Will wearing extra clothing layers protect from..

For a desperate last-ditch measure, our hero finds a fuel tanker truck and decides to ram it into a store down the street. Accelerating, he jams the pedal and leaps out the door to see the spectacular fireworks.

Now I know this has been seen zillions of times in ze Hollywood makings, but this takes place more down-to-earth Real Life, and so you don't expect to hit the road with barely a few scratches. I wonder if wearing extra layers of coats would cushion you from the blow (enough), or if not, a better way to do this last measure?

edited 6th Nov '11 9:04:18 PM by QQQQQ

From the sorts of injuries you can expect from hitting a road at speed—abrasion burns, basically, and possible head trauma—it will actually help quite a bit. Abrade away the clothes instead of your skin. Gloves would be particularly helpful, since the hands tend to take the brunt of that kind of damage.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

Leather is another good thing to protect from abrasions, though it obviously is less effective against the blunt trauma of hitting the road. Nevertheless, there's a reason it's popular with bikers.

edited 6th Nov '11 9:13:34 PM by KillerClowns

Gracias!

You do have to find a way to protect his head, although I agree- If he were wearing biker type "armor (on legs too!) he'd be alright, if a bit bruised and shaky.

Doodles

You have two problems when diving out the side of a truck (or falling off a motorcycle) and hitting the road: blunt trauma from the initial impact followed quickly by abrasion as you roll and/or slide along the road.

Leather is worn as it is durable and it acts as a good abrasion layer - it seems to grip enough to slow you gently when sliding down the road but is not so grippy that the leather tries to come to an abrupt halt with you inside it.

I've heard horror stories of rubber boots being ripped off the feet or causing the rider's feet to come to an abrupt halt while the rest of the rider's still free to move (and flip end over end) which is why leather boots (or a synthetic equivalent) are recommended over rubber.

Modern Cordura motorcycle gear is designed to mimic leather's performance in this respect.

A motorcycle helmet has a hard, smooth outer layer to slide down the road easier and does not bring the head to an abrupt halt relative to the rest of the body. It's also designed to stop nasty objects getting to the skull, but it's mainly to stop the head from being abraded away or being left a quarter-mile up the road...

So much for abrasion, now to blunt trauma.

The styrofoam lining inside a helmet is just as critical as, if not more so than, the hard outer shell - and it's the reason a motorcycle helmet only has a five-year lifespan before requiring replacement. After around 5 years the styrofoam has degraded to the point that it cannot do its job.

The function of the foam is simple and critical: When you impact with the ground - even just a sideways topple whilst stopped at the lights - the foam compresses and slows your rather heavy head gently, despite the fact that the outside of the helmet has come to a rather abrupt stop. That compression of the styrofoam lining allows your head - and the brain inside - to decelerate slowly and minimises the amount the brain sloshes around in its cerebral fluid, hopefully preventing the brain from slamming against the inside of the skull.

Without that foam, the skull would come to an abrupt halt, the brain would continue in accordance with the law of inertia and come to its own abrupt stop a split second later, causing haemorrhaging, swelling, cellular/neural damage and other nasties.

Which brings us to the closed-cell foam rubber found in critical areas of most motorcycle gear - designed to lessen the impact damage to the bony, and some of the squishy, bits of your body.

Then there's the armour that combines closed-cell foam rubber and a harder shell of plastic.

These things do their job - lessen the impact trauma, cut down the abrasion damage and protect vital areas.

But you can still expect to be a bit stiff and sore for a few days and maybe walking with a limp due to the knock your knee took (which, thanks to the armour, is merely tender rather than shattered).

A motorcycle helmet and some decent armour would do it provided the guy also knew how to jump clear in such a way that his body would roll or slide. Jumping feet first or head first would be courting disaster as having either extremity stop suddenly while the rest is in motion would cause the person to tumble end over end.

Omit the closed-cell foam rubber and helmet and he's going to suffer serious damage from the initial impact, even if the clothing reduces the abrasions as he rolls/slides down the road. I can't think of any garments/fabrics that would replace closed-cell foam rubber or Sorbothane as an effective impact absorber.

If your hero has time to put on motorcycle gear (or if your character is a biker and arrived at the fateful scene on a motorcycle then grabs the truck) and you've already established that he has the skills to fall properly (Judo/Aikido training, years of experience riding motorcycles off-road), you could get away with it.

I'd still have him limp away rubbing an elbow and feeling rather stiff later.

And bitching like mad that he's got to replace all his riding gear that got wrecked.

Edit: I forgot to mention - there may still be some small degree of abrasion on the skin, caused by the person's own clothing as the outer layer grips the road and the body shifts inside the clothes (which is why leather or purpose made Cordura riding gear is best, it minimises this). It's more akin to a "carpet burn" than the damage caused by the rough surface of the road, however. Still, expect shallow dermal damage.

Gloves - an absolute must. The hands always take a pounding. Proper motorcycle gloves with padding and extra layers of leather in all the right places (knuckles, heel of the palm). Normal leather gloves could wear through - its not uncommon for the reinforcing layer to be worn through and the lower layer abraded. With only one layer, the abrasion is on the hand itself - and it abrades a lot more than leather.

And bleeds a lot more, too.

edited 7th Nov '11 11:46:03 PM by Wolf1066

Let's imagine our hero - he wears about several layers of sweaters so he looks like a bloated penguin. He doesn't have the neat biker armour, so he also tries wrapping socks around his knees and elbows. (From thrift store.)

What might be the likelihood of him making it out— quite scathed, with a limp? (But not to the point where he has to drag himself across the ground.)

It depends one where he is landing. If it is grass, dirt or something similar the injuries would be more manageable, whereas if one lands on pavement it is more likely that the character will die.

Also if one were to roll while falling, then the hero will be less injured then if he were to belly flop on the pavement.

Plus the hero could make use his arms as a brace for his head to try and minimize the amount of head trauma.

Regardless of what happens your hero will be in a lot of pain,*

but I think you already know that.

If you really want to find out statistics of being able to escape from a speeding car or how to get out with the least injury possible, then you'd probably have to do research. I kind of doubt that anyone here would be knowledgable about these kind of things without doing some research on their own.*

edited 8th Nov '11 10:49:32 AM by EldritchBlueRose

Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.

I actually know an ICU trauma nurse (I love having a big family), and decided to grab her opinion on the topic. Cut a long story short: the armoring QQQQQ described, plus thinking about how you hit the ground as described by the clearly knowledgeable Wolf 1066, plus a bit of luck (but not an unrealistic amount) would have the desired effect of walking away, in pain but functional.

Just one aspect of head trauma that is sometimes overlooked: even with a helmet, assuming there are enough Gs in the crash, the brain can be thrown around inside the skull, causing a lot of damage or even death (this can happen to all organs, but the brain is the most obvious one). So even if the character is meant to escape relatively unscathed it might be a good idea to give him a really bad headache afterwards.

Okies! And would bloodshot eyes◊ also be possible?

edited 8th Nov '11 3:13:39 PM by QQQQQ

We won't go into exactly how many times I've fallen off motorcycles in various levels of clothing , but I can attest that the more protection, the better - and thumping a knee on the tarmac in the morning makes it rather difficult to lift your leg over the bike's seat later in the day...

@Sidewinder, the G-forces and head trauma are precisely the reason why helmets have the styrofoam lining, acting like a parachute for your head and allowing it (and the brain inside) to decelerate slower than a direct impact would allow.

But that's not to say you can't be seriously damaged when you bash your helmeted noggin on the ground.

That said, in all the times I've spilled at various speeds, I've never once experienced head injury - mostly because I've hit the ground and slid along on my side or (once) front, taking most of the brunt on my limbs and torso, and my head hasn't ever hit anything with force.

The only time I haven't gotten up and ridden away (albeit sometimes with a rather twisted bike and, on one occasion, a broken wrist) was when the bike was so badly trashed it was completely unrideable.

If the hero landed on his side and was free to slide/roll without impacting anything else, he could lessen the chance of bashing his head hard enough to cause damage. If he landed feet first he would immediately cartwheel and most likely wind up driving his head into the ground on at least one revolution.

I've found I tend to instinctively protect my head with my arms, meaning an elbow takes a thump when I hit the road and my head is resting on my upper arm as I slide along, having not hit the road at all - and that's when I suddenly find myself falling off without warning. It's amazing how fast you'll move when you have to.

I think that my arm muscle served the same "cushioning" purpose as my helmet lining was supposed to do.

I'm sure that if I had time to plan on hitting the road, I'd make sure I deliberately shielded my head as I went (I'll take a broken elbow over head trauma any day) - I'd expect that the hero of the story would, too.

Done right and with decent luck, you're looking at abrasions - even of the carpet burn variety - tenderness/aching/pain at the impact points - especially knees, hips and elbows (there's a reason those areas are reinforced in motorcycle armour) - sore muscles or an overall "body ache" and a bit of difficulty moving but otherwise pretty much OK.

Oh, and a strong desire to never EVER do that again.