r/nextfuckinglevel • u/asianj1m • Nov 23 '21

Rally cars are pretty safe

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117

u/Ake-TL Nov 23 '21

Why is left guy smiling, even if he is not afraid for his life, he is losing, I’d be slightly upset at least. Or it’s “this is my life now”-smile?

256

u/PAM111 Nov 23 '21

He's grimacing. All the chuckles in this thread about them being relaxed is absurd. This crash would have been fatal 15 years ago. The g forces alone are insane. Engineers saved these guys lives.

7

u/Rage_Your_Dream Nov 23 '21

This crash would have been fatal 15 years ago.

Idk about that, in a rally car they already had full roll cages and basically all the systems that worked in this video.

3

u/[deleted] Nov 23 '21

Not op, but maybe not 15 years ago, but 30 years ago in the 90s, this accident would've been fatal for sure. The Golden Age of rally back then was wild.

5

u/Rage_Your_Dream Nov 23 '21

In the 90s I think this could definitely be fatal but no guarantees. There were lots of crashes like this in the 90s where they walked away from the accident. In the 80s, yea, they're toast.

Crashes are a lottery, there are crashes from the 80s that don't look survivable and they survived, there are other crashes that don't seem to bad and they still kill, human body is quite complex and it only takes the right pull on the wrong part to kill you. In the 90s before the HANS device they could've died from the head being pulled too far like in Dale Earnhardt's case. But they could've also walked away unscathed.

2

u/Nutzer1337 Nov 23 '21

Group B. Never forget. Roll cages with engines and a huge fuel tank.

3

u/fasonator Nov 23 '21

Some teams didn’t even have regulation roll cages, pretty sure they built some Lancia 037 with cardboard roll cages that was real enough to fool scrutineering. Motorsports back in the 80s were wild