F = ma
A car crash will affect an obsese 250lb bus driver much more than some 40lb little twerp.
Let’s say the bus was traveling at a rate of 60mph🇺🇸 and hit a brick wall, and all passengers uniformly come to a complete stop at precisely 1 second. The 5 year old weighing 40lbs🇺🇸 would experience an impact of around 109 pounds of force (109.40 lbf🇺🇸) whereas the bus driver weighing 250lbs🇺🇸 would experience 683.67 lbf🇺🇸.
I absolutely did NOT run the calculations in 🤮 🇪🇺 🤮 before converting to 😎🇺🇸😎.
High schoolers ride busses too. They’re a little bigger than 40lb twerps at that point.
I mean, on the other hand, a 5 year old is generally more fragile than an adult man.
Have you never met a kid? Were you never a kid? The kids that scream and cry over small bumps do it because that’s how they were taught to get attention and the adults feed that.
Kids are (biologically) way more resilient than adults. Their bones are more rubbery and slowly harden over time.
I’ve always thought that humans should just evolve to be smaller now that we’re so smart. We’d need less food, people would be safer in impacts, we could build smaller and more efficient homes, etc. Think of the efficiency of a space program where each astronaut was 1/3 the weight and half the size!
It’s not like we have any natural predators any more, so size isn’t a big deal.
Small bumps are not the same as a vehicle crash. There’s a reason young children can’t sit in the front seat, because air bags deploying can kill them. Kids are small and flexible enough to have an advantage with lower impact stuff, but for high impact stuff they’re smaller and squishier and that extra flexibility doesn’t help as much, and once they hit puberty they mostly lose that because of the reduced cartilage in their skeletons. Younger children are especially vulnerable to head and neck injuries because of their less developed muscles.