A stationary car is hit from behind by another car.?

Question

Describe what happens to the people in the

a) stationary car

b) car that hit the stationary car

Answer 1

a) The car will accelerate forward and give the people a jolt from behind.

b) The car will accelerate backward and give the people a jolt from the front.

Answer 2

Inertia on the occupants of the stationary car will cause them to move rapidly toward the rear of the vehicle relative to the vehicle.  This is how whiplash happens, since the heads of the occupants are not acted upon by the seats at the same rate as the rest of their bodies.

The occupants of the car that hit them will be thrown forward by inertia and arrested only by the seatbelt restraints they are hopefully wearing or by the car itself as they are thrown into the windshield and other forward parts of the vehicle by inertia on their bodies.

Answer 3

In a perfect world, the energy that B was using would be transferred to car A, stopping car B, and forcing car A with the energy. It is not a perfect world lol. Cars swerve, cars go all over the road and directions change. But basically its Newton's laws.

I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

II. The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

III. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Here we are looking at law III for the most part.

Hoped my answer helped.

Edit (Just realized the question was about the PEOPLE. LOL ill keep the rest of it but there are too many variables, speed, seatbelts, size of the people, number of people, etc. etc.)

Answer 4

Kevin has done a decent job of explanation. An important issue here also is the momentum  p =mv. Momentum is transferred from the moving car to the stationary car pushing it forward ( along with the ppl ). The moving car comes to a nearly stationary position then rebounds due to a partially elastic collision. So it will move backwards slightly after collision relevant to the car that was hit.