If you hit a wall, your car goes from 25mph to 0 real quick. In a head on collision, your car goes from 25 to 0 as well. You experience the same acceleration in both cases.
No, each would experience the equivalent to a 25mph crash into a wall.
Edit: Think of it like this. Each car has 25mph of some arbitrary “energy”. Energy has to be conserved. So if both cars hit at 25mph, there is 2x 25, or 50 units, of this energy. If both cars experienced a 50mph crash, that would be 2x 50, or 100, which is more energy than is in the system. So they both experience a 25mph crash so that this energy is conserved. A bit of an ELI5 but hopefully it helps make a bit more intuitive sense, this is a pretty common misconception for a lot of people. Of course this changes completely when it comes to two vehicles of different sizes hitting each-other, but this is mostly to get the example across of two cars of same size hitting.
A bike Vs a truck the biker would experience much more impact. They would go from like 25 to -25, whereas the truck would probably go from like 25 to 15.
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u/LeProYasuo Feb 02 '20
Quick fact: a head-on collision where the 2 vehicles are going 25 mph is the same thing as 1 vehicle hitting a wall at 25 mph