Quote:
Originally Posted by InvisibleSoul
This comparison is wrong on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin.
1.) VW Bus is not a real bus
2.) Hitting a wall is not even close to the same as hitting a car
What I was getting at is that a small car should basically bounce off a big bus because of the huge difference in momentum. Even in a much older bus with far fewer safety measures, just from that fact alone, I think the bus driver would be okay.
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It was meant to be taken humorously, and not a direct comparison
A bus is basically a box, and the A pillars on a bus - especially one from the 60's, and even today - are weak, as they are structual columns. It would actually fare better hitting a wall, then the front end of a car, which is for all intents and purposes, pointy.
It's not all to do with momentum, as momentum is just speed times weight. So even if the bus is twice as heavy, if the car is going twice the speed, they carry equal momentum. Add that to structural rigidity and every other real-world physics aspect, and the bus driver is actually quite lucky. From the pictures it looks like the car struck the left side of the bus, which was extremely lucky.
Had it been a head-on collision, the bus driver would most likely be far worse off.
But that's not really the point, is it lol
