Some days ago, a RAV4 crashed and got in fiire. Isn't there a safety system to prevent that to happen?

Question

It was a huge crash...

Answer 1

Not specifically. The manufacturers make the cars to withstand quite a bit, however, some things happen the even they cant anticipate. You said it was a bad wreck? If a fuel line gets broken and leaks onto exhaust, then a fire can occur. But this specific incident would be very specific and not exactly planned for in a engineering perspective. Other times, poor engineering can actually be the cause. Look up the NYC taxi cabs and police cars that were on the ford crown victoria platform. Something in the engineering had these cars starting on fire if they were rear-ended.

Answer 2

American cars have safety features to shut off the fuel in the event of a crash or a roll over. These features need to be considered when the NHTSA does their crash tests. All Japanese SUVs would fail, as it did in your example.

Answer 3

ZEBJ25 is right. The Crown Victoria's fuel tank sat directly underneath the rear bumber, making nearly all rear-end accidents a serious problem. Most of them were refitted with additional protection as part of a recall, to prevent the tank from cracking or shattering in these types of accidents. Same thing with the Fiero. The gas tank was underneath the driver. Not sure about you, but sitting on 15 gallons of explosive fuel is not my cup of tea. You wil find, that in extreme cases like you mentioned, anything is possible.

Answer 4

Not sure on the specifics of the crash but on on most cars now a days if the air bags are deployed it will shut of the fuel pump

Answer 5

The real reason cars aren't protected like that is due to cost to install such things and what would happen to the car if it actually went off in a not so major accident....