Text 3100, 68 rader
Skriven 2004-12-08 11:15:58 av Roy Witt (1:10/22)
   Kommentar till text 3023 av MIKE ROSS (1:167/133.0)
Ärende: Seat Belts
==================
Hello MIKE.

07 Dec 04 21:58, you wrote to me:

 MR> "Roy Witt" bravely wrote to "MIKE ROSS" (07 Dec 04  10:10:36)
 MR>  --- on the heady topic of "Seat Belts"

 RW>> Hello MIKE.
 RW>>
 RW>> 06 Dec 04 23:11, you wrote to mark lewis:

 MR>> At highway speeds OTOH cars tend to fly apart into pieces and if one
 MR>> is tied in the chances of surviving are slim to none. They should
 MR>> amend the laws to account for this and let people on highways and
 MR>> bridges untie. BTW the only time we are allowed not to wear a
 MR>> seatbelt is when parking the car.
 RW>>
 RW>> My wife and I survived a high speed (70mph) accident in 2001 because
 RW>> of those seat belts. True, the vehicle disintegrated as it bounced
 RW>> off a cement center divider on a freeway, but we escaped without a
 RW>> scratch while the vehicle was a total loss. It hit so hard that the
 RW>> right front spindle broke from the suspension.

 MR> Wow, you're lucky to be the exception but I'll argue your crash seems
 MR> to have been a sliding type not a rollover or straight-on impact.

You'd lose. It was a 'hydroplaning' issue that made the car hit the center
divider, rear end first, then the car, in a clock wise rotation, kept on
hitting the divider, twisting the front clip of the car to the driver's
side. It looked like it could be driven in a circle. The passenger
compartment stayed relatively intact and the doors could be opened and
closed, while the rear hatch was locked down by the impact.  I had to
crawl through the back seat to reach luggage and my tool box in the rear.

 MR> In this latter type of crash, at highway speeds, the occupants get
 MR> dismembered by their seatbelts and are still ejected. This is
 MR> particularly true for children that, because of their smaller height,
 MR> tend to slide under the seatbelt and are decapitated. There are
 MR> warnings about this in many safety publications.

And the reason why they should be in car seats, strapped in the back seat.

 MR> I've seen your type of crash but instead, hitting the cement divider
 MR> for an exit head-on. The engine was ripped from the car slicing the
 MR> chassis neatly in 2 and all 5 occupants were killed.

In California that wouldn't be possible. Each exit has water barrels to
stop your car before it gets to the divider. Each freeway center divider
is built the same way on open ends. They won't save your car, but they'll
save you from injury by cushioning the impact.

 MR> A friend of mine was rear-ended when turning onto the highway and the
 MR> trauma left him with a permanent nasty twitch of the head. Are you
 MR> still affected by the accident? It wasn't a Ford by any chance? ;-)

I wasn't affected by it at all (other than being pissed at myself for
driving faster than normal in the rain), but my wife suffered from a fear
of being a passenger in a car and experiencing an accident all over again.

It took her a while to get over it and she wouldn't even go with me on
some of the club cruises in fear that we'd crash again. She got over it
eventually and I promised her that I wouldn't get too squirely with her in
the car in the mean time. No, it wasn't a Ford...it was a 95 Camaro Z28...



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 * Origin: Flying \A/ Ranch, Santa Ysabel, CA (1:10/22)