2 men killed in car-truck crash in Shizuoka

@Bungle - Alcohol.

Suicide.

Cars of recent time is made weak to reduce weight of cars. Also, before the bodies and frames were separate but today they are in one resulting in the increases of casualties.

Schopenhauer,

Actually, cars are much safer than before. Much. A car made to standards in 2000 will slice right through a car made to standards in 1950. Casualties have been going down, not up, when it comes to car safety — driver safety is a different issue.

All this applies to cars made for Swedish/US standards, of course. Not Japanese. Those kei trucks are rolling coffins when it comes to an accident.

Sounds like he wanted to commit suicide. I feel sorry for the truckdriver.

A car made to standards in 2000 will slice right through a car made to standards in 1950.

Im not so sure. A 1956 Buick vs a keicar? I have a feeling the keicar will get totalled. Keicars are cheap but not safe at all.

Sounds like a suicide to me. If not, unless he was dead drunk, which is also possible, he would have realized he was going the wrong way when the FIRST cars started swerving out of the way to avoid him -- you know, in the first few KILOMETERS.

Borscht is right.

Modern cars designed with safety cells, crumple zones, anti-intrusion bars etc are far safer than older cars. Statistics prove this.

Kei trucks are not designed with safety concerns paramount. In fact many kei-cars would not pass the stringent safety tests of most modern countries and can not be sold there.

when i heard the news at first, i thought it was another elderly driver going the wrong way. but a 25 y.o. guy? if it's suicide like some people are speculating, then i can never understand why some people want to take an innocent person with them when they die. just do it so no one else is injured.

Of course it could have been a rental car driven by someone from a country which drives on the right, who knows?

This is the sad part of life (and death). Another’s fault can take you too!!

A car made to standards in 2000 will slice right through a car made to standards in 1950.

So True,

Cars to day are made of thin Aluminum and Plastic not very safe at all. A car made in 1955 would have sliced right through a modern car and kept on rolling.

How strong a car's frame is and whether it can "slice through" another car is not relevant to safety - actually the inverse is true. Modern cars are designed to crumple and take as much of the force of the impact as possible to reduce the impact to the driver.

Cars to day are made of thin Aluminum and Plastic not very safe at all. A car made in 1955 would have sliced right through a modern car and kept on rolling. and thats just it people have the impression that a big solid car like a 4WD or older steel rail vehicle is safer than newer sedan, statistic show otherwise. Newer vehicles are designed to crumple on impact reducing the force on the driver and through the vehicle. 4WD , cars with steel chassis rails dont do this as well. If you look at crash test data you'll find the best performing vehicles are modern midsized family sedans

http://www.iihs.org/iihs/ratings/TSP-List

a head-on collision between a 1959 and 2009 horseless carriage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U&feature=share

The truck was not a "kei jidosha", it was a "Chugata" truck. The car looks like a Toyota Ractis. Unfortunately for the truck driver, it seems to have plowed straight into and under the truck cab on the driver's side.

https://article.auone.jp/detail/1/2/2/9_2_r_20171214_1513247641744275

Modern cars are built to higher standards of crash protection with "crumple zone" bodies and air bags. See this video comparing crash tests of cars from 2017 and 1997:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7o2MB6DuKk

People here should be blaming the driver driving the WRONG WAY on a highway instead of the safety of a car frame.

May well have got confused entering the highway with the large number of occasionally contradictory direction signs, or he was possibly relying too much on the car navi and not looking out of the window.

RIP to the two men. Anyone notice that the tow truck has wording in English???

Suicide, good lord.

The guy was totally drunk or on drugs.

Drugs (alcohol etc) or suicide. For those claiming that a '50s car has any chance against a modern (non K) car, no have no idea what you're talking about. Modern cars are both heavier (major plus) and much, much better build materials and design wise than cars from even 20 years ago. Nevermind the boxes from the '50s - you have no chance of survival in those.

K cars on the other hands, are coffins on wheels. Japan only allows them because they are sold for huge profits by the killer auto manufacturers making them, Japanese people only buy them because they're not so heavily taxed, and because the safety problems these "cars" have are not publicized.