I recently stumbled on this video where they hook up a quintain to a pressure meter and hit it with a couched lance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzG3VU6PXVI

The only result they show is that the meter registered 5957 pounds of pressure which they equate to being hit by a car. Now I wonder if such a comparison is even remotely true, sadly I am not that good at physics so I wonder if anyone some something to say about the video.

From what I gather that 5957 pounds of pressure (no idea if it is per inch) was inflicted by a lance blow which seems to have an impact surface of around (roughly 2,5 . 2,5) 6,25 square cm. Would this even remotely equate to being hit by a car which has a surface of 6,25 square cm?

I'm not sure how they figure it's like being hit by a car (2500 lb-3500 lb) moving at 70 miles per hour. Because....Science???
A 17hh horse is in the 1600 lb. range. + 150 at most for armor, saddle and tack is a total of 1800 lb range. And that would be a big horse, as medieval horse armors point to horses in the 15-16hh size.
Assuming the driver and the rider are about the same weight, the mass of the car has a good 800-1700 lbs. of mass over a knight + steed.

And a car moving at 70 miles per hour is moving about twice the speed of a horse at full gallop. And from what I have gleaned from these boards, knights didn't often their destrier at full speed (nor could they really run at full potential movement with that much weight on their back.) So the rider and horse might be moving a third of that speed.

I don't doubt that a knight on a horse striking a lightly armored opponent is as deadly (perhaps more so) as being run over. But, like you, I don't see how they get a knight+horse+lance = car at 70mph.
-Terry

This bollocks takes us back at least twenty years. I thought we were starting to get past this nonsense.

None of it has any value. Ignore.

Some testing has been done by Drs Alan Williams and Toby Capwell. Not sure if its all been fully written up. That was with proper lances and grapers using arrets. I was there for the first, which basically showed what direction the testing needed to take to be meaningful, and supplied the lances.