Text 3101, 56 rader
Skriven 2004-12-08 10:46:22 av Roy Witt (1:10/22)
   Kommentar till text 3025 av mark lewis (1:3634/12)
Ärende: Seat Belts
==================
Hello mark.

07 Dec 04 22:34, you wrote to me:


 MR>>> At highway speeds OTOH cars tend to fly apart into pieces and if
 MR>>> one is tied in the chances of surviving are slim to none. They
 MR>>> should amend the laws to account for this and let people on
 MR>>> highways and bridges untie. BTW the only time we are allowed not to
 MR>>> wear a seatbelt is when parking the car.

 RW>> My wife and I survived a high speed (70mph) accident in 2001
 RW>> because of those seat belts. True, the vehicle disintegrated
 RW>> as it bounced off a cement center divider on a freeway, but
 RW>> we escaped without a scratch while the vehicle was a total
 RW>> loss. It hit so hard that the right front spindle broke from
 RW>> the suspension.

 ml> on the opposite note, i've seen folk die when their vehicle,
 ml> travelling at or below posted speed limits, collided with an
 ml> immovable object in such a manner that the collision shoved the
 ml> engine into the passenger compartment which then burst into flames
 ml> due to leaking fuel and hot engine components... if they had not been
 ml> wearing the seatbelts, they'd at least have had a chance of being
 ml> thrown from the vehicle and not having been burned to death before
 ml> anyone could get to them and get them out...

I've seen reports of this type of accident too. However, they're the
exception rather than the rule. We have a lot of 'coyote' running illegal
immigrants across the border, many of them in vans with up to 25 people
on board. When they're being chased by the Border Patrol, they usually
crash because of the nature of the vehicle vs the load. Survivors are
usually the driver and any person with seatbelts on. In one case, every
person in the back was killed and the only survivor was the driver, who
was in such good shape afterwards that he attempted to escape on foot.
Naturally, he couldn't out run the 4x4 vehicles chasing him.

And you'll always have accidents where seatbelts wouldn't do you any good
at all. That's unfortunate, but it happens. One that I saw was a big Buick
full of family that impaled themselves on a bridge girder that had been
left pointing across a small ravine, after floodwaters washed away the
bridge. The girder went right up the middle of the car, through the
windshield and out the back window, leaving the car hanging in mid air on
that girder. Nobody survived.

There was also the time that a car load of family was hit by a train at a
signal crossing, killing everyone in the car, including a new puppy that
they had just picked up at a farm house in the country. The excitement of
having a new puppy among 5 kids in the car, caused their father to not see
or hear the train. Seatbelts or not wouldn't have made any difference in
this case either.



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