Fifth Gear's Motorway Pile-up | Fifth Gear Classic 

The damage there is nothing compared to when an artic or coach meets the back of the queue.

The Fiat Uno turned into the Fiat Zero.

The cars here would have been around 10 years old at the time. Would be interesting to do another test but with cars from around 2009, see how much improvement has been made.

real life beamng

The ones on the uno would be liquified.

Well that Fiat acted as a very effective crumple zone for the Metro and the Mercedes!! :-O Makes you appreciate how much safer and stronger modern cars really are, especially the smaller and cheaper models. That said the human body does not take well to being slammed at 70mph regardless of what car you're in, that some serious deceleration happening.

Moral of the story - get a big Mercedes!

I remember watching this as a teenager back when it was broadcast and the sight of that Fiat UNO, with front and rear wheels basically touching has stuck with me vividly all these years. I watched shows like Fifth Gear for entertainment but it says something about Fifth Gear that it actually had (and still does) a positive impact on my driving habits.

The Uno just disintegrated. Scary.

Just shows how selfish and carless people are even in those dangeours conditions

Keep. A. Good. Following. Distance. General rule that’ll give you the best chances of having the space to brake or swerve for almost any situation. (& yes it should include adjustments for weather etc). Very sobering video.

How to survive: 1: get a benz 2:be in the 80s Thats all Yeet 6 likes (edit) guys i have grown up i dont know why i am here but this is absolute cringe im doing

What I take out of this is.... buy a classic S-Class! Thanks for the video

Man, props to them for actually showing us the unedited clips of the impact - rather than overdoing it with ten different camera angles and not a single undisturbed shot of the crash from beginning to end.

Those were nice cars, I really liked that Astra and the Escort. But the S-Class was the best car of them all

Why did they have to ruin that Beautiful old classic . METRO😝

I can still remember the crash back in 97 and I can also remember the crash on the M5 near the Taunton Ruby club and my friend's dog was in the crash and sadly my friend's dog died long with other people

Pity that the innocent Mercedes S class had to be destroyed as a prop

One of the best videos on road safety I've seen. Lorries and heavy vehicles however weren't mentioned..

That almost happened to me last year in Austria,went to 5-10m visibility in like 1second. Emergency lights on,brakes on,and slowed down from 120km to 40-50km reaaaaaaly fast 😱 that was by far the biggest scare ever while driving

That Mercedes was so beautiful, but yet that was a car built with such superb quality to have handled that impact so well

These are all classics now.

It wasn’t really all that long ago that all those old cars were still on the road!

To be fair, the uno was a bean tin of a car even before it had 10+ years of rust weaken the structure. The Mercedes w126 on the other hand, was probably the safest car of the 80s and was designed as such. They were absolute tanks.

The thing is, People still drive like arseholes in bad weather etc, even though the know the risk.

Proud owner of a '92 Mbenz 280SE :)

Poor S-Class 😢❤️

Remember watching this on first transmission years and years ago, kinda sparked my interest in panel beating, Learning crash theory and the many designed flex points in a car, A crash happens so fast the human eye simply can not see how much a vehicle twists and bends like a springy sponge, car safety systems Can Help save lives, ignorance simply kills regardless of how many safety are installed as they are all worthless if your not a safe driver , how many people noticed the black square astra gte in the right hand row, vauxhall nuts are sobbing right now,

Gotta love the sanctimonious attitudes of 5th gear like these sorts of crashes could never happen to them.

If you're familiar with the group 'Autoshite' on Facebook then you'll love this video 🤣

Some of those cars in that demonstration, such as the Metro, the Escort and the Cavalier, would have been worth a lot of money today. Let’s have a moment of silence for the soon-to-be classics that laid down their lives so us motorway drivers can continue to live the rest of ours. Lord, hear our prayer. 🙏

Tiff is a amazing driver, abile to drive fast & skilfully. However even he knows when to drive slow. & that’s why he’s a Good driver.

4:00 the impact

Testing with a metro isn't a great example. It's like being hit by a sheet of paper

Now im going to get anxiety everytime traffic suddenly slows down ahead of me and the car behind me is coming behind me fast

My reaction to the video: Pay attention to your driving and your surroundings all the time. Also, whenever fog comes on the motorway, SLOW DOWN, YOU DONKEYS.

My phone vibrated when the car smashed into the other cars, youtube is getting intelligent

Poor rover metro... that was my mum's first car in blue, she loved it

Why ruin a beautiful classic W126 ?

Big car doesn't mean survival. 2 people I know know died in Australia when the driver slowed for smoke from a bush fire and were rear ended by a 140 tonne road train that was still doing 100 kmh.

I was in a train cab doing 100mph in fog,you had the train safely systems telling you go on greens,as we passed the A12 cars overtook us!!!!!!

11th December 1984 M25 westbound where Clackett Lane Services are located since being built in the early 90s. Probably the worst pile up in modern times . People burnt alive in vehicles etc.

Beamng drive irl be like

Dont buy a Fiat, buy a Merc!

Still to the day, this scares me. Yes the Merc was unscathed internally but only until the next lunatic comes barreling through. Then comes a lorry or two.

I bet if they had put that that's merc against any new merc, the old classic merc would survive like a tank and new merc would be like that fiat in todays day. That shows that old merce were strong and reliable. New ones are crap.

Why do they happen in the first place? Because some dummy is usually on his phone; usually an Eastern European Lorry driver on cruise control and then piles up the arse of the traffic stopped in front of them killing loads of people because they weren't paying attention. solution? GET OFF THE BLOODY PHONE. Oh and turn the limiter on instead of the cruise control that way your foot tends to be near the brake pedal. Here's a tip, give yourself an escape route by keeping a bit of distance to the stationary vehicle in front and keep one eye on the mirror; if a car looks like it's coming in too fast change lanes if you can. Let the one in front take the hit instead.

You saw what the Mercedes did to the other cars. Now imagine what would happen nowadays with all those huge cars driving around. The S-Class in the video weighs around 1,6 tons while a BMW X6 or a Ford Ranger weigh a about 2,2 tons.

Why do they keep giving them cars!?!???!

Holy shit, that Uno! and what if a HGV went into the pile, God forbid a tanker or explosive chemicals truck. *Shudders

This is horrifying. Sadly a realistic occurence due to way too many idiots on the roads.

CaRs WeRe BuIiT BeTtEr iN tHe 80s 🙄

The car should be tested for 100-120kmph speed. Rather than for 60kmph.More than that In a modern world need for real time traffic/ vehicular movement or weather monitoring system is required. Not much of progress is gone in this direction. Need warning signal at every 1kms with camera for real time monitoring , With digitised system need for on board traffic/ weather monitoring device which can provide automated alert on visibility , snow, rain or to reduce the speed and what speed to maintain or update on real time prevailing conditions & much more. Need of the hour. All said and done it's on our part to drive carefully and responsibily and understand the condition till such roads and systems are introduced.

People keep saying "how dare they ruin a beautiful W126 S Class"... Guys, this was filmed in 2003. Back then that car was worthless

These guys do the experiments FOR US so we don't have to. Just like Brainiac. These sorts of videos always encourage me to drive better. I just wouldn't drive in fog.

test it now with a truck from the Eastern Bloc with a driver who bought his driver's license there for 200€.... as there are now masses of people driving around in Europe. Even the car in front will be flat...

Even when you drive leaving an airport runway in front everybody swerves into it in an emergency anyway so still no guarantee of avoiding getting hit or hitting someone else.

If its truck no drivers of any car would stay alive or have injuries

Just imagine a G whizz at the back of que! The car would be destroyed..

Espace all over your face.

MB driver would've survived, only to then go to prison lol...

I passed my driving test recently and I really wish they showed these sorts of things in the theory test to those participating in them. They give you hazard perception tests without showing you what happens if you lapse in your concentration on the road. Such a sobering video that would shock all the other guys with R plates who drive as if they're in a car with full carbon ceramics.

Kind of soothing to know that I'll not be as dead in my W126.

I think the people in the Uno would just be about mush..

Winter white-out and glare ice one day on the expressway one evening... I'd slowed to 25~30 MPH, hazards on. Suddenly I was overtaken by a large herd of SUVs (this was in America btw, SE corner of Lake Michigan/known bad spot) all plowing along at 70 MPH+ or so. Got a couple of looks from the windows of those 4wd behemoths as they flew by... "lol look at Mr. Slow" was written on their faces as they all but pointed and laughed at the little borrowed Toyota. Time passed and we (wife and baby son were in the car too) continued on at our happy snail's pace, warm, dry and making steady if glacial progress. Then in the distance... lights. Not on the roadway, but in the median. One of the big 4x4s had spun off the road. A minute or so later there was another, and another, and another and... you get the picture. Most of the nearly dozen or so managed to at least stay on their wheels... a few did not. Even though I had time to take it all in at my leisurely pace I was mostly focusing on the road, and I couldn't see their faces... but something tells me their expressions had changed. It's a fairly remote stretch of highway, and recovery there is slow and expensive, especially in blizzard conditions. Eventually I came upon a State Trooper stopped under an underpass near one of the last (first?) wrecks, and pulled over to have a chat... told him what I'd seen spread out behind us all down the median and ditch, and how they'd gotten there. "Roger" he said, "then they're all getting tickets, too" and he called for backup. We plodded on, eventually broke out of the worst of it to better conditions and made it to our destination... tired, late and hungry but fully intact. It was on the news the next day... not everyone had survived. TLDR: Slow down. The life you save might be that of someone you love.

The Fiat exist just to dissipate the collision energy.

This is sobering. I think EURO NCAP should be testing the rear crash strength of cars, it's only frontal impact that is looked at.

The person who went to prison as a result of the 1997 pile up was David Fairclough who was 46 at the time. He was acquitted for death by dangerous driving. And his driving license was suspended for 4 years.

Laugh is now all those cars in this video are worth a few quid now and very rare sights on the uk roads, thanks to that joke of a scrappage scheme.

I learned my lesson years ago. Used to drive faster then I could see, then I had a very near miss from someone driving absurdly slow (10-20kmh seriously pull off the road at that point) I was driving much faster then I should have likely 80-90kmh in a heavy downpour and escaped without incident. Someone had passed me seconds before, had they still been beside me I would have had nowhere to go and rear ended a tractor trailer. I was driving a 40,000lb truck and would have been squished like a bug. I had probably less then 2 seconds to react at that speed. I learned a valuable lesson early in my driving career. I could have easily killed myself or someone else with my behavior.

Seeing all these fifth gear crash tests just makes me think the show is just run by stunt choreographers hiding their budget behind a tv show.

shame for w126 looks at good condition,small cars is a criminal offence to maker

6:33 that's a nova gte... worth more than that merc by now

Richard Hammond will show you how crashes are done properly.

I see homer in one of the cars doing a face palm

Uno is like an egg Merc is a tank It's not fair

I thought the Hungerford M4 crash was the worst ever? Many more deaths due to the fireball that was caused by a Tanker driver being a pratt and smashing into the back of the queue of traffic; the saddest part is that he survived.

Reminds me of every episode of CHiPs

That’s just an excuse to crash a bunch of cars

Fiat makes sturdy hubcaps

Classics motors now . long gone now

Seeing that fiat just fold like paper made me feel genuinely sick o~o

I like metros :(

i remember watching this!

This is really shocking me cause I always drive way to fast

And just how many drivers in the UK are prosecuted daily for driving too close (under 2 second gap in ideal conditions; one banana, two banana), ignoring temporary speed restrictions, or not illuminating headlights in poor visibility? On average less than 1 I'll bet, yet the majority of drivers are guilty.

Smashed Fiat Uno? UNO REVERSE CARD!

I know what your saying is right but the issue is is if you slow down to 30 mph as indicated by the signs your as likely to be rear ended buy the idiot still doing 70 mph behind you... Theres nothing worse than driving slow in fog and having to watch both the rear view mirror and whats looming up in front of you... Fog is scary stuff on a busy road

Fiat is the number Uno

2:43 proper 70s like cop

Cars are designed for some frontal impact protection but, so it seems, not so much for rear impact.

2 years ago damn

What a surprise the German car did the best. People need to stop buying shitty French cars. Spend your money wisely!

wow when did beamngs graphics get so good?

Speeds need to be decreased gradually, otherwise, if you have a bunch of traffic doing 70, and you slow the speed down to 40 just a few hundred yards ahead in low visibility conditions, then an accident like this is inevitable.

The great thing about modern cars with radar AEB, is that the car can see through fog like this. The technology is astounding.

At least the fiat driver would be the noble hero in this case cause the uno is the crumble zone

Poor Bluebird 😢

I used to drive an Uno when I was a teenager, I always thought that if I had a crash I would have been fucked!

4:01 is what you are looking for