My best friend (and first co-founder) died in a crash after hitting a tree at 48mph in a BMW 5-series.
I used to hold the same assumptions you did, particularly #'s 4 & 5. In my friend's case, the firewall gave & the engine came into the cockpit & exploded, splitting the driver in half & burning my friend past the point of recovery.
The fireball from the explosion marked the tree, the street, & the lawn for a 20-30 foot radius around the crash site, unbelievable that it could be created by one car.
It made me realize that the engines in these cars are optimized for serious performance and they can only be so safe. In this case, a C250 is getting 200+ horsepower out of a small 1.8l engine. Cranking at 80mph, I'm not sure there's anyway to avoid this sort of explosion or for the safety measures to kick in fast enough.
Just my two cents. Obviously I don't know the details here, but I did want to add that even a 48mph collision into a tree at a particular angle can very well create a really large explosion.
I used to hold the same assumptions you did, particularly #'s 4 & 5. In my friend's case, the firewall gave & the engine came into the cockpit & exploded, splitting the driver in half & burning my friend past the point of recovery.
The fireball from the explosion marked the tree, the street, & the lawn for a 20-30 foot radius around the crash site, unbelievable that it could be created by one car.
It made me realize that the engines in these cars are optimized for serious performance and they can only be so safe. In this case, a C250 is getting 200+ horsepower out of a small 1.8l engine. Cranking at 80mph, I'm not sure there's anyway to avoid this sort of explosion or for the safety measures to kick in fast enough.
Just my two cents. Obviously I don't know the details here, but I did want to add that even a 48mph collision into a tree at a particular angle can very well create a really large explosion.
-h