Terrible Merc-McLaren SLR Crash In Qatar!

[gurpz]

One of the most terrible crash pictures I have even seen, this happened at a very very high speed given that the SLR is literally torn into pieces. Driven by a 22 year old this Mercedes-Benz McLaren SLR reportedly lost control during the morning of july 15th. The details are still sketchy and we dont know if the driver survived or not or if there was someone on the passenger seat too but have a look at the picture to follow….. absolutely shocking to say the least!

Just goes on to say no matter how safe cars become, what matter is the one driving it. Drive Safe Guys!

Jump for more pictures of the crash.

Source: CarDomain

 

[BlackC55]

I used to work in Qatar.

The driving is fast and awful. Most people with the expensive cars drive them flat out everywhere.

I have seem horrendus crashes right in front of me and managed to avoid all of them. I was the only person in the company to never have a crash. Luck rather than judgement.

My old boss crashed his Carrera GT and smashed it to bits. Next day he bought two more. Thats the mentality.

 

[W210 Fan]

as we have seen before, there is no real relation between depth of wallet and driving skill

 

[Mudster]

Considering the rest of the destruction, the passenger cell looks remarkably intact.

It looks like these cars really are constructed like Formula 1 cars, designed to shed parts in an attempt to absorb forces and keep the safety cell intact.

 

[BTB 500]

Yup I was thinking the same. If it didn't hit anything solid the occupant(s) might have survived OK.

 

[Dieselman]

Ditto..!

 

[wemorgan]

For a front EuroNCAP (64kph) test this car was deigned such that you could unbolt the front of the car and bolt on the new parts with the whole occupant cell being undamaged.

 

[Alfie]

I think sadly that given the force that has ripped that car to bits, there would have been huge forces aplied to the passenger cell throwing the occupants heads all over the place. If either didnt suffer a broken cortex then its a miracle. It only takes about a 40mph crash to snap a cortex

 

[wemorgan]

Given that it's rare to wear seatbelts in the Middle East I suspect you're correct.

 

[Alfie]

Given that it's rare to wear seatbelts in the Middle East I suspect you're correct.

Even a seatbelt wont hold your neck and head intact in a crash like that.

 

[BTB 500]

Remember the 5th Gear test where they ran a Smart into a concrete block at 70 mph? A huge deal was made of the fact that the passenger cell was still intact, but I remember thinking that the deceleration would almost certainly have killed the occupants anyway. A rigid structure that just stops dead (!) isn't really what you want.

 

[W210 Fan]

If I remember from my trip to Woking the front of the SLR is designed to crumple at different speeds, what compresses and absorbs energy at 60kph will compress and go solid and not absorb energy at 150kph for example and we want compressability to absorb the energy to stop it being passed onto us, the humans, so the front structure has different strength weak points (bear with me) which are designed to shear and deform and different speeds, had the same thing with something I am designing here, I can make something that can let the human survive a 50mph accident but at 100/150/200mph all that stuff becomes useless and I need different levels of crash absorbing in the front structure, you need differing levels of strength structure to survive different accidents,

but bill you are right, the car may have survived the accident but the human wont, my brother is a ski instructor, he had to go and pick up a guys head as he hit a Y shaped tree, the body stopped, the head didnt, the momentum was too great for the neck, which is the same problem you will have hitting a wall at high speed in just about any road car, then things like HANS devices start to make a great deal of sense, hitting solid non moveable objects at really high speeds things like spleens and bladders come off their mountings, the body kinda turns into a bag organs and it all gets a bit ugly

 

[wemorgan]

It's hard to speculate, but from the pictures it looks as if the car has rolled over many times. These roll-overs produce reletively low declerations, whilst a front 35mph crash into a rigid wall will produce 40-60g. It's these decelerations that often prove fatal.

 

[Donza]

Has anyone seen the video of the Lambo that goes flying over a speed bump in Dubai?

Its heart-wrenching stuff! He still keeps on accelerating...

Poor Car!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg79_mM2CNY&feature=related

 

[tim.100]

I used to work in Qatar.

The driving is fast and awful. Most people with the expensive cars drive them flat out everywhere.

...

My old boss crashed his Carrera GT and smashed it to bits. Next day he bought two more. Thats the mentality.

And the used car advertisments in Qatar say 'expat owned' if a foreign national owned the car. This is important if you're buying...

 

[The Dent Guy]

These pics of the remnants of the SLR would suggest to me it was blown apart - not just crashed!

 

[Mr E]

Sadly, it would appear from the MB investigation into the crash that the car was traveling in excess of 190mph. Apparently on his own, no passengers, no other vehicles involved.

Driver was killed instantly - 22, tragic.

 

[Donza]

Sadly, it would appear from the MB investigation into the crash that the car was traveling in excess of 190mph. Apparently on his own, no passengers, no other vehicles involved.

Driver was killed instantly - 22, tragic.

If the road is like anything in the pictures. Death was pretty much certain.

No sane person would drive at 190mph+ unless the road was perfect, and i mean perfect.