Civic driver killed after being rear-ended

Victor1507 said:

The front of the Civic Touring that rear ended him hardly has any damage. It shows that the front of the car is a lot stronger than the back. Or maybe Honda skimps on the structure in the lower trims..

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I'm going to guess the well bolted down motor mounted sideways like it is on FWD cars did most of the damage. Cast iron engine block vs sheet metal trunk at the back. If my guess is right, I'd guess also that the battering ram in the crash test video above does is not representative of CivicX's.

Or who knows, maybe the Uber guy's car caught some air after jumping a curb and rear ended the other CivicX above ground level.

Gotta admit the CivicX in that crash test video took it like a champ. Makes me feel a bit safer against rear enders.

If that had been me, by two boys in the back would have been dead! *chills*

Abdool said:

While this is very sad and I wish this guy family all the best its heart broken, but but must say I find the civic material very weak I swear I apply sla little pressure with my hand to take out something's the entire thing just broke like thin glass how embarrassing of civics I was so mad but now I see why civic are getting all the hate

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You do realize the sheet metal isnt the thing that protects you in a civic eh? It's the frame that absorbs the energy. For this much damage to happen, the guy that hit him mustve been going fast enough to do this kinda damage on any kinda car honestly

When I worked in Kansas City the company I worked for sold software to the Kansas City police department where we entered old police reports into our software to create a database. I was completely sickened at how many parents received a DUI while taking their kids to school.

R.I.P. to the Accord Driver and I'm sure the DUI driver will survive another day with a good attorney and be out on the streets again soon.

Watch the news article video and look at the victims car very carefully and you will see clearly that this was not a square on rear impact. This was a swerving contact at an angle into the rear left of the car. That is not a test that is performed as that is an edge case impact type. Only the front impact is done in direct, 40% overlap and 20% overlap on both left and right side of the vehicle.

There is little question that the drunk driver was flying at a very good clip. The one thing that is good is that the telemetry from the cars should be available so that these facts can be known. If I would have to guess, it is at least 80 kph and possibly as high as 100.

As mentioned earlier, driver's head/chin likely struck steering wheel during rebound from being (almost dead-on) rear-ended. This is the one situation in which it might have been better to have the front airbags deploy in a rear-end event. Looks like the side airbags did deploy as they should if there is enough of a side-on force component. The referenced video shows a terrific rear impact with enough side-force to spin the victim 180 degrees and the DUI car 90 or perhaps 270 degrees and "push" both cars 75-120 feet farther down the road.

dthatcher7 said:

If that had been me, by two boys in the back would have been dead! *chills*

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That was my first thought as well. I have a 6 year old and a 14 month old, with another baby due next week. My wifes car is safer than mine, and she usually has the kids. But I have two childseats in the back presently with my Civic, and have been considering swapping to three of the Diono carseats for the back of my car.

Being a parent changes viewpoint, big time.

On the topic of "sheet metal != strength", here's one of my favorite videos:



1959 Chevy Bel Air (so much strong metal!) vs 2009 Chevy Malibu (not so much)

tldr: modern engineering wins.

(As an aside, when this video first came out, there were a ton of disbelief- the most popular conspiracy theory was that the Chevy Bel Air must've been rusted out. )

Bummer for the driver in the OPs video though.

A lot of the parts are actually meant to crumple like a spring to absorb more of the impact. Yes they get destroyed in the process of a crash, but will keep you safe. Unfortunately this accident was quite bad.

very sad, I hate to hear things like this.

sorry to hear it