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Originally Posted by inv4zn
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.
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If the car had no give just like the wall, then I would agree.
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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.
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Yes, I know momentum is mass times velocity. The problem is the bus is not just twice as heavy. I think the bus in the crash is a Nova LFS, and the weight is over 40000lbs. Add the 15 people on the bus, and you're looking at about 42000lbs. The Mazda6 weighs 3600lbs, and with the two guys, say 3900lbs. That means the bus had more than 10x the mass. Even if the car was going twice the speed of the bus, the bus still has more than 5x the momentum of the car.
I still like the chances of the driver of a 1960s bus being fine in this collision.