The protagonist and the villain are driving their cars straight towards each other at top speed–playing a classic game of chicken. The villain thinks he’s sure to win–the hero’s girl is in the hero’s car, and he won’t risk her life. But he underestimates the hero’s ingenuity. Slamming the brakes and/or the accelerator, the hero spins out–the collision is on his car’s XXXX. The force is distributed through the car in a way that shields the car’s vital components and occupants; he and his girl are uninjured and he can drive off. But his car hits the villain’s car in the YYYY, the “sweet spot” for car crashes, totaling the bad guy’s car (bonus points if it flips) and injuring him severely.
For what XXXX and YYYY could this scenario be plausible?
One way I can imagine it: The hero has a sports car, or another type of car, with a sloping hood. The villain is in a car such as an SUV or truck. At the last minute the hero slams on the brakes, causing his front end to dive. The villains vehicle rides up the hero’s car, causing the villain’s vehicle to go up on two wheels and flip. The hero and his girl duck below the level of the windshield, so despite the damage to the hero’s car, such as a broken windshield and partially collapsed roof, they are safe and can drive off. Make the hero’s car an older model without airbags.
I’m sure a collision like that has been done 9 or 10 times in the opening scenes of CHiPs.
^
Mine would be the other way round. Hero and girl are riding a utility vehicle with a high frame/bumper made of solid welded I-steel. Bad guy in a modern number with a low frame, of engineered super-steel designed to crumple a certain parts at a certain speed, but leaving the passenger part intact. Hero’s strategy: exceed that mentioned test speed using their combined speeds, go for a head-on collision.
And if you look closely you can see the ramp welded to the front of the sports car so the other car will ride up it and flip.
Didn’t work out too well for Jayne Mansfield.
I was involved in a wreck where an old woman was going the wrong way on the highway. She had realized what she had done and stopped when I came around a curve at 50+ and she was sitting in my lane. I slammed on my brakes and slid left into the median but my right rear hit her right front and I spun a little and slid to a stop in the grass a couple hundred feet later. Her engine compartment was a little smashed, enough that the radiator, fan and belts were probably useless, I only had a big dent in the quarter panel. If she had been moving at 50mph it might have spun her sideways and she could have flipped. I mean, probably not, but it would have been believable enough for an action movie or story. The damage would have been worse for both cars, of course, but mine probably would still have been driveable.
Realistically, assuming both parties are in passenger cars of comparable dimensions and mass, no. The hero, by causing his car to spin, will likely incur an oblique or lateral impact; that is, the hero’s vehicle will be struck on a corner or side. Not only are most automobiles less capable of resisting damage in these directions, the passenger safety and protective systems are primarily designed to protect against a front or rear impact. With the more recent development of side impact airbags and structural reinforcement the potential for severe occupant injury is reduced, but oblique impacts are still considered the worst type of impact, particularly frontal overlap impact (where the vehicle is struck from the front but offset, thereby only allowing a small portion of the “crumple zone” to function).
There is a maneuver called PIT or VIP maneuver which is sometimes used by law enforcement. These are common acronyms that stand for a number of different descriptions, but the “I” stands for immobilization, with the intent being to destabilize the vehicle and force it to lose traction, bringing it to a rapid stop. However, the PIT maneuver can only be controllably performed at low speeds with both vehicles initially going the same direction, is less effective against front wheel or all wheel drive vehicles, and can result in roll-over or other unintended consequences if the pursuing car becomes locked to the target or the target is run up sideways against a low barrier such as a curb. An extreme, Hollywood-ized version of this maneuver can be seen at the end of the Moscow chase scene in The Bourne Supremacy. In reality, that scene required an elaborate tensioned rig to keep the two vehicles together while being towed through the tunnel. In reality, one of the vehicles would probably have either flipped, or they would have separated with imparted spin.
Having the hero and his girlfriend leap out of the car through the roof, perform a triple somersault over the resulting crash, and land standing hand in hand would be about as realistic as surviving this kind of impact uninjured in a functioning car.
Stranger