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Rear-end collisions

A Rear-end collision (often called simply rear-end) is a traffic accident where a vehicle (usually an automobile or a truck) impacts the vehicle in front of it, so called because it thus hits its rear.

Typical scenarios for rear-ends are i) a sudden deceleration by the first car (for example, to avoid someone crossing the street), ii) the following car that does not have the time to brake and impacts the first and iii) at a road junction the following car accelerates more rapidly than the leading.

In rear-ends, mechanical damage is equally shared by the two vehicles if they have identical plasticity and mass. Injuries to the occupants are usually much worse for the impacted vehicle, because occupants of the following vehicle often anticipate the imminent impact and take automatic measures.

As a rule of thumb, impacting into another car is equivalent to impacting into a rigid surface (like a wall) at half of the speed. This means that rear-ending a still car while going at 30 mph is equivalent, in terms of forces, to impacting a wall at 15 mph. The same is true for the impacted vehicle.

A typical medical consequence of rear-ends, even in case of collisions at moderate speed, is whiplash.

For purposes of insurance and policing, the driver of the car that rear-ends the other car is almost always considered to be at fault.

Rear-end collisions
Rollovers
Head-on collisions
Pile-ups
Railroad crossing accidents