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this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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To an extent it’s both. I mean intent-wise it’s all about the occupants of the car, but as a side effect it also slightly reduces the impact on the pedestrian. The way I would think about it is that crumple zones on their own aren’t nearly enough to protect pedestrians, but removing them would be going completely in the wrong direction
Crumple zones don't crumple when hitting anything as soft as a person. I had a car run into me while stopped. They were doing about 45, it was the worst-case impact, driver corner to driver corner. My airbags didn't go off. I lost the left front fender and headlight. No crumple zone changes (that's part of the unit body, when it gets bent, it often totals the vehicle). A pedestrian would've bounced off that car with broken bones and a concussion, minimum.
They're for occupants.
Plastic bumpers are the only thing that compresses easily enough to not injure a pedestrian. And even those are pointless, at a speed where a pedestrian impact would compress a bumper, is fast enough to transfer a lot of momentum into a human body, and compress the bumper into the harder parts of the car.
No, not to an extent.
Crumpling does nothing for a person getting hit by a car. Please stop spreading bullshit.
From a physics perspective, yes it does. Not much, but yes it does do something.
In order for a crumple zone to work, the material must be at least slightly softer than the rest of the structure. When you have a collision, both the strong structure and the relatively weak crumple zones will flex, but the crumple zones will flex more. In a big collision, like with another car, they might flex so much they have permanent damage (the crumple), but even with a pedestrian they will flex a little. The more they flex, the more it cushions the impact for both the pedestrian and the occupants of the car.
As I said, the amount of cushion for the two parties is massively skewed in favor of the car, and crumple zones alone are not anywhere near enough to make cars safe for pedestrians. But objectively, yes they do slightly cushion the impact for a pedestrian, and in the perfect edge case collision it might mean the difference between life and death.
From a physics perspective, people don’t exist.
We’re talking about the human outcomes of being hit by a car with a crumple zone. Zero benefit.