Here is a fictional scenario, you hit a tree at 30 miles and hour your 2026 Volvo is totaled.
Your dad hits a tree at 30 miles an hour in his 1970 chevy, you replace the windshield and hose it out and you can drive that chevy.
Yeah, but the people in the Volvo get to walk away.
Dad would be proud to see his beloved Chevy live on.
The 70s car might beat the modern car. For the people inside the vehicles, the story is quite different.
Which do you want as a crumple zone: the car or you?
The thing you got to understand is that the energy of the crash has to go somewhere. The same energy will apply to both cars, the modern car will absorb a lot of it by deforming, the old car won’t absorb any in that way because it’s a hard piece of metal. And you have to wonder, what is more important to you, the car chassis or the people inside? You might as well ask “why do we put packing peanuts if nails are a lot tougher” or “why do we ship eggs in weird cardboard boxes if a metal square would be more resilient”
It’s not the speed that kills you. It’s the rapid deceleration.
If you’re in an old car with no crumple zones, my intuition says it’s better to hit a modern car because then you also benefit from the other car’s crumple zones. Colliding with another rigid car would basically be like hitting a brick wall. I think the effect on the driver ends up the same in both cases.
If it’s two old cars with rigid bodies colliding, it’s exactly like hitting a brick wall. Even if the car itself is unharmed, the driver isn’t. It’s how quickly you stop that makes the impact dangerous, and in a car like that you stop almost instantly.
On the other hand, when two modern cars collide, there’s 2x the crumple zones, so the impact is the lowest there.
If two 70s cars collided, all the energy is transferred to your body since the solid construction of the car wouldn’t dissipate much of it.
Your car would receive a lot more damage, but the driver in the older car would be much more hurt than you.
Also, modern vehicles are far more reliable and efficient
The car would win. The driver would lose.
I was in a fender bender a few years ago where the other party insisted on getting the police involved because of injury - the passenger slumped dramatically to the ground complaining of whiplash. The officer who attended said, “You don’t have whiplash.” And explained to her the concept of crumple zones in modern cars absorbing forces from impact. Then he declared it a no-fault accident (it was actually my fault).
I direct you to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck
Tldw: cars today are designed to keep the driver safer in a crash, and by having crumple zones and such, the driver is protected more from the forces that are at play.
Edit: aw drat people beat me to the explanation as well as the video! Well shucks at least I had fun commenting lol
thank you for the question . it was interesting reading through the responses.
“70s car wins …but you still lose” lol
The car from the 70’s survives accidents better because more of it is rigid, but this makes it more dangerous as more of the force of the accident is transferred to the driver.
Modern crumple zones are placed intentionally so that while the car will crumple, the driver will not.
If I have to pick only one, I’m going to go with modern crumple zones
But man, I do wish we had some kind of magical smart metal that could be as rigid as an old car for low speed collisions, but still crumple for more serious impacts.
Because when you drive an old shitbox like I do, pretty much any damage is enough to total it, and having to get a new car really sucks when the accident was minor enough that no one was going to get hurt anyway.
Get EV. Make it do the skateboard design idea where the chassis/drive train is a skateboard under the cabin/cargo body. Delete the bolts that join the halves, replace with bungee cords. Done.
I had a toy car at some point that had plunger bumpers that reversed motor direction on impact.
Reverse Newtonian metal sheet. I think that’s doable in my lifetime.
Why arent people buying more cars from the 70s?
Parts and servicing is a big problem now. A lot of shops wont touch anything they cant plug a diagnostic computer into.
Some parts are made of unobtanium and require complex workarounds or paying through the nose for parts.
A lot of 70s cars were pretty damn ugly too
In the 70s the cars won but not the people. Modern vehicles let the people survive instead of themselves.
It wouldn’t win out. They typically didn’t have any crumple zones to dissipate the forces of the impact so the full forces in the accident got transferred to the passenger cell and therefore the passengers. Also no seatbelt pre-tensioners to stop you flying forward before the seatbelt locks would engage and no airbags to protect you. Steering columns were also not collapsible so the driver’s chest being impacted by the steering wheel was a common thing in a head on.
