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Originally Posted by Maggot
^Agreed
You are always better off hitting a car that can move and has a crumple zone than hitting something solid and immovable (solid concrete block).. but if the oncoming car is going the same speed as you and is the same mass, then it wouldn;t make much difference.. you would be dead either way.
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True in a way, the effect is devastating.
The thing is the question was not really about injury patterns but rather is was about the physics of the matter.
A "solid" object suggests one with no crumple zones and he asked about one that is immovable. So your vehicle has crumple zones which will decrease the impact but not to a survivable level. In fact most cars do not provide much survivability in any impacts greater than 60-70 km/h.
Now, assuming the scenario of another vehicle also traveling at 100 km/h in a head on is the same type of vehicle with similar mass and crumple zones. The impact would not be exactly equivalent to hitting a solid immovable object at 200 km/h as has been suggested. There are two main reasons for this, firstly the other car is not immovable and will deflect or rebound to an extent, thereby reducing impact force at the collision point and dispersing it into another direction. Secondly the other car also has crumple zones, therefore vehicle deformation absorbs energy. A solid, immovable object provides neither of these. To illustrate the concept of crumple zones, what will have more force at the point of impact, two pillows colliding at 100 km/h or two bricks (of equal mass to the pillows), of course it is the two bricks.
Now all this does not mean that the forces on the subject vehicle is equal in the car vs solid object at 100 and the car vs car at 200. The car vs car will have considerably more force at point of impact than car vs solid object.
Given the choice, I would take neither.