H2SO4, its a theoretical question. The main point you need to understand is that the motion is meant to be relative. Yes if you are travelling at an extremely high speed on the surface of planet earth then the windshield will probably be destroyed. The point of Einstein's theory is that as far as you are concerned you are at rest and it is everyone else moving at high speed. Can you see this? You are motionless - everyone else is moving at close to the speed of light. There is no such thing as an absolute state of rest, only interial frames of reference. There is no such thing as absolute speed because speed itself is relative. The reason this is the case is because there is no such thing as 'ether' or fixed, absolute space, or reference point in space, if you will. We are used to fixed reference points here on earth, but in reality they are not fixed at all, they are flying through the Milky Way and orbiting the sun at high speed.
Lorax, from our viewing perspective the car will appear to be squashed in the direction of travel. So will any headlight beam projected ahead of it. From within the car everything will appear normal and we will all appear to be squashed, in the direction of travel. So if we are standing upright we will all look very thin. This may sound surreal but this is not scientific conjecture. This has all been proven by experiment.
Illywhacker, the problem with your scenario is it gives the speed of light as zero, which contradicts Einstein's special theory of relativity. This is because the theory states that the speed of light for obervers in all inertial frames of reference is a constant, about 186,000 miles per second. A speed of zero as per your scenario is impossible. It also defies logic and observation and common sense. That is how Einstein came up with the theory. He was sitting down in his patent office in Switzerland and thought it up from first principles and building upon Galileo's principle of relativity. Another consequence of this is the equivalence of matter and energy, as expressed in the mass?energy equivalence formula E = mc2. All of Einstein's theories on relativity have been verified experimentally.
But, back to the original question - you cannot travel at the speed of light.
