Totaled the Z today

jginnane

Hi Sundown --

Today was the first I'd seen in this forum. Glad you survived and are doing well! Try to avoid those painkillers, except when listening to Rush Limbaugh. ;p

I read through all the comments and news articles, and there isn't much about the 20-year old deceased couple. I'd be curious whether they had seat belts on, and whether that hindered their escape from the pickup.

The Chevy S-10 sold from 1982-2002, and was rebadged as an Isuzu Hombre 1996-2000. The stock gas tank holds 18 gallons. NHTSA crash-tested a 1996 Hombre; in a front impact it was "marginal" for the driver and "very poor" for the right-seat occupant. They did not do a side-impact test. The Isuzu was powered by a straight-four w/ 120HP or V6 with approx. 50% more. All models were fuel-injected.

Unlike some GM models, there was never a recall for location or function of the gas tank. (That's really why I was looking.)

So: a low-end, compact pickup, 10-15 years old, doing extreme road maneuvers right before the collision. Also: a youthful driver. That doesn't necessarily mean drugs or alcohol, but it does mean (1) relative inexperience behind the wheel, and (2) the truck was bought used (think about it -- did he buy when he was 9 years old?), and therefore (3) an increased likelihood of the vehicle not being in top operating condition.

(4) The handling, i.e., over/understeer, varies drastically with the amount of weight in the load bed. Severe overloading, for example, would likely have been an unusual experience for such a young driver. And once the violent driving maneuvers started, the driver would have been more concerned with flipping (high center of gravity) than where he wound up with respect to traffic.

Even though driver error will be the final listed cause of this fatal crash, it's worth considering whether a marginally designed, maintained, and operated vehicle should have been on the road in the first place. This was a young couple that maybe didn't have to die, if "the system" had been designed better. (And by that I mean, "the system" worked out fairly in your Z.)