Crashes

Since crash testing of vehicles first started, the practice has saved countless lives, influencing the design and engineering of just about every aspect of modern cars, trucks, and SUVs. But cars designed for racing must handle much more extreme forces in order to protect their occupants, with reinforced roll cages, protective head restraints, and form-fitting racing seats with five- or six-point harnesses among their standard equipment.

You’d think that car companies had been crash testing vehicles since the dawn of cars. But the idea didn’t come along until the 1930s, when General Motors conducted the first known crash tests. Other automakers would gradually follow.

There are all sort of cool hypercars on the market today from Lamborghini, Ferrari, Porsche, and others. Perhaps the most high-end of them all is the Koenigsegg family of cars. Every automaker around the world who wants to sell cars in the US and abroad has to crash test rides.

There is a very hard and fast rule on every racetrack that I have ever visited. That rule is never ever (Ever, ever, ever, ever) get out of your car on the racetrack unless it is on fire.

If you live in Cleveland, Ohio, you have a chance to see some of the next Fast & Furious movie being filmed. Recently, Fast 8 tossed a car out of the Halle parking garage onto other cars on the road during second-unit filming.

The Humvee might be set to be replaced when the fighting over the contract finally ends, but the venerable HMMWV is still widely in use by the US military. Recently, the 173rd Airborne brigade was conducting exercises that required them to airdrop vehicles and other materials.

I’m a planner, and by that I mean that I have a plan in mind should I ever be stuck in a car with the garage door down when a random evil clown stands between me and the door into the house.

There’s a reason that rally and race cars have roll cages. It’s really not difficult to roll over a car when cornering at high speeds, and without one, the occupants could be in a world of hurt.

Airbags can help save your life, no matter what the crazy dude who also believes in reptilians and that Michael Jackson is still alive tells you. They use high-tech wizardry to detect car crashes and very quickly surround you with pillows so that you can smash your head in to something soft, rather than something hard.

Some rivalries are old and immutable: Purdue and Indiana University, cartoon cats and cartoon dogs, everybody and Donald Trump, every cultural group in the British isles and every other cultural group in the British isles. Others are newer, and often quite surprising.

Sometimes people do stupid things, especially when they’re not paying attention behind the wheel. Take this driver who apparently pinned the throttle on their Oldsmobile and blasted full speed into and out of a drive-through automated car wash.

You’ll want to brace for impact for this one, as we’re pretty sure you’ll jump back from your screen when you see just how fast the drivers were going in this rally car when its brakes completely stopped functioning and they ran off the road.

(NSFW: Language) The Brakim Racing Rally Team goes off the road on a “right 5 into right 4, drops outside” corner during the Rally West Virginia. The car goes end-over-end a few times, then finally stops.