[AndreyT]

Not much experience with this kind of thing on these forums apparently. Which is, of curse, a good thing.

The car crashed into a tree, as the article states. When a car crashes into a tree, having the car ripped into shreds is a frequent outcome even at absolutely unremarkable speeds. I.e. nothing in these pictures suggests any excessive speed at all. I'd say that what I see in this pictures can easily happen after loss of control, skid and collision with a tree at around 50mph.

When one sees it for the first time, it is actually very hard to believe that so much damage can be inflicted by a flimsy-looking tree even at completely ordinary everyday commuting speed. But that's just the way it is. Trees are like that. A standard street lightpole is also a very dangerous thing, but it has nothing on a tree.