This is pretty simple and probably goes without saying for most people, but in any case...

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The shaded areas above represent the parts of an unarmored car that provide any significant amount of ballistic protection. The unshaded parts pretty much only offer concealment and bullets will punch right through them.

You see cops hide behind their doors like TJ Hooker basically because they usually have armored doors.

Man, that's limited. I'll probably stick to just avoiding getting shot at.

Doesnt help much in Iqaluit when youre trying to evacuate the school yard and the maniac with the high powered gun is on a high hill Such was the case 3 years ago

Useful info. Hollywood would have you believe a lot of things.

Have they ever tested it on mythbusters? Have tactical officers hide behind a car while moving past a firing squad that is shooting at them

I actually tested it personally. I went to a school that did a "ballistic review," which consisted of us positioning cardboard targets behind a beater, stepping back to a table covered in various firearms and shooting the hell out of the car for about five minutes.

And I even got a paycheck while I was doing that.



(It's true -- but it's not perfect. In one trial the "guy" hiding behind the wheel took a single bullet to the face that would have killed him, but that was dumb luck. The cardboard targets in other areas were riddled with holes)

You can also at least sort of get an indication of this if you ever have a fender bender that punctures the body of a car (or see one). You might be shocked to note styrofoam in there (which keeps it light for good gas mileage, I guess). But you can't build an engine block or steering column or axel out of stryrofoam.

I just tried to find some nifty example or reference online without coming up with anything great. At least in this picture you can see, for instance, that the shell of the car door didn't stop any bullets:

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And here, where the bullet holes look to me like they're exit holes, rather than entry holes... (maybe, anyway...)

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Note that there are no bullet holes in the hubcaps. The tire is flat, but that could be because of a ricochet off the pavement under the car or it could be because these are actually entry holes and it was shot directly. Anyway... even if it just means nobody shot that low, that's still something. And if you squint you can see the seats do have bullet holes, meaning the outer body of the car didn't stop the shots.

Glad that the kisd and I hid behind or rather infront of the school that day

There's always:

http://conquestvehicles.com/knight-xv.html

Armored vehicles are a whole other thing. The reason I think this is potentially useful general info is because almost everywhere you walk around in a city there's a good chance of an ordinary car being nearby.

This is actually something we're going to be going over in our next training scheario, when we start heading into really dangerous gang territory.

On a related note, durong my vehicle auction job recently I came across an SUV very similar to this that had three bullet holes in the drivers side door. The driver most likely got hit in the shoulder or arm.

UA, I'm really looking forward to having a chance to work and talk with you guys a bit more (next month). Don't get shot by MS-13 in the meantime.

Polarman:

Serpentine, serpentine.

I was joking Eon, this is seriously great info. Simple enough to call on in a moment of crisis.

Additional info... this web site has penetration tests demonstrating whether this and that thing will actually stop bullets: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

One common one that goes against natural instincts is a household door... it does nothing to stop bullets, but when you're shooting or taking cover people have a tendency to act like it does. When we did some paintball drills a few months ago that really got me mad, too, because I kept shooting the door and saying "look dude, you're dead -- stop firing at me" and took about a zillion shots to my unpadded chest while the guy totally ignored me.

Doors will stop paintballs.

Handy!

I cant find the article, but a few years back there was a series of attacks on cars by a street gang in a city in South America...It might have been Rio, but Im not sure...Several people were injured and some killed over a span of a few weeks. In some of the cases they fired right through the car doors - not the windows - to hit their targets

The weapon is what makes the story interesting...it was a tater gun.

The gang built a tater gun out of steel pipe and used propane to operate it.

The ammo - another interesting fact - was green (not ripe) LIMES.

So basically they were able to fire unripened limes through the door of a moving vehicle using a homemade cannon.

It doesnt surprise me that bullets can go through a car.

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Heres something else to think about...I saw a demonstration of the effectiveness of Kevlar several years ago. The test pads easily stopped the high calibur bullets BUT the instructor then fired a needle through the cloth using a blow gun like it wasnt even there. It stopped a 45 but a plastic tube and a needle dart was enough to pass through without even slowing down.

I suggest sticking to the plan of not getting shot at as often as you possibly can...thats the best way to guarantee survival.

I broke a juicer with an unripe lime once... I really liked that juicer, too.

On a vaguely related note, if you're inside a car and you get attacked, the moment you do anything other than just sit there your odds of survival tripple... or something like that. I can't vouch for the math, but in case studies I saw people who died after being ambushed in their vehicles almost always took no action to try to survive.

Did the study happen to mention why people were failing to take defensive action when attacked in their vehicles? It would of course be silly to argue the fact that your chances of survival increase if you take action, so it is very curious that anyone would not do so.

Most likely the panic. Something totally unespected is happening you might die damn seatbelt where to go I'mstucksomebodyhelpme!!!!!!!!!1111111

WOW, Eon, WOW!

WOW, C-the-C, WOW!

...and Midnight Detcetive is right, SERPENTINE is worth it!

I teach that in my class!
They laugh but they do it and nod!