Crumple Zones
Technology and intelligent designs have made cars and other vehicles safer than they have ever been in the past. The seatbelt, tempered glass, airbags, and numerous other features all have contributed to the overall safety of vehicles. One safety feature that has had a huge effect and is frequently underappreciated is the crumple zone.
Crumple zones – also known as crush zones – are part of a vehicle that is designed to deform and crumple with the impact of a collision. The crumpling absorbs much of the energy of a collision’s impact, which prevents the energy of the impact from being transmitted to the occupants of the vehicle.
Car crashes are made up of a variety of kinetic forces all working at the same time. There is force in any crash. Crumple zones work actively in an accident to accomplish two important safety goals. These zones reduce the initial force of the crash and redistribute the force of the crash away from the vehicle’s occupants.
How Crumple Zones Work
The first way crumple zones help is through deceleration. This, as well as an overall decrease in the amount of force, creates a buffer zone for the people in the car as well as around the perimeter of the vehicle. There are enough items on a car that are designed to be rigid in order to protect the passengers. One of those items is the frame of the car. The engine is another item that is exceedingly rigid.
Redistributing the force of impact is the other goal. The force of any accident has to go somewhere and car manufacturers, rightly so, have decided that it should go away from the occupants of a vehicle. Everything that happens during an accident has some effect on decreasing the force of impact. By designing a large portion of a car to crumple and to bend, the force of impact is expended in bending the metal rather than in crushing the occupants.
Contact a Milwaukee Car Accident Attorney
If you have been injured in a car accident, contact the Milwaukee car accident attorneys of Habush Habush & Rottier at 1-800-242-2874.
