If a car hit a wall at 100mph would there be more or less damage if two cars hit head on both going at 100mph? Would

Question: If a car hit a wall at 100mph would there be more or less damage if two cars hit head on both going at 100mph? Would the forces of both cars combined to make more damage? But will the forces be shared equally and therefor the car that hits the wall recieves more damage?
- Keywords:
  100mph,
  damage,
  force,
  head,
  wall
Asked by jewlz to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 29 Jun 2012.
- Tim Stephens answered on 29 Jun 2012:
  
  If the cars are each travelling towards one another at 100mph, that will cause more damage to each of them than if one hits a wall at 100mph. I apologise that I need to use an equation here…
  
  A moving object is said to have kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is calculated with the equation (mass x velocity^2)/2. What this means is that something travelling at 200mph has 4 times the energy than something travelling at 100mph. Because the combined speed of the two cars is 200mph, there’s a lot more energy in the collision and the forces will be much larger causing more damage.
- Tom Lister answered on 30 Jun 2012:
  
  Very well explained Tim. The two cars hitting other will crumple however, whereas the wall is very hard – this will make the difference between hitting a wall and another car less, but I imagine a head on collision with another car would still be worse.
- Philippa Bird answered on 2 Jul 2012:
  
  I always think about this stuff when I’m driving, a bit morbid but the physics behind road traffic collisions is fascinating.

Question: If a car hit a wall at 100mph would there be more or less damage if two cars hit head on both going at 100mph? Would the forces of both cars combined to make more damage? But will the forces be shared equally and therefor the car that hits the wall recieves more damage?

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