There is 1 less 2011 Honda Fit on the road now. Some girl decided to try out physics on my car...needless to say physics won as usual. Fortunately she was in another small car (Pontiac Vibe) so the overall impact didn't have as much mass behind it as it could have.

She rear-ended us with my car stopped and her doing about 60mph not paying attention at all, guess she was texting. Ride in an ambulance and some pain killers later and here we are. Looking at the car last night it is totaled, I hope to take some photos when I go to get the last of my stuff from it so others can see what a 60mph crash looks like.

 

I'm glad it happened while you were driving the Fit and not the Kawasaki. Time to lawyer up for physical damages.

 

Ouch! glad you're ok man. Time to buy another one, any accident you can live tell about is a good one.

 

Sorry to hear about that. Hope everyone recovers fully.

 

yikes! Hope everything is covered. I hate unattentive drivers!

 

dear lord out hope you guys r ok

please post pics i wanna see the turn out if u dnt mind

 

Wow, survived!!! Great to know your head restraints and seat assembly worked.
I was looking at times of Fit acceleration this week 15 or 16 seconds to get to 60 seemed slow, but impossible to get out of her way even if you saw her coming. 60 to 0 in less than a second, must have been a good match on bumpers for you tell about it. I have installed a trailer hitch for bike rack use, now I will keep the ball in for added protection from the rear when I'm not using the rack.

 

damn sorry to hear.

 

15 to 16 seconds to 60?

In for photos, glad you guys are semi-ok and hopefully no permanent personal damage to back or neck. Non-attentive drivers are rampant on the way to Silicon Valley (everyone's on phones) and i've had to dodge a few incidents like the one you were in...

 

For the record, the seat, head restraint, and seat belt all failed. Yes, FAILED.

The passenger seat my wife was sitting in (she is not a large woman at all) failed completely. Before getting hit she was sitting up in her seat with the seat belt on and the headrest in a normal, comfortable position.

After being hit the seat was reclined almost completely, head rest somehow completely came out of the seat and was sitting in the back, and the seat belt had come undone.

Front air bags did not deploy. I've read this could be by design but my understanding a force this great should have set them off. Overall this is the least of my worries compared to the other failures.

I'm currently working on uploading the photos at this time.

 

Looking at the photos you might not believe it was hit at 60mph but it was. You can even see the license plate 'scratch' from the car which rear ended us. My wife is on bed rest until further orders from the doctor.

I have mixed feelings on the overall situation. Part of me feels it handled the accident well (60mph hit is insane by anyone's standards other than race cars) but the failure of the safety equipment (mentioned in previous post) really bothers me. Seat, belt, and head rest failures should not have occurred.

As for the car...you can see it is tweaked in the middle. The bottom of the car right behind the front seats is actually bowed down towards the ground and you can see how the roof line is tweaked. I purchased MANY accessories for the car from the factory (most of which can be see in the photos) and I'm not sure if I will get reimbursed for these extras or not. It is really hard to see but the dash is actually tweaked as well.

We almost had her paid off too!

 

Yeah, front airbags would have no reason to deploy, but the seat and belt fiasco is definitely concerning.

Held up like a champ considering.

 

Wow, that sucks. The seat and seat-belt things do worry me though.

And yes, the airbags are designed to go off as needed, otherwise there may be poorly timed and unneeded deployment and such. So the front airbags not going off means the system was working as designed.

I am impressed with the overall integrity of the passenger cage though. It is not nearly as deformed as I was expecting. Like you said, 60MPH is crazy fast for a collision of that type.

 

I don't know if the seats are designed to recline in a rear-end accident like that, but I imagine that your wife's injuries would have been worse if the seat hadn't given way and absorbed some force the way it did. Keeping physics in mind, the force of the impact would have been transferred straight to her body/skull/brain through a seat that didn't collapse. And I've seen many seats recline from accidents, so I kinda feel like it might be a design thing.

You should ask Honda. About those seat belts too. Maybe it had a purpose going out the way it did. Or maybe it failed.

 

Sorry to hear...!
...my hate towards stupid people grows exponentially with age and due cause...

 

Something I can't figure out.
I washed my 2013 for first time today and the roof pop popped under my hand as I washed it, cause it was actually moving with little force, yet, your car has no visible damage in the roof part, except a gentle divot in the last pic, right beside a dent in the corner piece.

I can only guess that the crumple zones did a great job.