Prius head-on Accident

A truely saddening and unfortunate accident. Any driver's worst
nightmare.

Could happen to anyone, anywhere, in any vehicle. "Lessons learned"
would be applicable to all drivers, in any car.

The article has a picture slide show. Photo coverage seems more
than a little lopsided:
* Four clear shots of masssive damage to the Prius.
* Only two shots of the Cavalier, taken from the right rear quarter,
that don't show the full extent of its damage on the front, driver's
side.

So, it looks like the Prius got all smashed up, but the Cavalier was
hardly damaged. The implication is that the Prius is an unsafe vehicle,
which we know is not true.

I wonder if this grossly skewed depiction was intentional.

 

sorry, but its important to me to know the details. which car were the passengers in? which car was the baby in? which car was the survivor in?

**edit**

checking out the pics. the Pri suffered much more front end damage. guessing the only survivor would have been the passenger in the Pri. and that the other 3 were in the other car. but only a guess. it looks like rear passengers in a Pri, especially if properly secured with 3 point harness setup for a car seat would have survived as the passenger zone in the back looks intact.

**edit** as i always do, i prerused other articles on the paper and found this

http://www.turnto23.com/north_county/21457959/detail.html

apparently all the feedback concerning the dangers of this stretch of road may have an extensive base. granted, human impatience and stupidity is still the biggest factor, but the biggest reason why our lives have become safer over time is not advances in medicine or knowledge. its making life "idiot-proof" either thru technology or laws....

 

How do we know? The picture angles are not at all equivalent. I can see no way of judging from just this set of slides.

 

I think medical knowledge has had a huge impact, but I grant you that it is advances in car technology that are saving so many lives on the road. I understand one of the main reason why the UK has such a low fatality rate vs the rest of Europe (and a quick check on Google reveals better than even the US where there were 1.6 fatalities per 10,000 vehicles in 2007 vs the UK with 0.9) is because there is such stringent testing of older vehicles that it quickly becomes uneconomic to repair them, ensuring that there is a constant demand for newer, safer vehicles. Japan, which I understand uses punitive taxation to encourage car turnover, has a fatality rate of 0.8 per 10,000 vehicles.

http://www.monash.edu.au/muarc/reports/papers/fatals.html

 

that is our problem. every day i see cars that should not be on the road. our inspection system to continuously license older vehicles in many cases, simply does not exist. imagine my joy at the C4C program only to hear about its major limitations. i was hoping this would be the chance to take all unsafe, inefficient, older vehicles off the road.

fuzzy; i agree, the pics do not tell the whole story so i do not "know" anything, hence the first line of my post. obviously there were 5 people involved. 2 in one car, 3 in another. now, the real assumptions come in. 3 have spanish surnames, the other does not. look at the age ranges, its not a real stretch to imagine the scenario here.

so what would you think?? an 80 YO would be in enough hurry to try to pass a slow moving truck?? so have to think it was probably him and his wife out for a drive in the Pri. they did not avoid the collision probably due to his failing eyesight and slower reactions.

so his wife was in the back seat?? or probably the passenger. its easy to see why he did not survive as there is major penetration thru the windshield on his side. its doubtful that anyone in the rear seat on the drivers side would have survived either.

 

thanks for the info. waaay off on my assumptions. its sad this happened. the additional pics seem to show a wide flat shoulder with plenty of room to maneuver

 

I was in a very similar situation many years ago and I was in the Prius driver's position. I took the shoulder and was on it when the other car and the truck were side by side going the other way. Even though there was plenty of room it still seemed tight because the whole situation was out of the norm. In my case the other driver could have easily panicked and swerved either into the truck or into the shoulder where I was, causing a similar type of accident as this one being discussed. Guess what I'm saying is that it's possible the Prius driver tried to get to the shoulder, but everything still went very very bad.

Let's all be careful out there.
Jeff

 

What in the world does having your car inspected have to do with pulling out to improperly pass a truck?

 

There is another 2 lane highway in northern California known to be blood alley, Hwy 12. One time when I drove through there, I was surprised that the drivers on both direction including big rigs will drive partially on the shoulder to leave enough space in the center line for passing.

 

I have also had to make this choice on the long, boring roads of Arizona. This guy coming at me could see but chose to pass a vehicle even though I was clearly visible. Thankfully it was one of the wider roads but it still meant that the truck he was passing and my vehicle had to go to the edges of our sides in order to have him pass in the middle without hitting either of us.
It would seem like the Prius driver (and to an extent the driver of the Cav) did not have the time to respond. I would take my chances on the ditch before a head-on any day!

 

take a look at the pics...there is no real ditch. its a smooth transition to flat unobstructed fields.

 

I grew up in Fairfield and spent plenty of time on Hwy 12 through Rio Vista to Napa and it is indeed dangerous. Too many people wanting to pass but I think it has such a bad reputation that I rarely see people actually passing others except in passing lanes. Then again you always see flower arrangements on the side of the road.

 

what about "fog alley" on umm...81? not sure, the one that goes into Sacramento? i lived in San Jose, used to hear about accidents there about once a week, usually minor but almost always 20+ cars involved

 

Hi All,

Well, the photographer did try to make it look like the Prius came off worse. But look at the A-pilar of the Prius in the side shot with all the stuff sheared off the driver's side of the car. It has a straight line to it, and the passenger compartment looks intact. It looks like the Cavalier hit with about a 30 degree angle to the line of the Prius, coming in from the passenger side of the Prius. It was probably this sideways impact that resulted in the seriousness of the injuries.


Nothing is going to save you at 100 mph closing speed but avoiding the accident.

The Cavalier passenger side fender looks good, but of course that is not the side of the impact. The roof of the Cavalier is seperated from the car, and it appears it collapsed during the impact - see the big kink in the passenger side rear of the roof. The seperation might be the action of emergency personel, but the roof did collapse during the impact, unlike the Prius.