Back in 2002 my wife crashed our 89 244 into a creek bank after leaving the road in a curve. She survived and fully recovered after six months. On the way home from the store today, I saw what was left of a Chevy Silverado that took the same path for the same accident. The VF folks, Highway Patrol, and EMTs were all there. The heavy rescue squad had just pulled the pickup out of the creek, the sight was beyond ugly. It appeared that the chassis folded at the firewall and crushed into the backs of the front seats.

I asked a Fire Fighter if this was a rescue, His response was very sullen: "No, its a recovery and it will be closed casket". I drove up the road about a quarter mile, pulled over, and puked my brains out. When I got home, I ran in and gave my Wife a huge tearful hug. Once I explained why, she fell apart as well.

Is a Chevy Siverado tougher than a 240 or vise versa? I don't know, but the truck "marketing" seems to try and sell a "bulletproof invincible" product. Perhaps now, despite the fact that my wife's recovery was in the 5% probability range, someone might listen and buy a 245 when they are thinking about a pickup truck.

Talk about a mixed up day, but hopefully the pain results in a overall positive outcome!

jorrell

--
92 245 250K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently taking names and kicking reputations!

Man, I really hope that wasn't some expensive food you put into the gully!

Are there ANY newer Volvos that have this tank-like invinciblity?

Tim
--
1992 - 244 - AW70 "Soft Ride" / 1987 - 244 - M47 (Hydra, turbo bars, bilstein, urethane bushings - now deceased)

I think in all honesty logic would indicate that the newer Volvos have better crash survivability than the older ones. Twenty odd years of reasearch will have produced some results. Apparently one of the reasons Volvo went to FWD is that it significantly improved the crash performance when the cars are front ended.

It isn't just about tough, its about how the structure disspates energy. A major factor will have been how fast the Silverado was travelling compared to how fast your wife was travelling in your 240.

In real life, real world crashes, there are too many variables, and of course that is one of the reasons Volvo have for years had teams in Sweden analysing all serious accidents involving Volvo cars, to learn what happens out in the real world.

I always find it really frightening to see relatively lightly damaged vehicles in which people have died. You're just really really lucky to be able to go home and hug her.

The fact is Volvo has always designed for crash survival FOR THE OCCUPANTS and not necessarily overall strength of the vehicle.

I've seen them hit and knocked around all different ways and the surprising thing, for MOST of the RWD cars I've seen, is that the doors open and close. This tells me the passenger compartment doesn't deform under crash forces. Of course you can hit anything hard enough to break it, but I'd rather put my family into Volvos than just about anything else out there. It's a gamble no matter what, but these cars tilt the odds a bit in your favor.

Over the last year, I've seen 3 accidents involving Chevy pickups. I don't know the details of every one of them, but the deformation to the passenger compartments are very scary. One was a near perfect offset barrier crash where a Sonoma or similar small truck hit the guardrail at a left-turn-lane gap in a jersey barrier divided 4-lane highway. The roof and floor were bent up and down to a peak, the steering wheel had to be touching the seatback. Did not look survivable. I don't think my Volvos would kill me like that.

The picture attached I shot a couple summers ago- the car's a 1984, it was 20+ years old then, not in great shape, a rusty New England car. It still did its job and the two front seat occupants just walked away. The windshield broke because the hood folded back into it, not because of deformation at the A pillars.


--
::: Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: 92 244 ::: 90 745GL ::: 90 745T ::: 84 242DL ::: 90 745T Parts ::: Used to have : 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 91 244, 88 244GL, 88 744GLE, 82 245T, 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 88 245DL, 89 244DL!

First let me say all accidents are different and therefore hard to simulate by a manufaturer. That said I had two of my dearest cars die in accidents.
First was my 1965 123S in Holland about 30 years ago. Going thru a long sweeping 2 lane curve, I was hit in the left rear quarter by a drunk that ran a stop. I was unable to to get arround him eventhough I tried to change from the apex to the outside lane, but she pushed me around and on dry pavement the car with new tyres would not skid, causing me to roll over 3 times. Coming to rest against a lightpole on all four. This Amazone rolling over 3 times @ 30 mph with sunroof open was still running. I was shook up and pissed that I could not drive her off because the lightpole had caused my right tie-rod to break and my right wheel was at a 90 degree angle. All my music cassettes trewn about including all else that was loose that flew out off the roof. I walked away!
The second time was 1986 when a 4500lbs plus 1978 Ford Country Squire Station wagon rammed my 242GT at 45mph. It is freightening to see such a large car come at you while you trying to get out of its way but their brakes causing them to veer towards where you are trying to go. They hit me just behind the drivers' side 'B'pillar causing my car to spin around 540 degrees before coming to rest against the curb. My head went thru the side window giving me a tremendous headache. Again I walked away. That day I opted to take the Volvo instead of our Honda Civic. The Volvo saved my life or at least kept me out of the hospital for a long time.
Both times the doors worked, both times hit on the drivers' side of the car, both times not my fault, but all four cars had to be hauled away and all 4 were totaled. Damn I wish I still had those two cars as I think they were beter than my current 944T.
I feel safer in my Volvo and MINI than the other cars I have, but avoidence is the safest way and that doesn't always mean slow driving.
Happy save motoring in 2008.

--
EJO now a 1993 944T 205K; ex '65 123S; ex '75 245; and ex '81 242GT; also 2001 Kia Sportage, Chrysler 2002 T&C and 2006 MINI Cooper and that little '71 MG Midget

Very similar picture to the damage my wife's car suffered, here is the link:


Now, this was a car without airbag, 99K miles, her injury was a hangman's fracture to the neck due to the massive whiplash associated with the impact, one vertebrae (C2 if I recall correctly broke in half). According to her Neurosurgeon, if the car had been a 90 with an air bag (rather than an 89 without airbag),she would have walked away with a dime sized bruise on her knee... the only other injury she had. The doors still opened and closed, but when I started pulling the interior out, I found that the floor boards had little wrinkle waves in them from where they absorbed impact. Only two pieces of sheetmetal were saved off the car, the rear deck lid and the gas cover lid, everything else was wrinkled or trashed beyond use, even the rear quarters.

Now I don't mean to specifically pick on Chevrolet/GMC, as I've helped a friend of mine pull fully functional drivetrains out of "death F-150 Fords". It is pathetic that their cabin area is the crumple zone. We pulled an engine out of one where the fenders and hood were not damaged at all after a front end impact with a low concrete barrier that snagged the frame rails. Dare to guess what part of the truck crumpled? Yes, the undertaker made money on that one as well.


jorrell

--
92 245 250K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently taking names and kicking reputations!

Absolutely, its one of the things that has always amazed me looking at crashed Volvos. They are clearly designed to disspate the energy of the accident right through the car. You can get a car that has been hit in one quarter and find mild rippling at the other side of the car. Yet as you say the doors function fine.

I've never seen that as a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned, if I get into an accident and the car can't be repaired that fine. It has done its job protecting the occupants. It is however markedly different from a lot of other cars where the damage is confined to a very small area.

Personally, I feel pretty safe in my 20+ y.o. Volvos. I was in one of those offset head-ons in my '76 242, combined speed about 65 mph. Didn't walk away, I drove home after pounding out part of the driver's front fender and changing the tire. The Subaru left on a rollback. Did I mention I wasn't wearing a seatbelt? Did have to junk her though, knocked the unit body about 5/8" out of line. Definitely don't try that with yer Civic!

I posted a link to an article in opinions recently about trucks & SUVs not being built with the same crash safety as cars, and I think this is just another example of that....

http://www.brickboard.com/OPINIONS/index.htm?id=1241838

My understanding is that it's essentially a loophole in the federal regulations for this stuff that the standards for car safety (and emissions BTW) don't apply to trucks. This loophole allows manufacturers to sell trucks without investing all that expensive research and development into their products that would otherwise be necessary for cars and minivans.

The irony is that the lack of proper safety design in trucks and SUVs is not only unsafe for everyone else on the road, -- it's also unsafe for the SUV drivers themselves, despite the "invincible feeling" those drivers may feel from being elevated so high in their tall, top-heavy vehicles.

It's sad that the situation is allowed to persist, but I guess there's alot of money to be made keeping things the way they are....

As others have said, modern cars are still much better in safety design than our 15+ year-old RWD volvos. I wish I liked modern cars.
--
'92 245 5-speed, '92 944 GL auto

The following youtube video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WmypX2RUPY of the crash test of a Silverado shows how badly they do in an offset crash test, unfortunately so do all of the old cars we drive. Those not produced in the last few years fare badly in the offset crash test even though they do moderately well in the full on test. There is another youtube video of the Silverado in the full barrier test and it does not look too bad, it's the offset test that is the killer. The video made by 5th Gear the UK motoring program crashing a much later Volvo than my Volvo into a recent model Renault bleakly illustrates the point. The Volvo was a safe car in its day in comparison with the dreadful cars of yesteryear, but now does not compare well with the latest safest cars when they are in the offset test which was designed to replicate real world crashes more closely.
Regards,
Checkpoint Charlie

For what it's worth, Volvo and Mercedes had been pushing the offset frontal as the 'real' test to build against for a long time. Volvo had equipped cars in Sweden with 'black boxes' for a long time, and every time a Volvo was in a serious accident they'd show up to look it over, and they knew that was the most common serious accident. And for a while, they were even performing worse in the standardized 'head on' crash tests, merely because they had built their car a little stronger up front to handle the offset crashes, that made them perform a little worse in the straight ahead test, but then again cars that would easily fold up in a straight on crash would offer less protection in the offset.
--
'63 PV544 rat rod, '93 Classic #1141 245 +t

GM lies. In the 1985 Pontiac sales brochure, there is a picture of a child in a cutaway view of the Pontiac Transport minivan showing off its safety cage construction. The title above the picture reads: "When you want the best protection for your children." A year or so later, Consumer Reports tested the Pontiac Transport. They said it was one of the worst vehicles they had ever crash tested!

Wow, that's one of those horrible, "count your blessings" kinda stories. Especially at this time of year, I can't help but to feel for the family of the Silverado driver. And I can tell from your reaction, that you probably have done the same.
But I think when truck mfgrs tout the "bulletproof invincibility" of thier product they're refering to functional ruggedness rather than accident survivablity. And I do agree that too many light truck owners develop a false sense of security with the "larger is better" way of thinking.

a picture of the curve would help. was it bad road design, bad driving conditions or driver error causing the crash? maybe a combination of all of them?

read in a report recently saying that an empty pickup has very high rollover risk, which is made worse by the fact that the driver feels "invincible" in a truck.
--
'91 240SE Wagon

The road is a gradual left hander, no guard rail, 1 foot further out from the road edge, the six foot drop gradually begins until it meets up with a farm fence 10 feet away. In both accidents the road was dry and overcast. The road does have a minor flaw in that the outside edge of the curve slopes down. We have been after the local authorities to install a guard rail for the past four years, no luck yet, but we did get a yellow left curve ahead 45MPH sign installed last year. The speed limit through there is 55MPH.

The "Silverado", as I found out today was a 2006 model with a 2 door cab. Since the truck won't "power up", actual mileage is not known, last carfax mileage for the vehicle was 22K in August. Air bag did deploy and the seatbelt was on.

Why the detail? Simple, still collecting data to convince a few folks that a guard rail is needed. This was the third death in the same curve over the past four years.

jorrell
--
92 245 250K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently taking names and kicking reputations!

Hi John,
After the terrible experience of your wife and now this latest accident what if you put it to the local authorities (the decision maker/s) that they have been formally put on notice that a serious hazard exists due to the road design and depth of the ditch or gulley which massively increases the risk of serious injury in the event of a vehicle entering the ditch needing to swerve to avoid a child for instance. In that event the vehicle would be seriously damaged and the driver injured. Given they are put on notice that a hazard exists which they could mitigate but chose in the past not to then I suspect that if that type of accident happened they would then be individually and severally liable.

Not sure if the US followed the case law precedent set by the little old lady in Eastbourne in the UK in the 1920's who sued the borough Architect for approving plans for a house with foundations that were inadequate. She won the case and established in case law that one can be personally liable for decisions one makes in the pursuance of one's job (that is in addition to the employer being liable).

Very many countries around the world followed that case law and have now got an established track record of cases in their jurisdiction following that precedent. What that means for professionals around the world is we have to take special Professional Indemnity insurance to cover us personally in the event of a negligence claim being taken out against us personally for professional decisions taken at work. Our employer also needs it as well. If you have a friend or acquaintance who is a Civil Engineer in your State ask him about the liability situation for the local authority who fail to mitigate a known avoidable hazard. If that personal liability exists and the decision makers are made to realise the driver or their estate could end up suing them personally and them being personally bankrupted i.e. they could lose their house, savings and all assets as a result of their decision not to spend authority money to mitigate a known hazard, that may just focus their mind.
Regards,
Checkpoint Charlie

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It may be possible to find out how fast the truck was going, as GM vehicles have, for some years, had a "black box" similar to a flight data recorder, that keeps track of that, and several other things as well. However, exactly who has the right to access that data is a sticky legal issue, with quite a bit of variation from state to state.

Any word on whether alcohol was involved?

An ill-handling vehicle and excessive speed is often a deadly combination, adding intoxication to the equation multiplies the danger severalfold.

Then there are the factors that are harder to determine---was the driver local (and presumably familiar with the road) or was he seeing a tricky curve for the first time? Did the right front tire perhaps have a slow leak, and was down to something like 18 psi, causing it to tuck under instead of providing cornering grip?

The book :
High and Mighty: SUVs--The World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way
might be of interest.
The death rate for occupants of SUVs is greater than that for occupants of cars. That there ramming devices mounted on the front of these already dangerous vehicles is crazy.