The Car Accident That Didn’t Feel Like One

What is it like to get hit by another car and walk away from the ordeal feeling almost as if it never happened?

Liu Qi Le had just picked up his wife Ye Sheng from work at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport and the couple were on their regular route home. It was 10pm, and like every other evening they were catching up on their day.

The weather was fair but as they neared the entrance to the Nankan expressway traveling at 95km/h, a sudden impact brought the conversation to a grinding halt and it felt like real life had suddenly stopped in its tracks.

Kept in line

“My mind just went blank,” recalls the 28-year-old army medic, who barely had time to register the impact, especially as the road was not very busy. “When I brought the car to a stop, I had to ask my wife what happened,” he says. Ye Sheng told him that another car had hit them from the back. They later realized the other vehicle had come up from behind, on their right, and sideswiped them.

In a sideswipe collision like the one the couple was involved in, the impact usually causes the car to drift out of the lane, increasing the risk of a second collision. Luckily for Qi Le, this didn’t happen. Footage from the dashcam of his 2019 Impreza showed that his car was rocked on impact and began to swerve, but seemingly righted itself and straightened out, thanks to the Impreza’s Subaru Global Platform, Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive and side impact door beams.

In this accident, the rigid SGP helped to keep the Impreza’s undercarriage intact and the suspension stable despite the sideswipe by the other vehicle, while the SAWD enabled the Impreza’s wheels to continue gripping the road and allowed Qi Le to maintain safe control of the car. “I didn’t have to readjust my steering at all,” he says, adding that he simply maintained a firm grip on the wheel the whole time. Though this was his first accident in his eight years of driving, Qi Le hopes it will be his last.

I’m not sure we might still be here if we had been in another car.

Built for impact

From inside the safety of the car, neither Qi Le nor his wife thought that the damage would be too serious. But when they emerged from the Impreza they realized they were badly mistaken: the entire right side of the car was severely dented, the right-side mirror had been sheared off and the passenger door window had been shattered.

The dents, however, were evidence that the car’s safety features were doing their job. According to a study published in The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care in sideswipe accidents, passengers sitting on the same side of the crash are more likely to be injured. But the Subaru’s high-strength steel body absorbed the force of the impact, while the side impact door beams and the rear door engagement pins maintained the integrity of the doors rather than let them cave in. Working in tandem, they created a protective shell so that Qi Le and his wife could exit the Impreza and walk away almost as if nothing had happened.

Despite being sideswiped, Qi Le’s car appeared to have suffered far less damage than the other driver’s SUV, where all the airbags had been deployed and a wheel had become completely dislodged. Even the tow truck drivers were surprised the couple were unhurt after hearing them describe what had happened. “They couldn’t believe that we didn’t suffer any physical injuries,” says Qi Le.

Tried and tested safety

Subaru’s safety features certainly proved their value that night. “I’m not sure we’d still be here if we had been in another car,” says Qi Le quietly.

The couple plans to grow their family in the next few years, and Qi Le says he has his eyes on the more spacious Forester or Outback. Regardless, he doesn’t see himself driving anything but a Subaru in the foreseeable future.

“I obviously wouldn’t have wanted to use our lives to test out the car’s safety design if given the choice,” he chuckles. “But I foresee that I will remain a Subaru customer for a long time.”