Actually yes, they probably were lucky. It’s a crap shoot some times. I’ve seen one person wake up alive and well from an accident where I saw the picture of the car and was certain someone had died in it, but they didn’t, and another situation with a minor dent and the driver sustained permanent neurological damage. Heck, I was in an accident about 5 years ago myself where a group of college girls blew through a red light and sheared the front of my car off (literally the entire engine block). If they had been a quarter of a second slower or I had been a quarter of a second faster, the full 60 mph impact would have been on my driver door. Parts of my car all over the road; when the first cop arrived on the scene I was clearing some debris off the intersection to open at least one lane for traffic; cop looks at my car, asks where’s the driver? I point at myself. He shakes his head in disbelief and comes over and shakes my hand.
Seen that before as well.