How fast would a car have to be going to knock over a telephone pole?

I was in a car collision last night (car vs telephone pole). I was in the passenger seat so I have no clue how fast we were going but I am just curious how fast we would of had to be going in a Hyundai accent to take out a small telephone pole.





it wasn't a very thick pole but I was surprised that it snapped in half|||A Hyundai is a pretty light car. It would probably take 40mph or more to snap a wooden telephone pole.



Aluminum light poles and traffic poles are a different story. They are designed to break away for safety reasons, so it would take a lot less.|||The poles are built to break. Car hits them at 50 and the pole stands, all of the force is applied to the car. Car hits it at 50 and the pole snaps and the car continues in motion for fractions of a second more, the force is greatly decreased. Still large, but not as much. How strong the force ends up being is the inverse square of the time it takes to apply the force.|||4o mph|||You know I've been wondering that myself. I guess you must have been going over 80km? But how do you hit a telephone pole anyway? Losing controll of the car or drunk driving? But my guess would be in that region, cause all the poles i've seen are very sturdy.|||like bruce said, many are designed to break off on impact so as to reduce the risk of death in a collision. if the police responded you can probably get an estimate of speed from their report