Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Fifth Gear" channel.

  1. Here in Finland, the law says that if you cannot stop the car on the visible part of the road, you're breaking the law. It doesn't matter what the speed limit is, it doesn't matter how much vegetation has grown next to the road, it doesn't matter if it's fog and the road is filled with black ice, you as the driver are responsible for selecting suitable speed. Finland also has pretty strict driving test before you get the driver's license. And still, we have 80 km/h speed limit for the country side roads.
    7
  2. I agree. You can see that the rear wheels of the van already stopped and then started to go forwards again.
    5
  3. The fact that the car rolled demonstrates that the crash was luckily not a direct hit so energy could be dissipated to rolling and sliding, too. It increases the changes of survival a lot!
    2
  4.  @smuckerst8355  It would be possible to make strong safety devices but the humans wouldn't still survice the g forces, so there's no really any point doing the airbags any stronger.
    2
  5.  @ChrisPatrick-q6k  Finland had traffic 196 related deaths in 2022 or about 3.5 deaths per 100k population. If you compare this to somewhere like US, they had 42795 deaths in traffic accidents which makes about 12.8 deaths per 100k population.
    2
  6.  @ChrisPatrick-q6k  I totally agree that drunk driving (DUI) is a big problem here in Finland but if I've understood correctly, not many of the fatalities were caused by it. Lesser accidents, for sure.
    2
  7. I was surprised that they hadn't removed the car battery before the crash. The battery acid is nasty stuff.
    1
  8. Smart is basically a rally car rollcage with nicer looks and a small engine. If you had proper rally rated seats, seatbealts, helmet and the hans device you could survice quite bad hits in that.
    1
  9. I agree. This is more like 50 mph head on collision with an another vehicle close to similar weight.
    1
  10. So, you're saying that the slower the cars go, the more dangerous it will get? With drivers like that, maybe you have to have GPS tracking and forced driving breaks?
    1
  11.  @JJSmith1100  The Montana paradox is interesting indeed! Thanks for sharing info about it. I'd guess that when you have speed limit, many drivers will assume that's safe speed to go no matter the weather or traffic. If you have no speed limits at all, every driver must start to think with his or her own brain.
    1
  12.  @niko5008  Yep, because the length of the bonnet doesn't change, and it sets maximum distance for the whole deceleration period. If this deceleration exceeds about 60g, it doesn't matter if you had airbags, crash helmet, HANS device and indestructable rollcage. Your brain smashing against the front of the internal surface of your skull above 60g is going to cause brain damage and kill you. You might look intact from the outside thanks to proper safety gear but the brain would be crushed and internal organs would be destroyed by the g-forces alone.
    1
  13. It depends how low the visibility is. If you do 50 mph on an area where bushes grow to the lane and you go through a sharp corner, you might not be able to see the tractor in time. 50 mph requires about 22 meters for the reaction time alone (average reaction time for normal drivers is around 1 second, we are not talking about race drivers here). If your visibility to the corner is less than that, you cannot even touch the brake pedal before the crash.
    1
  14.  @ChrisPatrick-q6k  The weather here in Finland is a bit more demanding compared to UK, too.
    1
  15.  @G80M3C  No, but you have to run slow enough to be able to stop the car if there's a reason to do so when you can see something surprising. Surely you will not drive the car into locations you cannot see at all, right? The law just says that you cannot run fast and then crash because you couldn't stop rapidly enough.
    1