Images of totaled Proton Prevé go viral
Images of a wrecked Proton Prevé that suffered a horrific accident along the East Coast Highway has gone viral on social media over the last few days, sparking furious debate amongst automotive enthusiasts and casual commentators alike. We are not publishing the said images with this article for copyright reasons, but they can be easily found if you’re connected to Facebook.
To put it in words, the damaged vehicle suffered severe bodily damage on its left side, its roof caved in, and front end completely destroyed with the engine flung out a considerable distance from the vehicle (there are no pictures of the vehicle and engine together to illustrate their actual distance). There was no other vehicle involved in the accident; the car had slammed into a road divider.
Yet, in the midst of that carnage are two things to cheer about – both doors on the right of the vehicle appear to be operable without hindrance and, this is most important, according to captions accompanying majority of the pictures that came our way, the driver survived and walked out of the vehicle. There were no passengers. That there were no casualties in what was obviously a very serious crash is something to be greatly thankful for indeed.
This being an incident involving a Proton vehicle, it naturally attracts a great deal of attention from the public, and as you would expect, there is no shortage of criticism. Some commenters expressed their shock at the engine’s detachment from the vehicle, alleging substandard quality on Proton’s part. Others came to the national car maker’s defense, noting that the driver’s survival of this horrific crash as testament of the Prevé’s strong body shell that earned it a five-star rating from the Australasian NCAP.
From various shares of the pictures, the following are a selection of comments which we picked up:
– Sham Resakse: Enjin terbang and the driver still can makan keropok by the side of the road…. thumbs up proton
– Wong Zhi Zhien: If proton really can produce good cars then y still re-badging the cars? This means u can’t improve! For how many years given? 28 years ald! U see Hyundai n Kia, they really made a lot of improvement, proton??? Like baby being pampered n wasting Malaysian money! Can’t produce a good car just close down la!!
– Wang Jun Lem (in reply to the above): Wong Zhi Zhien As far as I know, the Preve is designed in Malaysia. (I’m guessing the next comment would be “PROTON SHOULD DESIGN SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE S**T”. but I digress.)
Furthermore, did you test drive the car at all, or was it an automatic conclusion that the Preve has not improved a bit? I don’t blame you for having made that conclusion, but for someone to ask someone else to “close down” for a bad car can only be justified if said person has actually had experience with the car. I test drove the Preve personally and found the performance to have exceeded my expectations, despite having issues with things such as engine noise and soundproofing (both of which improved greatly from the older Protons, and which I heard was gradually fixed in later production rounds). I’d like to hear your experience with the car, perhaps to see if the slamming of the car is justified.
– ChipsYap PS: Detaching engines is not a new approach as it helps to dissipate impact energy that would otherwise continue into the passenger compartment. Daihatsu used this idea because its cars are compact so the crumple zone is small and to reduce the impact forces reaching the cabin, many frontal elements were designed to ‘explode’ outwards, carrying the energy with them. That is why when people saw Peroduas in an accident, the radiator was often on the road and this led to a negative image about the durability of the car when actually, it was intended to happen that way in a collision.
– Kenny Yeoh: Kinda show how low our level of education standard is.. cant understand basic logic. I dislike proton for a fact that they dont built proper nice cars.. but im impressed on the safety aspect of this incident.
The Prevé is not a car without its faults, but in this instance it can be said that Proton’s crash structure did its job in protecting the driver from harm, though looking at the caved-in roof, one may wonder about the fate of passengers should there be any in the car during the crash. Some sources allege that the car was traveling as fast as 160kph during the accident, and if that’s true, it certainly reinforces Proton’s claims on body shell’s rigidity and crash-worthiness.
It is worth remembering that NCAP tests a vehicle’s crash worthiness at a constant speed of 64kph and even if we disregard claims that the vehicle was speeding, it was still likely to have been driven at about 110-120kph, which is double the tested speed and carrying four times the kinetic energy upon impact. If the vehicle was really being driven at 160kph, it would have been carrying more than six times the kinetic energy than it did at 64kph.
In the aftermath of an accident, what’s ultimately most important is we ask whether anybody was hurt or killed as a result of the impact or any post-incident trauma. In this instance, the car did its job in protecting its driver, who must surely have many lucky stars to thank for even surviving, let alone emerging unhurt. You can replace a damaged car with a new one, but you can’t replace the life of a person.
Picture: Official ANCAP release.
