assuming you’re a nascar driving who has car safety training going 180km/h in a car, with a helmet , buckled in, your brakes aren’t working and you’re going to crash into a concrete wall in 5s. would your best chance of survival be staying put or jumping out of the car and rolling.

You aren’t jumping out of a car in 5 seconds.

just assuming i am able to jump out , which would be the better option. friend is saying jumping out is safer

I'd recommend turning.

no, like im gonna hit it 100% head on

Based on all the safety features in a modern race car, stay in it. Unless you have a moto GP style suit jumping out is not going to go well.

I know this isn’t NASCAR but an F1 driver had a big off today and had a 50g impact and walked away with no issues.

Well that sounds like a poor choice

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcBY0b8Syk8/?stkn=a3lobmFobWFrd3Ro

watch the first few s of the vid, im basing my question of that.

thank u

Then both you and the car are going to hit it 100%, wether you travel together as one object, or separate. You both already have the same (immense) momentum.

You can add a little Δv with your muscles, which might nudge you slightly away from the car within those 5s, but you would still travel towards that wall with 180km/h, and impact in 5s.

So you can jump to get away from the car, but you cannot jump to get away from the wall. Which is kind of sad, since the wall is the bad part.

thank u mate

The thing that hurts you is rapid deceleration. If you stay in the car, the front of it is the crumple zone to make that deceleration more gradual, and you have an airbag helping with that as well. this spreads out the deceleration you experience. If you were outside of the car and hit the wall going that speed you would experience all of that deceleration in a much shorter time period making it much more damaging. Though honestly at that speed your odds are not great.

The only case I can think of where being outside would be better is if you had lots of time before the crash. Like if your breaks failed and your steering locked up going down a hill half a mile from the wall, if you jump out and you miraculously survive the roll you might slow down enough to make the impact easier.

if you roll out, do you still hit the wall? what's important is time it takes to slow down. usually modern cars have huge space in the front, to increase this time. if you hit the wall with your bare body, then oh boy. there is a benefit of jumping only when car is accelerating. even then, your stopping time matters. if the car has constant velocity then, 5s time only becomes relevant to your 'survival' jump.