So they’d free fall for ~3.4 seconds and hit water at around 75mph. That part could be survivable depending on angle of impact and safety features of the car. Assuming they survive impact, getting out in the dark with cold murky water coming in car and surviving the hypothermia as well and odds are slim to none.
Vehicles are designed for impacts from both sides, the back and the front, and maybe to roll around a few times… But not for what these people experienced.
Think it’s probably more appropriate to say recover instead of rescue by this point. Unfortunately the Atlantic is pretty cold this time of year.
And they plunged almost 190 ft (Wikipedia info) into said water.
So they’d free fall for ~3.4 seconds and hit water at around 75mph. That part could be survivable depending on angle of impact and safety features of the car. Assuming they survive impact, getting out in the dark with cold murky water coming in car and surviving the hypothermia as well and odds are slim to none.
and they would have to be lucky enough to not have the bridge structure fall on top of them.
Unfortunately it wasn’t freefall. If you watch the video its over 5 seconds from when the bridge collapses till they’re in the water.
I replayed the video a zillion times to focus on each car going down. It’s horrifying
Vehicles are designed for impacts from both sides, the back and the front, and maybe to roll around a few times… But not for what these people experienced.
The remaining victims were part of a construction crew filling potholes.
https://apnews.com/live/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-latest-2024