Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT Did Its Job...

semi fell asleep?
Sometimes mass is helpful.
a smart car would have been a baseball in that situation.
Which may or may not have been worse, it has safety cage built around the driver so other than getting impaled by a tree it may have been similar.
 
Which may or may not have been worse, it has safety cage built around the driver so other than getting impaled by a tree it may have been similar.
The problem with the safety cage concept is that there is little in the way of crush to extend the duration of the Delta-V. Even though the occupant(s) are spared from being pinned between the dashboard and the seat, the force due to rapid acceleration can be fatal by itself. At a certain point, aortas tear, spleens rupture, etc., so you're dead anyway. The deformation of the Jeep in this case was definitely good for the driver, as it stretched out the acceleration and more or less stopped at the firewall. The A-pillar could ideally have done a bit better, but we're asking a lot of a passenger vehicle vs. a semi.

As Rand said, this is 1000% a small overlap frontal crash. The rearward shift of the driver's door is a big telltale - along with other aspects of the damage to the involved vehicles.
 
A 25 year old F-150 was made of steel and not aluminum alloy.
I don't think he was implying the 25 year old ford was made from aluminum, he said they folded in crashes like aluminum foil which is absolutely true. Look up a 1997 ford f150 and behold the origami of metal...
 
The problem with the safety cage concept is that there is little in the way of crush to extend the duration of the Delta-V. Even though the occupant(s) are spared from being pinned between the dashboard and the seat, the force due to rapid acceleration can be fatal by itself. At a certain point, aortas tear, spleens rupture, etc., so you're dead anyway. The deformation of the Jeep in this case was definitely good for the driver, as it stretched out the acceleration and more or less stopped at the firewall. The A-pillar could ideally have done a bit better, but we're asking a lot of a passenger vehicle vs. a semi.

As Rand said, this is 1000% a small overlap frontal crash. The rearward shift of the driver's door is a big telltale - along with other aspects of the damage to the involved vehicles.
Well I'm not one to test their theory but it's impressive to say the least. Sudden deceleration is going to kill you no matter what if it will.

 
Well I'm not one to test their theory but it's impressive to say the least. Sudden deceleration is going to kill you no matter what if it will.


The point is that a vehicle which has a front end to crush before reaching the passenger compartment will make the deceleration less sudden, all else being equal. With that said, I would imagine there is a range of speeds where the rigid cage of the smart car would be of some benefit - I'd just rather be in something that (mostly) does what the Jeep did.
 
The point is that a vehicle which has a front end to crush before reaching the passenger compartment will make the deceleration less sudden, all else being equal. With that said, I would imagine there is a range of speeds where the rigid cage of the smart car would be of some benefit - I'd just rather be in something that (mostly) does what the Jeep did.
It also depends on what they hit..
example smart car: a drunk driver hitting a phone pole or concrete is just the energy in the smart car.
when you hit a vehicle that weighs 2-4x or more(commercial truck) .. you get acceleration damage/death.. ie your insides tear and turn into goo from the nearly instantaneous rebound.
ie the smart car is the baseball and gets wacked by the "bat"

With more mass and more crumple zone its less instant and less unequal objects sharing energy.

Now some accidents are not survivable but with the right vehicle in the "right" type of crash it is alot better now than
a geo metro getting rear ended by a semi into a e150 for example (coworker died) in that case a really strong cage would definitely have helped survivablitity.

I nowhere said the GC driver surviving "relatively unhurt" wasn't impressive.
 
That looked like they were both traveling highway speed to me
So I pictured the jeep making a left in front of semi would be passenger side.

now if he was coming off a side road and making a left infront of the semi to go opposite direction that would be true.
but with the pattern of damage being on the driver side of the cab.. it appears unlikely that it was from a left in front of the semi.

Can you describe how a left turn in front of the semi would produce that damage pattern to the drivers side of the semi cab.. and the driver front of the jeep?

IMO much more likely one of them went left of center.. (not turning)

Looks like a textbook small offset collision.
Looked more like the engine compartment was pushed from the left, to the right, of the Jeep. The edges of the damage are practically square. Head on, with small offset, the passenger compartment on the Jeep wouldn't be so clearly intact.

I had thought the truck took the Jeep's engine compartment out from the left.

So, I was thinking that the Jeep pulled out an made a left turn in front of the truck - who was unable to avoid the collision.

But looking at the Semi more closely, it looks like a left to left small offset frontal - so, that would support your perception, not my initial one from looking at the Jeep.
 
Looked more like the engine compartment was pushed from the left, to the right, of the Jeep. The edges of the damage are practically square. Head on, with small offset, the passenger compartment on the Jeep wouldn't be so clearly intact.

I had thought the truck took the Jeep's engine compartment out from the left.

So, I was thinking that the Jeep pulled out an made a left turn in front of the truck - who was unable to avoid the collision.

But looking at the Semi more closely, it looks like a left to left small offset frontal - so, that would support your perception, not my initial one from looking at the Jeep.
Dangit.. you edited :) ;)

the semi damage (areas) to rule out most of the options of how the jeep got that crazy looking damage I was left with small offset frontal.
Without a semi pic I would have likely thought other crash options more probable.
 
The crash happened on a 2-lane highway, speeds are typically about 60 mph. No intersection involved.

On another crash, last fall, a young female that works in my team was involved in a slower speed crash. She was going straight at about 35 MPH in a Ram 1500 on the way to work. A Ford Escape turned into her at about 20 mph and hit her at the strongest point on the Ram, just behind the front wheel, just below the A pillar. Zero crumple on her truck, and because of that but she got a serious concussion. She is still feeling the effects 5 months later. Has headaches, still on physical therapy and massages. About $10K of damage to the truck, Escape was probably a write off. She called me for help, I was there in 3 - 4 minutes and helped her at the scene. I documented everything - I had done crash investigations numerous times in a previous career. Crashes are all different and can really hurt folks in unexpected ways.

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Modern automotive safety engineering is pretty impressive. Glad your friend came out of that with no serious injuries.

I constantly watch dashcam videos and sometimes it's amazing how severe the damages are to the vehicles but the driver walks away with minimal damage. A testimonial to how safe cars have become. There was a dashcam video of a small sedan, I think a Yaris or Focus, that turned left in front of an incoming ~60mph semi on a two-lane road and got smashed and flung into a ditch. Driver walked away unharmed. I'll see if I can find that video.
 
... and protected the driver. I do know the driver and he was checked out from the hospital and home, 3 hours after the crash.

No serious injuries. I don't know how the crash happened.

The Jeep was a newer SRT Jeep Grand Cherokee, picture of the Jeep and what the Jeep hit.

Just wow.

View attachment 145963View attachment 145965
Wow, that held up incredibly well! 😯
 
A skidpad is not going to translate on accident avoidance when the organic solid behind the wheel is the main variable.
Probably only a few more inches of overlap and the SRT story would be a bit different! So I pay attention to oncoming drivers when I'm in the Focus... I do lots of brake covering at intersections and certainly don't play chicken if someone oncoming does a marginal pass, even if I'm a couple cars back... Lots of people seem to space out in their vehicles though, looking at phones or screens, and I've seen a couple near misses where neither one seemed to notice at all that they were only a couple feet away from disaster.... Usually truck drivers are pretty good around here, on the 2 lane roads, can't remember the last time I saw one get into the other lane.
 
Not to hijack your thread but our H&S just showed me this pic when one of our employees doing soil sampling on the side of the highway got rear ended by a semi whose driver had a heart attack. She was sitting in her front seat and came out with barely a scratch. The white box is where her license plate was.

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