Okay, gonna sit down and put my two cents in now that we have more pictures from
@Cog.
I'm no accident investigator nor insurance adjuster, but I'm a smart layperson, so here's my take:
The Suzuki hit the pickup directly in the left rear taillight, just like
@Officer_Charon's diagram shows. That much is not in dispute, given the pictures and the fact that the dent in the Suzuki's front that I called out earlier pretty much exactly matches the damage done and is the shape of the left edge of the pickup's bed where the left rear taillight is. So there's evidence for the
initial impact, but here's what I think happened next:
-The pickup's transmission is in [P]ark, or the emergency brake is on. Whatever it is, at least two of the pickup's wheels are going to resist turning, either because of brakes or because of the
parking pawl.
-The Suzuki strikes the pickup obliquely from behind, just like in the diagram. WHAM!
-Enough momentum is transferred from the moving Suzuki to the pickup to overcome the tire friction that is otherwise holding the pickup still, much like a
Newton's Cradle. As a result, the pickup jumps forward suddenly and violently. The pickup's direction tends to be straight forward, though, because the rear wheels aren't steerable and are pointed parallel with the street.
-There is now an empty space between the Suzuki and the pickup due to the pickup being shoved out of the way.
-This transfer of momentum has slowed the Suzuki significantly, but doesn't stop it completely (its wheels are still rolling), and so it continues its journey towards the curb, albeit much more slowly.
-The pickup loses enough momentum that the friction of its tires brings it to a stop a fraction of a second after being hit and just a very short ways from where it was originally parked.
-Since the pickup has stopped still again, the slower-rolling Suzuki impacts the rear of the pickup again (as shown in the second picture), this time with the leftmost corner of its hood (since it has rolled much closer to the curb by now), which would explain why the left headlight got peeled/folded outwards like in the picture. This also matches the second bit of Officer_Charon's diagram.
-This time, though, all the momentum is used up folding the headlight and crumpling the other side of the Suzuki, and all the vehicles are now stopped.
In order to find out how fast the Suzuki was going, you need to know three things: The weight of each vehicle, and the distance the pickup traveled from its starting position after being hit. After that, it's just tribological math, as shown in
a video linked in the video game thread, of all places. The vehicle weights (plus a little extra for any cargo or occupants) are things which can be looked up on the manufacturer's websites, but it's that distance that's all-important to measure, because without that, then you have to start doing materials science instead to try and figure out how fast you would need to go in order to put a dent THIS deep into a Suzuki grille, etc. The tribology method is probably easier.
--Patrick
