Awesome Crashes

We can always count on Mark Rober to teach us cool things. For this experiment, he wanted to know if the camera-based emergency braking system on his Tesla was as effective as a Luminar LiDAR-based system. The ultimate test was to see if the cars would stop before driving into a Wile E. Coyote-style fake road. He also used LiDAR to map Space Mountain.

This video is from 2009, but it’s still a fascinating watch. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) smashed a 1959 Chevy Bel-Air into a new Chevy Malibu to see how much safety had improved over 50 years. It’s incredible how much better protected the occupants of the modern car are compared to cars built before NHTSA safety regulations.

MetaBallStudios is known for its infographic-style comparison videos. This time they took a slightly different approach, showing off the relative heights of different cliffs by driving a simulated car off of each one and watching how long it took to fall all the way to the bottom.

Gnuk Animations has an obsession with LEGO trains, and likes to see what it will take to stop one from rolling down the tracks. On their TikTok channel, you’ll find videos of a LEGO train taking on spaghetti, Q-tips, Pokémon cards, paper straws, tin foil, and more.

The vehicle physics simulator BeamNG.drive has given us countless hours of entertainment. In this crazy video from wecrashgames, they pitted various cars, trucks, and vans against a trio of massive baseball bats. Side impacts appear to be easier to escape. Play ball!

There are lots of things you could crash your vehicle into, but a giant medieval flail isn’t likely to be one of them. In this entertaining Beam.NG Drive simulation posted by TG22110, we see what might happen if you drove an old Ford Econoline van into a spiked wrecking ball at speeds up to 300 MPH. BeamNG Nation had some fun flailing about too.

Modern crash test dummies are shockingly expensive to buy. Engineer James Bruton didn’t have a spare million bucks lying around, so he decided to build his own. He made his dummy from wood, metal, 3D-printed plastic, and rubber. While it isn’t quite as refined as the industry-standard units, it’s fully outfitted with sensors like the real deal.

Crash.enabled uses the vehicle physics simulator BeamNG.drive to see how cars and trucks might behave in various collisions. In this brief clip, they test rear-ending a small hatchback into a semi-trailer at progressively less plausible speeds. Things get really bad over 60 mph, but we suppose it could be worse.

From Titanic to The Perfect Storm to Finding Nemo, Hollywood has been depicting shipwrecks for decades. Insider asked maritime archeologist and historian James Delgado to evaluate the realism of on-screen disasters and the wreckage left behind. While they’re not always accurate, a few of the films are surprisingly spot-on.

This insane iOS and Android game puts you in control of gigantic ocean vessels that you float down a ramp and send flying into structures with the goal of crash landing into buildings and cities. It kind of reminds us of the addictive Burnout crash modes.

If there’s one thing you can rely on action movies and TV shows for, it’s car crashes. While some filmmakers have moved on to using CGI for crash effects, practical vehicle stunt work is still the most convincing. Insider got together with J.E.M. FX to explain the tricks required to create controlled vehicular mayhem on screen.

YouTube channel Handmade features models of cars that were individually hand-built out of Plasticine clay. The artist behind the camera uses a plastic model as his form, then painstakingly traces and cuts out each piece of its body to create impressively accurate miniatures. And then he crash-tests them.

We’ve always enjoyed watching videos generated using the vehicle physics simulator BeamNG.Drive. This clip showcases various vehicles driving over a square-edged pit in the middle of the road. Place your bets now: which cars will make it over, and which will fall in? Need more car vs. pit action? You’ve got it.

The S has a thing for building matchstick-powered rocket engines. This time, their goal was to create two flame-shooting vehicles out of cardboard, then crash them head-on into each other to view the fiery wreckage. It took a few attempts to get them to launch at the same time, but the money shot was worth it.

YouTuber Renbricks put together this hypnotic 8-minute compilation of Hot Wheels cars crashing through a miniature rally course. We enjoyed seeing the tiny crowd of spectators as each car whizzed by and came to a crash landing in the dirt.

There’s a series of videos making the rounds that shows vehicles being launched off of a disproportionately tall bulge in the road, and they’re quite entertaining. The clips were made using the soft-body vehicle simulator BeamNG.drive, and these ones were posted by BeamNG Nation. That Cybertruck aced the landing.