http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=1298917&page=1

worksafe but nasty

someones nicked the front off the stereo !!!!

holy fuckaroo i cant beleive that tree is still standing up.

i believe they worked out on passionford.com that it's a fake - did the rounds about a year ago iirc aswell....

Are the wheels for sale?

Chris

no clarrat,no broken glass,ground not ploughed up,looks like an aiu training excersize

A crash like that would sure have a fire in the front or rear end, wouldnt it?

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A crash like that would sure have a fire in the front or rear end, wouldnt it?

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Rescued attachment acc2.jpg

Im sure its a fake, even still. For starters no-one from audi has confirmed it despite its frequency on various boards. even if they dont know that its doing the rounds (like! nice legal battle to get it blocked!) then no-one will say where it is. just 'portugal' and 'outside a village where someone lived'. someone find a press article and Ill be less sceptical

must be fake... can you imagine how large the ruts would be in't mud to get into that position? No way!

I work in a VAG bodyshop, I've seen a lot of smashed up A3's. I really does not look right. As brooky says, there is no seam to split where the sill has parted, the air bag has not deployed, both upper A pillars are missing - these are one of the strongest parts of the car

Fake maybe, but a bloke I know runs a breakers yard in shropshire and had a car in which Ford hurriedly removed for "safekeeping"!!!!!!!!!!

Anybody with a mk5,6,or 7 escort better stop reading now!!

Apparently, the fellow who hired the brand new (3000miles on the clock and in the brekers yard!!) hertz rental car which ended up in my mate's breakers didn't like wearing a seatbelt, and on this most bizarre occasion is saved him!! He apparently drove around the barrier at a half barrier level crossing after the train had gone by, thinking the crossing had jammed, but there was actually another train coming! It clipped the back corner of the car, behind the rear door of the 4 door escort. The impact pulled apart every spot weld between the rear floorpan and the inner sill, and also between the roof and the screen toprail and bottoms of the a-pillars. The rear floorpan, boot area, all 4 doors, A,B and C pillars all ended up quite neatly parked a little way down the line, and the engine bay and front floorpan with front seats was left neatly parked the far side of the crossing. The bits that surprised me were that the entire wiring loom had been pulled in two at the A-pillar, the wires having stretched out a good metre before snapping!! The front wings had also pulled in half quite neatly down a line in front of the A-pillars, but again had stretched before snapping, so the edge near the break was a good 6" to the rear of the A-pillar! What was worrying was that many of the spot welds had not pulled patches out of the adjoining panel, but had simply come apart at the welds, revealing rust in the centres of the spot-welds!!! eeeek!

It all ended ok though as the bloke driving was ok, though badly shaken. Only thing was, the seatbelt shoulder and bottom mountings were in the rear part of the car, which was some distance from the part with the driver in, which also contained the perfectly intact seatbelt sockets!!!!! No seatbelt on then methinks, fortunate to have forgotten that day then sir!!! Did strike me as amusing when I learnt that the driver was OK and I saw the Hertz key still in the ignition connected to an engine bay and 2 seats with no roof or doors!!!

As I said, the car had been at the yard for a few days when Ford Motor Company turned up with a lorry and paperwork to authorise immediate removal of the car for "safekeeping" hmmmmmmm...

looking at in mre detail, i'd say fake too, not photoshopped (which i always look for, the pictures are real) but i'd expect more staged for training or somesuch

Guys,
I reckon it's genuine myself.

Mark, the upper A-pillars are shown on the sixth picture down. They are still attached to the roof and are bent across the car in the direction of travel.

Did you see the comment about the white sheets being there to cover body parts? They do appear to be at the point of impact where, if the car split open, the driver would fall out. Notice how the passenger's door is neatly wrapped around the tree? Why would someone do this for an exercise?

Also, notice how the state of the car is very much like the description of the remains from the train level crossing incident with the entire rear of the car in one place and the engine bay and seats in another?

I'm no expert but all the signs or force seem to me to be consistent.

Cheers,
Craig.

the cut on the sill is way to straight to have been ripped in an accident, and would the panels really wrap round a tree and stay there, or would they bounce off....


Escort owners need no worry - being hit by a train is hardly a decent test of vehicle structural integrity!

atb

steve

With the escort, I agree but the actual damage caused by the impact with the train was only a small bit on the rear corner, it was unbeievable, as was the speed of Ford in fetching the car before the motoring press saw it (there had been enquiries!!)

Steve,
I'd say the panels would wrap around the tree if the car hit the tree in the manner which is apparent. I have seen footage of rally cars breaking in half like this when hitting trees sideways before although in most cases the two halves don't completely separate.

In this case it appears that the car went in almost perfectly sideways and hit the tree slap bang in the middle of the passenger's door. Obviously the door deformed around the tree as did the sill and the roof but the door is only relatively loosely attached to the rest of the car by the lock striker and hinge so when the driver's side started to split apart due to the weight of the front and rear of the car bending it around the tree, the two sections of the car separated leaving the door still wrapped around the tree.

Also, the point about the lower sill cut on the driver's side being too straight isn't in my opinion enough of a reason to dismiss this accident as a staged accident. Given the apparent force of the collision it would be impossible to predict how the various structural components would react and I don't think that it is unreasonable to accept that it would split in a straight line like this. In fact, if the welds are good then I would expect it to fail in this way. If you test a piece of steel in a tensile strength rig then doesn't it tend to just break straight across the section?

Cheers,
Craig.

you could well be right. I dont know why anyone would do a staged accident with that level of damage or detail - why wrap the door around the tree for instance, and the bark kinda overlaps the metal like it was gouged rather than put there. And why wreck the tree bark too?

Its no suprise the air bag didnt go off. In cars I have had, its stated that the bag only explodes on a frontal impact - side swipes wont trigger it, as dont rear impacts.

Anyone spot the other disaster - someones got a rover 45 in the picture

atb

steve

I am not totally convinced this is a fake the level of detail in this crash would take to long to reproduce.
I think it's a very high speed side impact into the first tree close to the road last photo on the website.
car splits rear continues on to hit the tree this is where it gets hard to predict I think the front half loses the engine and the body ends up going the same way facing back.

As for no ground scars the rear could have cleared that distance before coming to rest (note bark missing in two places on tree where tailgate and bumper hit the tree)
No ground scars on the front part I have no idea.

Not sure about the steering wheel that is a head impact, but the cars impact is sideways dragging the drivers seat to the right thought it might have spun but the head impact the wheel must have been pointing forward.

Both bodies went through the passenger side and were ejected where the car split.


I am not a betting man but I do think this is real.

Seen quite a few crashes from the police accident investigation team at uni and even after the police gave a full rundown of the accident it was still hard to belive the final outcome even when you know the answer.
I think these photos have a thousand outcomes without the truth.

Mark

Its a fake I dont know why somebody has gone to all that effort to stage it but they have.

If this car had been ripped apart like that why are ther no gouges in the soft mud caused as the bits slid to a halt ?
For an impact severe enough to rip the car apart the debris is over a relatively small space.
Where is all the broken glass?
Wht is there no muck of any description on the car - your not trying to tell me only the wheels touched the floor during the crash ?
Only one tree has any signifcant bark missing, and thats the one with the door bent round - dont they have side impact protection in those ?
Where are all the uniforms ? Why only one policeman ( holding the tape measure ) for such a horrific accident.
Only one wheel is damaged - and that is very light.
In the last picture how did the front and the back of the car get on either side of those two trees with no damage to the trees or the ground between them.
And thats before we look too deeply at the cuts in the metal and the lack of casualty related evidence ( or lack of ).
How come the engine is on its sump ? Everybody knows they prefer to topple over onto the filter, and again no ground disturbance, as if it was placd down.
Fake, fake, fake.

[Edited on 31/3/04 by Brooky]

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Originally posted by Brooky
Its a fake I dont know why somebody has gone to all that effort to stage it but they have.

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If this car had been ripped apart like that why are ther no gouges in the soft mud caused as the bits slid to a halt ?

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For an impact severe enough to rip the car apart the debris is over a relatively small space.

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Where is all the broken glass?
Wht is there no muck of any description on the car - your not trying to tell me only the wheels touched the floor during the crash ?

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Only one tree has any signifcant bark missing, and thats the one with the door bent round - dont they have side impact protection in those ?

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Where are all the uniforms ? Why only one policeman ( holding the tape measure ) for such a horrific accident.

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Only one wheel is damaged - and that is very light.

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In the last picture how did the front and the back of the car get on either side of those two trees with no damage to the trees or the ground between them.

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How come the engine is on its sump ? Everybody knows they prefer to topple over onto the filter, and again no ground disturbance, as if it was placd down.

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I agree..i think its real.

for a staged exercise would they throw a CD on the ground to lend authenticity?

I think not..

Mark

ps, is ^^^^that the longest post ever? picture excluded.

[Edited on 31/3/04 by 9904169]

I dont think its real. But that might be dont want to think anyone is stupid enough to be doing 200ks on public roads!
If the accident happened a while back, why would sheets still be out? Bodys would be photographed, possibly chalked and removed asap. They too are evidence, but only when cold!

As a firefighter who has attended a fair few accidents ranging from minor bumps to full on multi car and lorry motorway pile ups, there is absolutely nothing there that says real to me. Your not seriously trying to tell me that an impact big enough to "rip" the engine out of the car gently put it down on the sump without disturbing the twigs around it ? It didnt slide at all ? it just fell out of the sky onto the sump ?
Nahhh not for one second.
All crashes leave some kind of scar on the road way, even the rim off a flat/burst tyre will make a channel in the tarmac.

[Edited on 31/3/04 by Brooky]

Dont know if the A3 is a fake or not (jury sill out on that I think). But this one isnt.

http://www.users.qwest.net/~williamsbryanmic/videos/honda/typer3.asf
Work safe, but takes a little whiel to download on slower connections.