“What… what’s going on here?”
Zhang Yan was bewildered.
She had thought the worst-case scenario would be serious injury, but she never expected to die outright!
Logically, when she realized she was about to crash, she had stepped on the brake. Although the vehicle hadn’t completely slowed down, considering the car had crash beams and airbags, and she had properly fastened her seatbelt—with all these safety measures in place, she shouldn’t have died instantly, right?
If a Mini神 crashed like this and resulted in immediate death, that would be understandable. After all, you couldn’t expect much safety from a car worth just over 30,000 yuan, and no one would likely drive such a vehicle on the highway anyway. But Zhang Yan had bought a Passat worth over 200,000 yuan!
This brand of car was well-known for the solid sound its doors made when closing.
Of course, Zhang Yan wasn’t knowledgeable about these things; she was just repeating what she had read in online posts: a heavy door-closing sound indicated solid steel materials were used, which meant safety would be more reliable.
But what was the result? Where was the reliability?
Fortunately, the game was merciful enough to allow players to watch a death replay, ensuring players died with a clear understanding of what happened.
The death notice stated that the head, neck, lower legs, and feet had all suffered severe damage, especially the head and neck trauma, which left no possibility of disability—because she had died instantly.
Looking at the wreckage imagery, everything became clearer.
The once-beautiful new car had been reduced to scrap. The most conspicuous feature was the nearly broken A-pillar, which had clearly invaded the driver’s cabin space, inevitably causing severe compression to the occupants.
As a result, it was no surprise that the driver’s lower legs and feet had suffered serious injuries.
“But that’s still not right?”
“If the lower legs and feet suffered serious injuries, at worst, it would mean amputation. Life should still be preserved, right?”
Zhang Yan remained perplexed.
Of course, no one wants to choose between death and severe disability—everyone wants to be safe and sound. But if forced to choose, preserving one’s life would certainly be preferable.
Although dying directly saved medical expenses… what was the point of saving money when you’re dead?
Looking further, Zhang Yan realized that not only did the game provide death data, it even offered a death replay!
In the accident replay, Zhang Yan clearly saw the entire process of the crash.
The truck ahead had suddenly blown a tire, causing the vehicle to lose control and stop on the road. The incident happened so abruptly that the driver hadn’t had time to place warning signs. Meanwhile, Zhang Yan, due to fatigued driving, hadn’t carefully observed the road conditions. By the time she noticed, it was too late—despite stepping on the brake, she still crashed into it solidly.
The critical moment was after the impact.
Zhang Yan watched the entire collision process in slow motion, trying to understand exactly how the head and neck injuries had occurred.
Logically, she had been wearing a seatbelt, and the car had airbags, which should have provided good cushioning. Surely the airbag hadn’t failed to deploy, causing her head to hit the windshield?
However, upon careful examination of the recording, Zhang Yan was dumbfounded.
After the violent collision, the airbag had indeed deployed. However, possibly due to severe A-pillar deformation or because of steering wheel displacement caused by cabin intrusion, the airbag hadn’t caught the driver’s face!
This resulted in the driver’s head missing the airbag entirely and directly hitting the already fractured, severely intruding A-pillar!
As for side airbags—sorry, this model didn’t have them.
Of course, perhaps to avoid frightening children, there were no blood effects; the driver looked almost like a dummy. But even just seeing this image was enough to imagine the extent of damage that would occur in reality.
It would certainly result in immediate head trauma, complete facial disfigurement, and a shattered cervical spine. There would be no point in viewing the remains—direct cremation would be the only option.
“This is too ridiculous!”
Zhang Yan found this completely unacceptable.
There was an airbag, yet it failed to catch the driver’s head? This was absolutely unheard of!
Moreover, for the Passat, which had always boasted about its excellent safety, to produce such a result—wasn’t the game deliberately defaming it?
The car was gone, and so was the person.
The only good news was that after starting a new account, the assets left from the previous account—those few tens of thousands of yuan—could be inherited. And since there had been no traffic violations on the previous account, the new account didn’t need to retake the driver’s license test.
However, the initial funds weren’t 240,000 yuan anymore, but 200,000 yuan.
Obviously, although the previous account’s assets could be inherited after starting a new account, the initial funds would decrease. After several iterations, it would likely drop to a minimum value, such as 50,000 or 80,000 yuan.
At that point, there would be very few cars to choose from, and players would have to slowly save money from scratch again.
This was probably designed to prevent certain people from deliberately causing accidents to farm money—buying a car worth tens of thousands, dying in a crash, inheriting the remaining money to the next account, and repeatedly crashing and farming.
Moreover, this preferential treatment only applied to accidents caused by normal driving. If traffic violations caused the accident, opening a new account might result in inheriting fines, and the driver’s license would need to be retaken.
Zhang Yan could accept this outcome. At least her previous hard work hadn’t been in vain—she had nearly 260,000 yuan on hand and could buy another decent car.
But she absolutely couldn’t accept the collision result!
Since it was also time for a short break, Zhang Yan decided to rest for half an hour and check out online reviews.
There should be quite a few people who, like her, chose the Passat as their first car. This collision result would surely be unacceptable to everyone.
Of course, she could also see which cars others had found to be better. With 260,000 yuan in hand this time, she couldn’t afford to waste it again. She had to choose a car with better safety features; otherwise, no matter how much money she earned, losing her life would still be a total loss.
There were already many discussions about “Safe and Civilized Driving” online.
“The driver’s license test is really too difficult. I give up! I don’t think subject two in real life is this hard!”
“Is there any expert who can help me pass the driver’s license test? I’d be eternally grateful!”
“‘Safe and Civilized Driving’ driver’s license test guaranteed-pass tutorial! Don’t miss out!”
“Damn, I spent a whole two hours on the test and finally passed! I don’t know why, but I suddenly remembered the feeling of playing ‘Looking Back Is the Shore’—I was also stuck in the newbie village for two hours…”
“Don’t worry, the bus and truck license tests are still waiting for you later, and those are even harder.”
“Forget it, I’ll just stick to running ride-shares.”
“Is there something wrong with this game? I already drive all day for my commute, and when I get home, I just want to play some games to relax, but this game is even more stressful than real life?”
“I think the most ridiculous thing is the vehicle damage. How come cars seem less durable than in real life? Even a slight collision causes severe deformation—it’s too frightening!”
“Actually, this is the true effect of a collision. Other racing games where you crash at 200 km/h and only the hood flies off while the car remains intact—that’s the truly ridiculous fiction. People have just become accustomed to the vehicle hardness in other racing games, so they can’t adapt to this game.”
“Rumor has it that a large portion of the massive investment in ‘Safe and Civilized Driving’ went into the engine. The vehicle chassis, A-pillars, and other structures are designed separately, with different strengths for different structures. Combined with the engine’s realistic physics effects, they achieve 90% similarity to real-life collision results.”
“Nonsense! This is just a gimmick. I crashed once with a Passat and died immediately. How could a real-life Passat be so terrible? Either their collision system isn’t as perfect as they claim, or they’re deliberately defaming the Passat!”
“Same here—crashed once with the Passat and ascended to heaven on the spot. This is too unreasonable!”
“Yes, especially with offset collisions. The result is too ridiculous—the airbag didn’t even catch the driver’s face. There must be a calculation error in the game’s physics engine!”
“Why is it unreasonable? Have you crashed a Passat in real life?”
“Damn, who would dare to drive like that in real life? But the Passat has always been known for its good safety. All the old owners unanimously praise it—are you suggesting all these people are Da Zhong’s shills?”
“Don’t speak too absolutely. The IIAS crash test results for the new Passat haven’t been released yet, right? They should be out in the next few days. What if this generation has reduced safety features?”
“The crash test results for the American version of the Passat are already out—all excellent. Could the domestic version be downgraded to such a crappy level?”
“Exactly, no matter how much they reduce features, could they misalign the airbag? If the test results come out excellent, how will ‘Safe and Civilized Driving’ explain this? Did they take bribes from competitors?”
“Everyone, stop arguing. The game never explicitly stated it was Da Zhong’s Passat.”
“This logo, this design—although they’ve been modified quite a bit, anyone with eyes can see what it is. Are they trying to deny it?”
Online discussions were either about the driver’s license test or vehicle collision results.
After all, those who couldn’t pass the license test had already given up, while those who had passed and accepted this style of gameplay were all concerned about vehicle safety issues to some extent.
As the saying goes, driving fast isn’t impressive—success is defined by not falling.
This wasn’t like many other racing games where once you bought a car, you owned it permanently, and no matter how many crashes, it wouldn’t break or need repairs, and the driver wouldn’t get injured.
In “Safe and Civilized Driving,” safety and maintenance costs directly affected player income.
After working hard for an hour to earn 40,000 yuan, only to have it all wiped out by a single accident—how could you not prioritize vehicle safety?
And as the car with the biggest discrepancy between expectations and collision results, the Passat naturally received the most attention.
The IIAS that netizens mentioned stands for the Insurance Institute for Automotive Safety, a globally recognized, relatively objective and fair automobile safety assessment organization.
Since it was established by insurance associations, and the interests of insurance companies and automobile manufacturers are naturally conflicting—the worse a vehicle’s safety, the more the insurance company has to pay after an accident—it was generally not susceptible to being bought off by automobile manufacturers. Most people considered it an important factor when purchasing a car.