[quote="robin"]It's hard to tell from the pictures, but actually it doesn't look like chassis damage to me - usually you get at least one wheel pointing in a funny direction, or just hanging off or missing.
However, if you have damaged the windscreen surround then you are probably still looking at a write off, as it comes as part of the chassis IIRC.
Whatever ... the insurance company will soon tell you and given the state of the car I would be happy not to have it repaired - let them sell it for salvage.
Meanwhile I dug this photo out for another topic the other day - shows just how tough the wee beasties are
Robin
May look tough but it is deceleration injury that kills, not how together the car remains.
I have been on many a Medic 1 (specialist ambulance from Edinburgh Royal with 2 tauma doctors on board) trip some field where some poor chap's car has landed. Often these folks end up on the post mortem table.
Car and cabin can look fine, especially the bigger more expensive sorts, but excessive flexion/rotational injuries to spinal cord axons passing through cervical spine causes shearing and bleeding and can result in hemi or quadraplegia.
Also, deceleration of the brain in the cranium can also cause coup-contra-coup injury where haemorrhage happens both on the front of the brain (direction of travel) and the back (backward movement of brain against cranium after stopping). Otherwise, simply shear stress can cause diffuse axonal injury and brain stem death. And thats before we even get into bleeds and things you can see on CT scans.
These injuries are often not survivable and depend on speed rather than preservation of the car structure. Bye the way, I assume there was no passenger in that picture, or their head would be embedded on the edge of the windscreen surround.
NR
