Hollywood's Immense Influence

Watching an episode of Mythbusters today, I found myself extremely surprised to find out that when a car runs off a cliff, it's highly unlikely that it will explode. I remember several times in which I had seen a movie or a show in which the protagonist's vehicle fell off a cliff but didn't explode, and the character(s) got to safety. During those scenes I was thinking "that car would have blown up!!!" But how did I know that? Had I ever seen a car go off a cliff? Had I ever seen one blow up? No, I had taken the thousands of other scenes from thousands of others movies & shows as fact, believing that a heavy piece of machinery with gas, oil, and tons of moving parts would explode upon high-speed impact. However, Jamie & Adam of the show "MythBusters" threw several cars off of a cliff, to discover that it is unlikely that a car would explode, simply because of all the safety precautions taken by manufacturers. The location of the gas tank prevents it from taking the catastrophic damage necessary to force it to release all of its gas at once, and if it's NOT released all at once, you only get a burning car, not an exploding car!

Anyways, this is a testament to how much influence Hollywood has on us. We often take what we see for granted, believing all but the wildest of stunts and claims. Ehh… I don't really know where I was going with this tangent… Take it or leave it, I'm watching more MythBusters. At least when they have explosions, I know it's for real XD