On one hand , it seems like it would be really hard to cause enough damage to a gas armored combat vehicle to cause a fire or an explosion . After all , car producer put a fate of reinforcement around the integral fuel system . They have to . A hard enough hit to a fuel tankful will almost certainly result in the fatalities of anyone in or cheeseparing to the car . The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ( NHTSA ) , the government office that creates and enforces safety machine standard for vehicle sold in the United States , has really nonindulgent regulations in place to check that that a fuel tank wo n’t be impact in a crash . They do this by direct side - impact and rearward - impact tests on all new machine , direct the damage to see it falls within acceptable standards and then releasing the information to the public in the form ofsafety ratings . ( The NHTSA also standardizes non - gasoline systems , such as hydrogen , squeeze natural flatulence and galvanizing vehicles ' battery . )
On the other hand , well , auto do betray those test sometimes , which imply that gas tanks might not be protect as well as they should be . Also , getting rear - ended or T - boned is n’t quite the same as getting shot at , is it ? So what go on when the impact is due to an exceedingly fast bullet ( one that also happens to be red-hot from friction ) rather than blunt force-out ? television receiver and motion picture would have us conceive that a car ’s fuel tank will muff up instantly anytime a shot penetrates the rear of the car . Even when filmmaker are a lilliputian lax with their accuracy , it ’s somewhat plausible . After all , accelerator pedal is extremely flammable . That ’s how and why it ’s able to power your engine . It ’s not unfathomable that firing a few hot heater into the tank could repeat the blowup process that happens in the elevator car ’s locomotive , and that ’s what makes this supposed scenario ( as well as those action - movie scenes ) so believable .
To finally put this theory to rest , Discovery Channel ’s " MythBusters " give it a shooter . A Cadillac saloon was photograph with several bullet , all shoot for decently into the fuel cooler — and nothing happened . The six shots went in one side and redress out the other , without any dramatic play whatsoever . There was no explosion and there was no fervour . So far , no one else has stepped up to the plate to replicate this experiment ( at least , not that we know of ) so the " MythBusters " trial run provides the most compelling ocular evidence . In other actor’s line , we ’re not going to say it ’s completely impossible to bumble up a car by film at the gas tank ; we ’re just going to say that , so far , there ’s no grounds that it ’s ever actually chance .
