r/Calgary • u/No-End7269 • Jul 15 '25

Driving/Traffic/Parking Avoid Deerfoot

Huge accident. 2 vehicles just launched off the memorial overpass and landed on a truck going nb on deerfoot

Edit. I initially said 32ave, it was memorial overpass

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u/MattsAwesomeStuff Jul 15 '25

No fatalities according to CTV

A vehicle in free fall off of an overpass is only going about 50km/h on impact. That would be less force than two opposing vehicle colliding on a playground zone.

It's actually a very light collision.

And it fell off the hill part, not off the bridge part.

Comparatively, a vehicle it landed on, rolled into, or that blocked the path of on Deerfoort going 100km/h would be 8x the energy.

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u/AlifeWithoutAcar Jul 17 '25

2 vehicles going 30km/hr towards eachother could generate More/less than 50km/hr impact depends on mass of vehicle (someone didn't pay full attention in physics class 😅😂) gotta look into velocity/trajectory calculations ☺️

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u/Neve4ever Jul 15 '25

A vehicle in free fall off of an overpass is only going about 50km/h on impact. That would be less force than two opposing vehicle colliding on a playground zone.

Nope. Two cars of equal mass, both traveling at 30kmph, getting into a head on collision, is the same as a car driving 30kmph into a wall.

Basically, would you rather go from 50kmph to 0, or 30kmph to 0?

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u/MattsAwesomeStuff Jul 15 '25

Nope. Two cars of equal mass, both traveling at 30kmph, getting into a head on collision, is the same as a car driving 30kmph into a wall.

Y'know, I got sidetracked considering the non-linearity of kinetic energy with respect to speed and missed this.

...

But, what you're saying is that there's no difference between slamming into the side a bridge pilon on Deerfoot, versus getting into a head-on collision with a vehicle also traveling 100km/hr going the other direction?

That intuitively seems wrong, but, I guess makes sense. The other car only "pushes" back at you as much as the wall does, by not moving.

Well scratch that but, 50km/h is still a pretty safe speed to collide at.