physics of car accidents

The Physics of Automobile Accidents
Two cars are traveling down a highway in opposite directions. Both drivers are tired from driving all day and cross over the yellow line and hit head on. Crash! The driver of car A has remained inside the car and has broken ribs due to hitting the steering wheel. The driver of car B however is on the hood of car A and is pronounced dead at the scene, cause of death, a severe case of disobeying the laws of physics. Although both cars were heading at the same velocity one driver ended up dead while another survived. This seems like a complicated and hard thing to explain, but using the knowledge of basic physics it is easy.
Sir Isaac Newton was the first man to explain what happens in a collision even before automobiles were invented. He proposed the idea that an object in motion will continue in motion with the same speed and direction unless acted upon by an outside, unbalanced force. His theory is better known as the Law of Inertia. The drive...