New tech braces you for the dirty little secret of car accidents

A fair number of the car crashes on our roads are not a car crash, but a multiple impact car crash, an MIC. Your current car is probably too dumb to do much about that. Your next car however, that could be a different story. [MUSIC] The multiple impact crash, or MIC as they say in the crash analysis business, is a hidden threat. We always think a crash is one thing [NOISE] You hit it and then you figure out what got broken. But the multiple impact crush comes in many ways. Maybe you get hit from the back. And then you hit something in front of you. Maybe from the side and have another side impact. Maybe you hit a guard rail bounce off back Roll over and flip on top of your roof. A 2018 study of crash data by Pro Biomechanics, and Ford safety guru, Henry Scott, found that two impact crashes account for 20% of all collisions, but 30% of all severe injury collisions. Three impact crashes, they add up to just five percent of all, but 13% of the ones that result in severe injury. All of these are these multiple chains of events that are all catastrophic and happen so rapidly they're hard to tease apart. Especially, for something like this. This is, for example, an airbag computer. It's not the only piece of safety gear in your car, but it's one that really needs to understand the nature and sequence of impacts really well to protect you But the way they're designed today, they often get confused by these MIC. [SOUND] Hyundai appears to be the first car maker to write new logic for those boxes to calculate and recalibrate its readings in the middle of a multi impact crash. They'll use the forces and the angles of all the unfolding impacts. As well as what data is available about the changing position of occupants during the events. Ford and continental, the supplier, not the brand of car, have developed new technology that tries to prevent the bounce. That's the trajectory of your car after it's initially hit that often launches it into the next impact Their tech gets on the brakes after a detected crash, hopefully keeping you from causing the next one. It debuted standard on the 19 Edge. [MUSIC] Volvo's XC90 was the first car I drove that actually detects what it's about to get rear ended and clamps down the brakes. And of course doesn't prevent the initial coalition but it might prevent the second one that it sends you into. [SOUND] And as of 2019 model year Mercedes are starting to roll out something named three safe coalition rear that does a very similar job. All of these multiple impact crash technologies are going after the multiple impact that is really hard and important to guard against. That's the one of your brain bouncing back and forth in your skull in any serious crash. [MUSIC]