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Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins
Sure glad your buddy is relatively unhurt, Denis. Close calls like this really drive home just how thin of a thread we are all hanging from... just one brief moment of indiscretion, be it our own or someone else' can change our lives. Or end them. All the best to him for a speedy recovery and no lasting complications; healing is never fun.
Aren't these "headlight to headlight" collisions one of the newer focuses of the NTSB? Seems I saw a program on how they had concentrated for so long on dead-nuts square, full across the front head-ons, and had neglected this kind of "barely overlapping" collision, which are far more common. It looks like the BMW did quite well, considering the likely closing speed. Like you point out, it almost certainly saved his life.
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Originally Posted by dan79brooklyn
Doesn't the E46 also use Takata airbags?
Looks like all the safety equipment and crumple zones did their job this time. Lucky.
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I don't know much about the NTSB but I've thought about this type of collision quite a bit, they do seem common. On the one hand, it has a better chance of spinning the car when they connect and deflecting some energy but they can also result in a super-focused punch that has to go through a lot less car to get to the driver or front seat passenger. This one had a lot of straight punching power and the BMW really did an amazing job of soaking up the energy. He sometimes drives an old Mitsubishi mini-truck w no airbags, (for Home Depot or dump runs), he'd almost certainly be dead if he was in that, IMO.
And Dan, I think it does use the recalled Takata airbags. That was actually one of my first thoughts when I heard about it. Luckily, it performed as designed @15 years old.
