Newbie Class A Questions
Hello all I was hoping you could add some insight to our research on Class A’s. DH and I have been doing a lot of research on Class C’s. Every time I post a question in the Class C forum, the...
Forum Discussion
Mommalu wrote:
You don't buy a motorhome for safety anymore than you do for mpg's. With that said most A's are greater than 16,000 pounds, one of the bigger vehicles on the road. Accidents will more likely be with a far smaller vehicle, 5000 pounds often far less. As long as you and your loved ones are belted in your quite safe unless you are in an accident with a same size or larger vehicle and if two 16000 pound vehicles meet head on an air bag won't matter, just the laws of physics.
It's definitely true that motorhomes are not generally very crashworthy vehicles, regardless of whether class A or C. If nothing else, there is far too much stuff around to become projectiles in a bad crash. Often the structure (of both class A's and C's) is not particularly strong and crashworthy, either. Saying that a class C is safer, while arguably true, is ignoring the general fact that neither one is particularly good in that regard.
The claim that an airbag is useless on a heavy vehicle is not quite right, though. If you're crashing into another vehicle, you will experience less acceleration (and hence less sudden forces on your body) if you're in the more massive vehicle; this is just a practical application of the law of conservation of momentum. If, on the other hand, you crash into an immovable object like a tree or an embankment, then an airbag and especially crush structures in the vehicle would help for exactly the same reason it would in a car: it limits the maximum acceleration or deceleration of the body to something that can be survivable. (Crashing into an equally massive vehicle head-on at identical speeds is the same, as far as acceleration and forces are concerned, as crashing into an immovable object.)
Note I included crush structures in there; without crush structures (and sufficient distance for them to work), there is no way to control the slowing of the body when the vehicle hits something. It's impossible to limit how rapidly your body decelerates if there's not some distance to use to ease the slowing.
Luckily, being safe on the road is at least as much a matter of the driver's care and attentiveness and proper caution in avoiding crashes, rather than solely based on the ability of the vehicle to survive a crash. Motorhomes may not be the safest vehicles by design, but they can be driven safely...and most usually are.
