Avoiding Death by Deathmobile

[Pandromidal]

My reasonably late game character, is working on a second death mobile after my first one was destroyed in an unfortunate accident involving half a dozen triffid queens. I’ve heard a number of stories on the forum, and would like to avoid dying in an auto accident. I’ve heard of accidents from:

1. Grabber zombie pulls you in-front of your own vehicle
   Are quarter panels sufficient to stop you from flying over the front of the vehicle? If not, what is?
   If I don’t put quarter panels on the front of the vehicle would I just get scooped up onto it, or will I still die a horrible death?
   Is there a safe speed below which I should survive getting run over?

2. Seat tile is destroyed
   Is there any downside to building the entire vehicle out of heavy frames? I can’t find a place in the fuel efficiency code where vehicle weight is a factor.
   Anything else I can do to prevent this?

3. Crashing into things.
   Will a seat belt protect me from damage in crashes? Is there a speed a max speed over which I risk death?

4. Fuel tank blows up.
   I have an all-electric vehicle, with no gas, or diesel tanks. Is my car safe from explosions? What if I have containers of gas or explosives in my vehicle?

5. Other
   Is there other sources of danger I should watch out for?

[LostHere]

3: As I understand it, many death mobile fanatics swear by five point harnesses, to reduce the chances of being flung bodily across half the map.

[Coolthulhu]

1. Quarterpanels are enough. Don’t expect to survive getting under the car, the collision formula is actually worse at low speed when you essentially get under the car rather than pushed away.

2. Weight affects offroading pretty heavily.
   You can avoid it by keeping seat tile away from collision points. Collision damage propagates from the point that hits and loses power over distance.
   A relatively exploity way would be to have the seat be the bottleneck in vehicle construction - if removing a tile would turn the vehicle into two separate halves, the tile won’t be removed, not even if nuked.

3. Seat belt gives immunity to being flung that way. You can get damaged even if not flung, but this damage should be well within sane range, unless you reach velocity measured in sanics.

4. Gas and diesel explodes, electric doesn’t. Diesel explodes very weakly, so if you don’t keep it under vital parts, you shouldn’t get hurt too much.

[Pandromidal]

1. Quarterpanels are enough. Don’t expect to survive getting under the car, the collision formula is actually worse at low speed when you essentially get under the car rather than pushed away.

But if I get pushed away wouldn’t I just get run over again? Is there a ram design that would scoup you up onto the vehicle or throw you to one side?

[Coolthulhu]

But if I get pushed away wouldn’t I just get run over again? Is there a ram design that would scoup you up onto the vehicle or throw you to one side?

Pushing usually flings you far enough that you can hide behind something.
If your vehicle is thin enough, that usually is enough to get away.

[Arek_PL]

if you want to be safe just do not place tanks in places what get commonly damaged (ram, sides), to protect from grabber zombies pulling you out of your car make 2 tile wide rear walls, add small ram in the front to decrease chance of damaging your windshield (or front camera) and if you have camera or turrets on sides you want to add aditional line on sides

this is small vehicle, it still fits on ordinary roads but its safe and uses all types of fuel (except hydrogen and plutonium) if you have pernament base something like this is enought

[martinuzz]

Related: How do these shock dampeners or whatever they are called work? Not sure if they’re vanilla or from the vehicle mod.
Do they transfer all collision damage to the tile lying behind it (from the impact’s point of view)?

[Arek_PL]

they are type of armor, as armor they are terrible but i have no idea if they have hidden use but frames and armor should survive damage (unless you just drive through concrete buildings, even heavy duty armor with military composite will not make it)

[Solusphere]

IIRC, Shock Absorbers mitigate a huge portion of collision damage imparted to them. They’re the best possible surface to ram other things with, unless you’re wanting to damage the thing you ram, in which case they’re the worst. They also aren’t especially strong against non-collision damage, like zombies or bullets.

[Arek_PL]

so they are like bumpers of those funny cars at happy vilages?