From: Jasper
Date: December 30, 2005
Time: 08:11 AM
Buster, …It takes a tremendous amount of force to punch a hole throuh a windshield from the outside. A strong man swinging a sledgehammer might not get the head of the hammer thorough in one go. Physically throwing a battery though one is hard for me to imagine. It might be possible for a battery to punch a large enough hole through a windshield to split the battery and spill the acid in a passenger’s face. With the car getting hit coming to a sudden halt the front passenger’s head would be thrown forward and the acid would not have that far to travel. However, you still have the problems of front-end impact compression, hood release, cable and mounting disconnection, battery trajectory, mass (size and weight) and velocity. ………You need the relevant specs for both vehicles to build a reliable math model animation of the accident. However, I don’t think many engineers would get that far for several reasons, not the least of which is the head-on collision required to get the battery to fly in the right direction. ……….For one thing, hoods and hood latches are designed not to open on impact. They are integral parts of a system engineered to absorb the shock of a front-end collision by collapsing. The hood bends like a tent as the rest of the front end gets compressed. For the hood to fly open, the latch has to be faulty or open before the impact. Then there is the trajectory and velocity problem of the projectile (the battery). Think of the height of the hood on a typical car and the height of the windshield. Now think of what you have to do to get a basketball in a basketball net as oppose to a hockey puck in a hockey net. Any arch on the flight path of the projectile reduces the velocity. The angle of impact from low to high also lessens the chances of the flying battery penetrating the windshield (as opposed to someone dropping it from an overpass into the windshield of a speeding car). ………..On top of that you would still have severe injuries caused by the sudden stop of the crash even if everyone is belted in. Back seat passengers (presumably Fred and Ron) would suffer the worst damage unless the car’s rear seat was equipped with shoulder harnesses. The belts themselves would cause injuries and their brains would slam into their skulls. Neither of them would be in any condition to pull Kim from the wreckage. They would be unconscious or dead. –Jasper