General Overview
Energy cannot be created or destroyed and all moving cars have kinetic energy, so the energy has to go somewhere in the event of a crash. Car safety features are designed to absorb the energy instead of the passenger, thus reducing the probability of injury. Some safety features change shape during a crash to absorb the energy, while others increase the amount of time taken for the car to come to a stop (reduces the force and deceleration the passenger).
All moving things have mass and velocity, and the heavier and faster an object or person is, the more kinetic energy it or they have. A moving car and the passenger have kinetic energy, therefore in the occasion of a crash, the driver and passenger will keep going until they collide with something (car safety features, the dashboard, seat in front, windscreen or steering wheel). Newton’s first law (An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force) supports this.
All moving things have mass and velocity, and the heavier and faster an object or person is, the more kinetic energy it or they have. A moving car and the passenger have kinetic energy, therefore in the occasion of a crash, the driver and passenger will keep going until they collide with something (car safety features, the dashboard, seat in front, windscreen or steering wheel). Newton’s first law (An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force) supports this.