No, a viral video of an SUV vehicle crash test is not real

Each year, millions of people go car shopping, and some of them rely on safety ratings when picking out a vehicle.

So, when a video went viral that purported to show how various sport utility vehicle models fare when hit into a wall by a semi-truck going 30 miles per hour, it prompted safety concerns about certain featured cars.

“Which one would you rather be in? Definitely not the Bronco,” one Instagram post said.

People also wondered if the video was real. One commenter asked: “Does this have any basis in reality?” 

THE QUESTION

Is the viral video showing an SUV vehicle crash test real?

THE SOURCES

• TikTok user @OldTenderMan
• BeamNG, a driving simulation game
• InVid and RevEye, video forensics tools
• Insurance Institute for Highway Safety
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

THE ANSWER

No, the video is not real. It’s from a driving simulation video game.

WHAT WE FOUND

The viral video clip doesn’t show a real-life safety test of various sport utility vehicle models; it was actually created by a user of the simulation game BeamNG.

BeamNG is a computer-based video game that uses realistic graphics to simulate the handling and damage to vehicles. It allows users to build, drive and crash realistic-appearing vehicles. 

Using InVid to isolate the keyframes in the video and RevEye to conduct a reverse image search, VERIFY traced the video to a post from July 2 by TikTok user Old Tender Man. In an email to VERIFY, @OldTenderMan confirmed he is the original creator of the video. 

The TikToker used the hashtags #beamng, #beamngdrive and #gaming in the caption of the video, identifying it as coming from the game BeamNG. On TikTok, there are hundreds of videos, some with hundreds of thousands or millions of views, that show different driving and crash simulations created using the video game.

A spokesperson for BeamNG also told VERIFY the clip seen in the viral video was created using their game. 

“The video utilizes our physics simulation as well as a number of official assets. However, none of the real-world brands depicted in the video were created by us, so we cannot claim whether their engineering closely resembles or deviates from the engineering used in the real-life models,” said the spokesperson.

The vehicles seen in the viral video clip were created by individual players of the game, BeamNG told VERIFY. 

According to BeamNG’s website, players can manipulate different components of vehicles that affect the strength of the car. Because of these customizations, the vehicles seen in the viral clip are not true representations of how those vehicle brands could be damaged if they were hit from behind into a wall by a semi-truck going 30 miles per hour.

The scene depicted in the viral video is also not an accurate representation of how vehicles are safety tested. In no testing scenario provided by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – both agencies administer safety tests and ratings – is a truck used to crash into a vehicle from behind into a wall.