I just had an email of a few pictures where there was a biker riding at 85mph and a car pulled out on them resulting in the bike punching through the car door and causing the car to flip. Is it possible? Car is VW Polo. Bike is Honda VFR 400

Did the email say how far up the road the biker landed? From an 80+ mph crash he would have flown a long way. Most of him, anyway.

Im afraid the unfortunate side to this story is that the rider went into the car with the bike and all involved were killed. I do have a picture to upload.

image002.jpg (39 KB, 9 downloads) Bike crash

It would appear that the answer is "yes"

Actually no, a bike would find it nearly impossible to "roll" a car, the impact would cause enough dmg to split a car and make it look like so.

However, as a bikes main pressure point into the side of a car (giving that this is the most common place for a bike to hit a car when they are pulling out of road ends) the energy of the impact no longer travels in a forward motion through the car, but gets shifted down to going towards the ground. untill the center of gravity passes the threshold and will cause the bike to "roll" over the car, or through it..

A good example of it would be like so

-----¦ < this is the nose of the bike.
------¦ < this is the position of the front wheel in relation the the nose cone.

as the wheel will be the first thing to hit the car, the front shocks will compress lowing the bikes nose and rising the riders center of gravity on the bike over the front, as it continues the front nosecone will crumble (as this is made of plastic more plastic and a bit more plastic - im trying to get across the point of no solid object here, clocks/headlights/wiring loom ) untill the headstock (just infront of the tank)

The bike in question - a VFR 400 is a lightweight bike (of its age, and also quite low) in relation the car in question.

untill recently, bikes have no "crumple" zone on them in the event of a crash. head on collisions for a biker is "tighten that sphincter and pray you make it out the other end"

Honda have seen this and are now coming up with designs to give bikes a brace and crumple zone (to stop the nose diving in a head on collision) meaning an airbag on the tank is possible without you just flying over it completely.

Ironically i believe the first production bike to have this added mainstream will be the VFR 800, they tried it on a goldwing but it was more of an experiment then.

Their are variables that could cause a car to roll from the impact of a bike, but at 85mph i cant see that being possible, even to today's somewhat lightweight cars. the car turning into the bikes path (turning left while being hit on the left hand side - driver side to americans, passenger to UK). but even that, would need the car to be traveling at quite a speed to cause enough roll in the cars body to have a bike tip it over.

Anywho, sorry for the wall of text, but hope it gives some light

I'd have to agree with Barry's very detailed explanation, but there's one scenario where I can imagine the car may very well flip.

... if the car was in motion?

The impact of the bike alone wouldn't be enough to roll the car, but such an impact at 80mph would almost certainly result in the car driver losing control of the vehicle, suddenly veering to one side and rolling the car as a result?

Hi this is my first post here,My reason for posting is rather grim as i've got personal experience with the subject, personal as in knowing somone who got killed under these cir****tances.
My dad was a taxidriver at night, he drove a big heavy mercedes benz taxi. On this fatal night he recieved a call to go pick up a customer in the opposite direction of wich he was driving.
so he made a uturn "wich was illegal" and did not notice the motorbike that came at approx 160 kmh with no lights on.
the mc pushed itself thru the driverdoor,punching my dad out of the passenger door to land outside the car,the car with the mc stuck inside rolled on to the side,landing on my dad.The driver of the mc was effectivly headless from the encounter with the roof,the female passenger got thrown off and suffered major trauma to the head but survived.the mc was a 1980's honda 750 something. and had plenty the mass and speed to roll this heavy car.
i guess the car was rolling at the time of impact, as a police patrol witnessed the crash from a distance, and rolled the car back on its wheels, failing to stop the engine and with the gear in drive the car drove in circles several times before being stopped.
but i think that the outcome could well have been simular with a stationary car.
personally for me this is not a myth, and as such i see no need in getting it confirmed or denied.