Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian Carlton
The stability of any of the high CG vehicles (vans, $hitboxes, etc) is very poor when such a vehicle is touched, even very lightly, laterally aft of the rear tires when it's moving quickly.
It takes very little lateral force to completely upset the line of travel and would require a very experienced driver to maintain control, with no assurance of success.
If you were of a criminal persuasion, you could easily terminate any $hitbox on the road by giving it a light tap laterally on the tail. It's not easy to do, however............you'd need to approach from the adjacent lane and swerve over.........
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I witnessed exactly such an event a few months back, not intentional but as you describe. Maybe 30 - 40 yards ahead I saw a minivan suddenly make sharp move laterally in its rear. I couldn't see what sort of bump made it happen but it was too sharp and sudden to have been anything else. The mini van started swerving, amazing no cars near to it collided, looked like some near misses. He veered hard into the concrete center barrier soon enough. I had gotten on my brakes right away and ended up being the vehicle closest to him when we stopped. His air bag had gone off, he pulled himself out - I got out and asked 'are you OK?'
He was all grumpy and pissed, didn't answer, but it was clear he was walking OK, he had slowed considerably before hitting the barrier so I took off. A truck had stopped ahead a ways, maybe that's the vehicle he clipped or was clipped by.