Motor vehicles / cars crashing into buildings

Bloody hell, there was a similar one a little while back.

It was this one I was thinking of--someone died in that case.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/kensington-crash-car-ploughs-through-railings-and-into-basement-in-horror-crash-a3561871.html

I don't get this one at all--it's a one-way up Lancaster Terrace, how could he have crashed into that through 'not making a turn'? If he was going eastbound, he must have made too much of a turn. Is that what is meant by 'not making the turn'?

You can enter it from the other side, no?

Not Lancaster Terrace. He must have gone over the central reservation if he was travelling westbound.

Edit: Wait, I've only just spotted how bonkers the new layout is there. Now I get it. Yes, there is a westbound right turn lane. I completely failed to see that earlier. Every time I go through there I get annoyed because the scheme is so utterly rubbish.

It's fucking slow. Cop every light and it adds 5min to my commute. Jokes.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/m­ercedes-**driver**-ploughs-through-railings-­and-wedges-car-in-basement-a3720186.html­

They acknowledged the fact it was driven.

Hallelujah.gif

Not slow enough for this guy clearly.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/15/driver-arrested-mercedes-wedged-upright-london-street

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2017/12/15/suv-crashes-into-des-moines-elementary-school/956578001/

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This happened near me yesterday.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/swinton-a6-crash-police-chase-14070854

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'66 plate Range Rover last night:

Crawl mode on this urban tank doesn't fuckin' work! I want my money back!

Range Rovers. Shut your eyes and drive because whatever happens me and my bratty family will be OK.
Hope the driver was injured.

Cool. Let us know how that works out for you.

A tram derailment:

Seen here:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/gallery/2018/jan/04/yoga-camp-and-frozen-falls-thursdays-top-photos#img-14

This is pretty special:

https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/952630973077819393

Odd reporting, not a word about the driver.

Edit: Aha, the image won't embed.

Full report here, with a short video:

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Speeding-Car-Goes-Airborne-Plows-Into-Second-Floor-of-Building-469239663.html

This one has details of the driver's lucky escape:

The driver managed to get out, but was left dangling off the bottom of the vehicle until police could catch him, said Daniel Sanchez, who witnessed the crash.

Still typical that it was left out of the Tweet.

As posted by @sacredhart in the news thread a couple of days ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/j­an/10/russian-man-believed-to-be-drunk-s­mashes-stolen-tank-into-supermarket

By way of contrast, here's a case in which someone has suffered life-threatening injuries after crashing into a lamppost:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/leytonstone-crash-man-fighting-for-life-after-crashing-car-into-lamppost-in-east-london-a3745806.html

Part of the reason why I started this thread was because I was interested in whether that evidently successful design objective of protecting people when crashing head-on into a wall, i.e. as per the ubiquitous and iconic crash test dummy images, was not insufficient given other types of crashes. The lamppost (or tree) problem that vehicles get wrapped around them seems completely unsolved (although perhaps not unaddressed, I just haven't been able to find anything conclusive on it).

I guess your issue will be partly that those instances where drivers crash their cars into lamposts and everyone walks away fine won't be newsworthy.

It's quite possible that I might gain the wrong impression, but I'm not conducting anything scientific here, so I'm not imagining I'm reaching any reliable conclusions. :)

Also, crashes into lampposts or trees are reportedly extremely rare--there are research papers on it. What I've seen so far is that most crashes into a narrow object at fairly high speed causes the vehicle to wrap itself around the obstacle and the usual protection against head-on crashes doesn't work. At lower speeds (no idea what the limit is), the car just comes to a halt, and when steering correction is still possible, this results in glancing blows.

Again, that may all be bollocks.

A lot of (newer) lampposts are designed to break away from their bases when struck - that's why it's normally trees not lampposts that do the damage. There's some interesting info here if you want. (Of course you do - you're Oliver!)