Not many cars can get by with this kind of crash. WSH mentions so many times how safety oriented our cars are and how much engineering MB puts into its stock. Take a look at this video . Not many people could've walked away from this kind of crash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbdH-...eature=related

 

Only in a benz or Volvo will you survive IMO.

 

Interesting video, trumpet....

Indeed, all it takes is a few secs in a near-crash/crash situation to differentiate cars that truly have maximal active and passive safety....at least per my brief previous drives of Volvo/Audi (in distant past), highly doubt any V/A has competent active safety vs a new S/CL600/63/65....

BTW, that video reminds me why I despise moronic stuff like PanoRoofs/sunroofs, let alone SL retractable roofs.....one's head/spine is fairly valuable stuff in any rollover/serious collision....I prefer an integral, highly engineered steel roof structure as first layer of defense (after active safety fails), not air or glass....post-crash life in a wheelchair sucks.....

 

....my thoughts exactly

 

wow

 

deadly accident this week in ny that involved volvos, the article i think mentions 2 but on the news over here they said there was three

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/su...0,978555.story

 

I doubt anyone says you can't get killed in a Benz!! But there safety, throughout their lineup!!, is pretty impressive. So its still better driving an old Merc and leave those new Japanese/Koreans alone!

 

I'm fairly certain that was a R129...

 

These are really the best built cars in the world. Safety is no small part of that equation.

 

That guy was very,very lucky.
One more roll and he would be decapitated,the roof should not be ripped off,door should not have opened during the roll.
I am not impressed by the way that car held up at all.
Btw,for every survivor in MB accident at that speed there are probably four victims,so don't all of you be so confident that you are safe just because you are driving Benzes....

 

I was impressed considering the door directly hit a barrier at 120 mph, the roof dragged across pavement for what looked like 500 feet and the guy walked out alive.

 

Yeah, it's surprising that the roof stayed on for as long as it did.

 

Only way to determine relative safety is to subject other cars to same scenario....obviously, imposs to accomplish....and still one of only 1000s of poss scenarios....but like fact our German friends who engineer cars like MBs have many yrs/1000s of high-speed, real-world collision scenarios to analyze as they develop/iterate safety engineering/systems of any car...

Am always amused when guys (?) fixate on "exclusivity" of cars.....rarity may be cute for a man/transgender-purse/pastel smartphone, but I prefer my cars to be high-vol cars that are products of extensive safety engineering and have advantage of ample real-world collision data to debug/refine/advance further.....the German AB is a naturally advantageous setting, as are the busy, fast, imperfect CA urban fwys where many AMGs are driven daily....

Safety is a fascinating risk/reward analysis w/many unknowns, esp in real-world scenarios....and many mfrs (and buyers) for marketing and pleasure reasons, respectively, want convertibles/SUVs/cupholders/sunroofs/PanoRoofs/infotainment nonsense, etc which are fairly moronic from any safety standpoint....

And no one really knows shape of decay curve of safety systems of cars....esp tires/wheels/brakes/airbag systems&sensors/stab ctrls, etc.....part of why I algorithmically trade-in cars every 6-12mos....

Would argue world's safest car today is S63 w/o PanoRoof and w/DistPlus....

But risk/reward is a judgment call.....many would puke over S63's nasty, plastic interior (the CL63 interior is barely tolerable)....and truly risk-averse would never do mtn twisties or 100+MPH driving (even legally on AB/tracks)....

Much of safety (from a customer standpoint) is really a common-sense judgment call.....based upon analyzing active/passive safety engineering of car.....and how smart is one's driving style....part of what I enjoy about driving on public rds is that it's an endless series of risk/reward judgments/bets, inclg choice of car/route, specific driving style, anticipatory bets based upon risk-profiling surrounding drivers' likely behavior and risk elements of specific stretches of fwys/twisties, etc......

And driving on tracks entails a different series of risk/reward bets.....but why I have zero appetite for those bets, as I have no interest in scheduling my driving in advance; driving amongst many reckless, lower-net-worth, litigious drivers (many tracks are hard to buy-out, to control fellow driver population); most tracks are in Podunk....w/no competent nearby healthcare if an accident occurs....besides, life's too short to be in Podunk anyway.....

 

Another interesting risk/reward dynamic for some of our AB/risk-seeking drivers is, if in collision at 100+MPH, some shrewd guys may actually prefer to be instantaneously incinerated in the collision, rather than survive in some vegetative/wheelchair-bound state....

Have noticed that a few of my more intelligent German/London (who have wkend houses in Munich area for their interesting cars) pals have opted for 599s/Scuds and quietly admit that part of why they are indifferent re: relatively weak safety of a F is that they only use F for wkend, high-risk drives on AB/in twisties....

Interesting....F's w/decent trade-in value (though weakening in the US/EU recession) if no collision and low miles....but, if serious collision, free cremation....car is likely leased anyway (at least in the financially clever SF/NYC mkt), so beneficiaries receive full insurance payoff for car lease and life....

 

"Free cremation" - I haven't seen that mentioned in any Ferrari advertising literature. Perhaps they're missing out on the key 'free funeral' demographic?

 

This video is fairly old. They've been showing this video along with others on tru tv (Serviving a memoment of impact) since the early 00. And on one of the shows they interviewed the driver and the car turned out to be a BMW 5 series.