don't mix, and the problem with PCH is that although you can be lulled into thinking that it's basically a freeway and pushing your car to freeway speeds, the fact is that it's actually peppered with driveways, businesses, etc, all of which present heavy dangers when you are going 50+ mph. I'm an admitted lead foot, but pretty much any time that I was on it, I'd see locals who made the trek every day doing 70 mph like it was no big deal.
At the end of the day, though, the crash was basically caused by inattentiveness. I agree with GrandviewGloria that high speeds and stoplights don't mix, and the problem with PCH is that although you can be lulled into thinking that it's basically a freeway and pushing your car to freeway speeds, the fact is that it's actually peppered with driveways, businesses, etc, all of which present heavy dangers when you are going 50+ mph. I'm an admitted lead foot, but pretty much any time that I was on it, I'd see locals who made the trek every day doing 70 mph like it was no big deal.
This. I've seen some truly idiotic moves made by drivers on PCH. It's scenic.. but deadly if people aren't paying attention. PCH is a very unforgiving road.
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