Glad you hear you're ok. That could have been much worse. Was everyone as fortunate as you?

 

Woman was complaining of neck and back pain. Pretty sure she was serious about it because of her paniced tone. Officer was fine, I'm pretty sure. He stayed in his vehicle and held still like he was trained too. The guy who hit me (the kia) was a doctor, so he and I checked on everyone and directed traffic till the other police officers and ambulance showed up.

 

the state trooper was part of the "Accident Reconstruction Team"

She's screwed! :lol:


Glad you're okay.

 

It's good that you're alright, you were "lucky" to be at the front of the line. The trooper's going to have whiplash, though, he was just toughing it out at the time. There's no way to avoid it, your head is not supposed to move like it does during instant acceleration/deceleration. Years ago my then wife and I got rear-ended by a full sized sedan going 45ish, but on the brakes near the end and going about 35 when he hit us in our full sized station wagon... the impact went through 3 more cars (second to the last had just driven off the lot) and both of our necks were too stiff to move for a few days. The sudden start/stop will always pull muscles and may even pinch nerves... the cop will probably miss work for a week.

 

really glad you re okay- just hope you don t take a beating from insurance getting ur car fixed

 

Sounds like the cop was too close to the Kia and the Kia was too close to you. More than one was probably at fault in this one. Glad you're good, though.

 

Umm.........what?

 

She struck a struck a state trooper, the trooper struck a Kia behind me, and the Kia struck me.
Both the trooper and the woman went to the hospital, the trooper was most likely fine, but the woman was complaining of neck and back pain.

What?

"Strucking hell"...sounds nasty, in a Not skimpy mud bath wrestling scenario..type thing.

 

I tend to agree with Aaron and most of the time the Police would too. Anytime there's a rear end collision the tailing car is usually to blame. The CHP pushes that you should see asphalt between the farthest point you can see and the lowest point on the car ahead. That usually ends up being at least a car length. and if the car being hit had the brakes on there shouldn't have been enough force to push 3 cars. That's a little excessive. Either she wasn't going 40, some one didn't have the brake on, or the two people following you were too close to one another. Not saying you, but the cars behind you.

 

For some reason I'm wanting to recall somewhere that if you see you're about to be rear ended, you should let off the brakes so that the "impact" isn't as severe, and thus lessening the risk of whiplash, neck, and back injuries?

 

I'd say the opposite. The less your car moves the less your head gets thrown around. It's that sudden accelleration that does the damage when you are rear ended. That's why it's important to have you head rest set up to stop your head from flying badwards. The more braking you apply the better off you should be, then we are back to knowing if it's going to happen.

I had a napa parts truck come flying up behind me, the pucker factor was outrageous. He swerved at the last secound, thank God.

 

more often than not you're not ready for a rear ending. Do you sit at stop lights watching behind you in expectation of a rear ending? i know i dont. Maybe i missed that lesson in Drivers ed. I have a tendency in my SVT to put it in neutral and if the road is completely level then i can sit there with my foot of the brake. but the fact remains that in the split second that you get rear ended i don't think you have time to think about what you can do to reduce the effects of whiplash. I think what happens happens and most people would have their foot on the brake...to compound that if you have 3 cars with the brakes on and the first one gets hit you'd expect by the 3rd car the whiplash factor would be greatly reduced. but alas, i'm a draftman not a kineticist.

 

more often than not you're not ready for a rear ending. Do you sit at stop lights watching behind you in expectation of a rear ending

Actually if I'm the last car in the que with open road behind me, I do try to keep one eye on my mirror. I do stop with a reasonable distance in front of me, and if I see a car coming in my mirror that makes me a little uncomfortable, I ease off the brake and let me car roll forward slightly. I have no idea where I learned that or who taught me that, my dad was a Paramedic for 8 years and drove and ambulance for 13, so maybe it was something he taught me, I don't know.

 

Standard Driver's Ed instruction states that when the car is at rest, your foot should be on the brakes. You should be far enough behind the person in front of you that it's possible to easily see the tires touching the ground. That line of sight exercise puts roughly a car length between you and the car in front of you unless you're driving a Smart Car or a VW Bus. A person traveling at 40mph impacting a police cruiser shouldn't really have even caused the Kia in front to hit the AJAx mobile (unless the cop and Kia driver weren't practicing safe stopping distances between cars).

 

I'm assuming you drive a stick then. the majority of cars on the road are auto i do believe. And in every auto i've driven if you take your foot off the brake the car rolls forward. not to mention the bumper on the front of the cruiser is designed to take impact and lessen the effects of an impact when ramming other cars. You'd think that that bumper alone would have absorbed most of the effects of pushing the kia into you.

 

Cougar is a stick, Jeep is an automatic. I don't let completely off the brake if I'm nervous about someone behind me, but I ease off of it a little bit so I do roll forward a few inches or so.

 

"Oh, you must drive a gear lever" - somehow that doesn't roll off the tongue quite right.

 

Fine.

Howbout this.

Your car must have a standard transmission installed in it.

Better?

 

I'd take "stick" over "standard"... since most cars come standard with an automatic.

"Manual" is my lingo of choice. :lol:

 

 

^^^That's a common misconception with rear-end collisions - let off the brake, and your body will take more of the impact. Remember, the car is in motion during an impact - your body's motion is simply a reaction of the car's movement - the more force the car's structure can absorb, the less your body does. That's why with Mercedes Benz "Pre-Safe" system, during a rear-end impact, it holds the brakes since the impact will usually cause the driver's foot to lift from the brake pedal.

Do a little physics refresher, and you'll see why holding on the brakes is safest when rear-end collision is imminent.

 

No need for a physics refresher, you're right. The plane of reference is different than I was thinking.

 

that's it. I'm going to start setting the E-Brake when i'm at stop lights.

 

Impact,Newtons,Distance,Fault who cares! The fact that everyone survived is all that matters! Metal can be fixed/Replaced.....

 

Welcome to the 'Jet!