Anyone remember Viper Racing? That game had the best most realistic contact between cars! It's hard to explain, but it gave the impression the bodywork of car was made of solid metal, where LFS feels like the car is a sponge.
Viper racing had kind of digital suspension damage. If you hit another car it would either get no damage or the suspension get totally wrecked. And the difference between those too was pure luck
that could well be less than 70km/h. Even really modern car get deformed really badly at car-to-pole crashes, especially in the side. The official tests are done with ~30km/h for side impacts, where the pole (10") move into the body roughly 1/4th to 1/3rd of the car width.
For the front crash they use a 300mm pole and a speed of ~50km/h, and there the intrusion is 0.5m-1.0m (the whole hood usually) - and remember: there's an engine absorbing much of the energy. So LFS' damage is much to forgiving atm
Driver had just got license and car, that was RWD version of skyline 25gt something, I don't know too much what models there is of these cars.
There was black ice on road and speed limit was 70kph, car had summer tires, this did happen in Sweden recently.
So he got his share of bad luck and good luck in one event, surely winning in a lottery is more likely than surviving from that crash, car was right hand drive version so it is really hard to believe someone can actually survive from that.
But that event is again something which could not occur in LFS, if you loose car from such speed and hit wall or some pylon like surface (end of pitwall etc.) there is very good chances that even your race is not ruined, this of course makes driver feel too comfortable for taking risks.
Surely network problems etc. are causing limitations and that is reason I did say that there could be server side option for damage sewerity, even I don't like idea, but that is required as otherwise online will be soon only for purists and that won't sell enough. Better have option than almost no damage, imo.