Car crash

DamaNegra said:

I just have a quick question regarding some characters involved in the car crash. Say that when the crash occured, one of the persons was lying down on the back seat. Could that person be shot out the windshield or would the front seats stop their progress?

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I just got through some training on auto accidents and what to look for as a rescuer:

How bad do you want to hurt them?

Depends on the crash - type and speed of impact, spinning or rolling, doors pop or stay closed.

Head-on collision, no spinning or rolling, they slam into the backside of the front seats at XXMPH (however fast the car is going is how fast they go forward) and get massive blunt-force trauma injuries, head and spinal injuries, or at lower speeds, some strains and bruises. Maybe broken limbs, depending on their position on the seat. Facial injuries too, if they hit face-first.

If the rear doors pop open and the car is spinning ... they can be flung out the door a few to quite a few feet. If it's rolling, they can be flung out any opening. Injuries are going to be serious here, head/spine damage and busted limbs.

If it's spinning and doors stay shut, they'll get jammed head-first or leg-first into the door, maybe on the floor too. Can injure severely.

Tumbling, if they stay in the car, they bounce around the inside, colliding with the other passengers and the car's interior.

Glass cuts happen too.

If you have a passenger in a car that is unrestrained, you can do pretty much anything you want with them. Fly out the front, the back, the sunroof. Car crashes are sort of like a tornado, they can do pretty amazing things with bodies. Front seat passengers can end up dead in the back seat or even behind the wheel. Same with rear passengers, laying down the seat, unrestrained, could result in nearly anything. Like, Tsu said, low impact/speeds they'd probably just hit the seats in front and end up bruised up, though if they're back hit the console in the middle, they'd probably break their back when they hit. Anything more than that, and yeah, they'd probably go right up over the seats or between them.

Seriously, car accidents are a craps shoot, anything could happen. Bodies fly pretty well actually.

kristie911 said:

Bodies fly pretty well actually.

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What a wonderful quote.

Since I have nothing to add to the OP...moving on now...

If they hit the lampost sideways, I'd buy it more if the body went out the side window...but if they were still in a forward motion, slam her against the wall...totally believable.

I'm with Kristie on this--unrestrained persons end up in all manner of freakish positions and even locations, sometimes many feet from the vehicle. If you want her to fly out the window I'd have the "T-boning" car hitting them do so in front of or behind the passenger door so there isn't much intrusion into the passenger area, which tends to pin people inside.

That's just about right... a body can end up just about anywhere, so write what you need.

DamaNegra said:

Well, the character in question is already dead by the time the accident happens, so it really doesn't make a difference how hurt she gets Her father was driving well above speed limit and passed stop. Another car that was also speeding but had the green light collided with this girl's car and hit its side. Both cars kept advancing until they were pinned between a lamppost and a building, or something like that. I was thinking she could've been sent flying through the windshield and was stopped by the wall.

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Here's the likely scenario:

Both cars will keep going in their initial direction because of their inertia, but they will be spinning because the force of the other car tends to give it a twist (you rarely see a t-bone collision where the cars stay together, with one shoving the other).

If the car sizes are strikingly different, the lighter car usually spins more. A SUV can roll if the spin is too tight.

... if you want her to hit a wall, just have the back doors pop open and the corpse go flying. It would look like she was ejected and killed by the impact.

Just about anything is possible. The wierdest thing I saw was a truck driver ejected through the windshield of his 18 wheeler while still strapped into his seat. They brought him to the ER while still in the seat since he was complaining of back pain. They taped the whole thing onto a backboard. He had a burst fracture of one or more vertebrae. Obviously the driver seat was defectively put into the cab.

Tsu Dho Nimh said:

It would look like she was ejected and killed by the impact.

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Right up until the autopsy...