Seatbelts

[shetlandpeat]

Perhaps a range of external airbags, Mercedes have one...

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/5495705/External-airbag-slows-car-in-a-crash.html

 

Jokingly

 

http://files.myopera.com/Mathilda/albums/69619/thumbs/New%20External%20Airbags.jpg_thumb.jpg

 

The above is not really an airbag.

 

Ford has some

 

http://archive.cardesignnews.com/news/2001/010530thisweek/images/ford-airbag3s.jpg

 

 

The Mercedes airbag brake lifts the vehicle to eliminate brake diving, this is when the front of the car dips. Stats prove that if your bumper is higher than theirs, you will stand a better chance of survival.

 

I am glad that lap belts are no longer fitted, again, they were because it was the cheaper option. Now, the vehicles have to be designed too eliminate them and have 3 point belts. I also remember my Capri having a fixed belt.

My worry when it comes to MOT tests is the way belts are tested, a quick yank to see if they lock.

[Longdog]

Take one person, crash him off the road without a seat belt, let him fly through the windscreen into a fence post, spend a couple of months in hospital with brain damage, total personality change from frontal lobe damage, add alchohol to that damage, lose a relationship and access to children and a year later suicide.

 

Think my mate would have been better with a seat belt on...

[Ghostrider]

I have in the past been responsible for trying to put people back together after car accidents. Trust me - accidents where seatbelts were worn lead to far less severe injuries to those where seatbelts weren't worn.

 

Nobody gets in my car without putting a seatbelt on.

 

I refuse to turn on engine till everyone is 'tied up' as I call it.

 

I think I would rather have crushed ribs for a while than be splattered over the road.

 

Not necessarily arguing with the above, but I could name too many people who the only reason they are walking around perfectly healthily today, is because they went through a windscreen, even if they got a few bust ribs, a broken arm or smashed face in the process. Whereas had they been tied in their seat, they'd have been so much puree to scrape up, as that seat was unrecognisable due to 100+Kg of solid cast steel engine buried in it. There have also been a few people who *might* still be alive, had they not worn a belt, on account of the delay freeing them from it in a wreck, due to the release points being unusable and the daft knife prohibition laws making a suitable knife to cut them out unavailable.

 

I'm not saying the wearing, or not wearing of belts will guarantee anyone's safety, both can be factors that either do harm or good, depending on the exact circumstances of each incident. My personal opinion is that they are 50/50 divided. If folk could know beforehand what sort of accident they were about to have, they could choose to belt or not belt accordingly, but they can't, so I see it as being an issue of personal choice. You do whichever you believe will do most good for the greatest proportion of time.

 

For me, that's being in the non-wearing camp. On Shetland's roads I'd much, much rather take my chances as a football bouncing along the tar (done it a few times, so I know what it feels like), than locked inside a tin box flying around out of control.

[piggywiggie]

I think I would rather still take the risk of wearing a seat belt. but thats my choice the same as your choice is not to wear one. I was brought up to wear a seatbelt and I feel safer in general wearing one. I also have a lot of padding so less chance of broken ribs there!

[Para Handy]

As I have a seat belt exemption certificate it maters not.

[Blackrat]

As I have a seat belt exemption certificate it maters not.

 

Will that piece of paper make you feel safe in a collision. I have been to a minor road traffic collision involving a postman on a rural road. They were only doing 30 mph and so was the other car. Impact speed 60 mph. Postie was at that time exempt and it did not stop them from smashing their face off the steering wheel and then loosing most if their teeth and broken bones in face. Again this was a minor one! 

 

In my time in Shetland I attended 12 fatal rtc's. None of them where the person killed was due to a seatbelt. I must say that out of the 12 I saw about 50% when the sad remains of the fatality were removed from the wreckage the car could have been driven from the scene. 

 

As to the post about knife laws and positioning of knives to cut your seatbelt. Do you think that in a serious collision when you are trapped you can get to your knife and it was where you left it????? 

 

As to the post about taking your chanced as to being like a football bouncing along the road !!!! Do you honestly think that you are full of air and surrounded in leather???  No the human body does not bounce. That's fact. Go grab a sheep or other animal. Throw it out a window at 60 mph and see how it bounces. I will give you a tenner each time it bounces after the first "bounce"

Airbags work in conjunction with seat belts. I attended at fatal rtc where on impact the driver with no seatbelt on was propelled over the steering wheel his airbag deployed and his head was squashed as it was propelled up into the roof by the airbag.

I have attended over 50 fatal collisions and taken parents and wives into mortuarys to identify what was left of their loved ones. This is not me glory hunting mearly fact. The loss of anyone's life is heartbreaking for so many people. 

As for the post that Shetland does not have many high speed crashes I beg to differ again that's fact. 

The so called 50/50 chance that your seatbelt will kill you IMHO is a myth. Lets all be honest and say that non seatbelt wearers can't be bothered to wear them rather than how "safe "they will be in a crash

[crofter-amy]

To make the roads safer I have a simple answer....Explosives! If every vehicle was fitted with an explosive that would blow the driver to smitherines if they crash. I think we would see an instant improvement in everyones driving

[Seaflech]

I really can't fathom the logic behind people who think it is safer to NOT wear a seatbelt in a vehicle.

I think it is the same old Shetland mentality regarding wearing lifejackets when off in a boat - only pansy wear them, real men laugh in the face of the danger.

 

Having been in a couple crashes, I will now never go in a car without a belt on, front or back seat. The first crash I was in was when I was young and invincible and not wearing a belt, after which I quickly realised that my invincibility could be, err, somewhat short lived, and since then I have always buckled up.

 

As for the theory that 'you're safer going through the windscreen,' I think the cheese has slid off your cracker with that one. Yes fine if everything lines up (literally and metaphorically), on the day, and you collide with something, arc gracefully over the steering wheel and somersault through the by now disintegrated windscreen before dusting yourself down and laughing at the person in the other car who is still sitting with their belt on.

Or, the other scenario where you collide with something, smash your face on the wheel on the way out, cause severe cranial damage on the doorpost as you bury into it, before continuing through the windscreen and landing on the bonnet of the car you hit with your legs wrapped round your head. Think I'll take a chance with wearing a belt.

 

Newton's First law of Motion: The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force.

In other words, if you are sitting unattached in a thing doing 60mph, and that thing stops very suddenly, you will continue to do 60mph until something gets in the way....

As far as I understand it the purpose of crumple zones in vehicles are two-fold. They are designed to absorb the energy of a crash in that zone so that the main 'cabin' of the car remains more or less intact, enhancing the chances of survival, and secondly that the energy absorption decreases the deceleration by the car stopping in the couple of feet of the crumple zone, rather than an instantaneous stop without it.

 

Why do some people think everything is a Government consiracy?!

[crofter-amy]

Why do some people think everything is a Government consiracy?!

 

Maybe they didn't study physics

[Infiltrator]

Why do some people think everything is a Government consiracy?!

 

They probably spend too much time on the internet and lose touch with reality.

 

Top Gear or Fifth Gear (can't remember) did a near head on collision between a car with a modern crumple zone and one without - the results were dramatic. The experts stated that the older car would likely have had fatalities, whereas the newer car the driver might have had minor injuries.

[Evil Inky]

There's a graph showing how dramatically road deaths have fallen since the late 1960s here: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1208

The roads were simply much more dangerous in the good old days before seatbelt laws and speed cameras.

[paulb]

and old cars as well. the car maybe a write off after a slow impact but the driver and passangers are a lot safer. anyone fancy normal glass winscreens again.

[Ghostrider]

As to the post about knife laws and positioning of knives to cut your seatbelt. Do you think that in a serious collision when you are trapped you can get to your knife and it was where you left it????? 

 

No, of course not. I was talking about other people coming upon an accident who, had they been allowed to carry a knife like just about everyone did at one time, could have cut the victim out.

 

As to the post about taking your chanced as to being like a football bouncing along the road !!!! Do you honestly think that you are full of air and surrounded in leather???  No the human body does not bounce. That's fact. Go grab a sheep or other animal. Throw it out a window at 60 mph and see how it bounces. I will give you a tenner each time it bounces after the first "bounce"

 

That comment was supposed to be taken figuratively, or course there's little "bounce". Like I said, I've "bounced" along the tar at various speeds in the past, broken bones included (twice), so I don't need to throw sheep out of something at speed to prove anything, I've been the crash test dummy myself.

 

On the basis of having "been there, done that", and considered against the alternative of the belt currently available, I'll still take my chances versus the tar than be tied in a tin box bouncing around the tar.

 

Airbags work in conjunction with seat belts. I attended at fatal rtc where on impact the driver with no seatbelt on was propelled over the steering wheel his airbag deployed and his head was squashed as it was propelled up into the roof by the airbag.

 

Yes, a bag without a belt is actually an added danger, and for that reason I remove, or at least deactivate them.

 

As for the post that Shetland does not have many high speed crashes I beg to differ again that's fact.

 

Of course Shetland has high speed crashes, thats not the issue. Its the kind of impact and the nature of the road and that's largely different from the "UK average" that I have issues with.

 

The so called 50/50 chance that your seatbelt will kill you IMHO is a myth.

 

That's not what I said. I said IMHO whether you chose to wear a belt, or chose not to wear a belt, the chances that you are going to be better off or worse off from either decision in Shetland were 50/50.

 

Lets all be honest and say that non seatbelt wearers can't be bothered to wear them rather than how "safe "they will be in a crash

 

You want honesty, okay, you can have it, and it has nothing to do with being "bothered".

 

1) I do not believe the case has been proven that belts as currently designed and installed in vehicles, as they are currently designed and constructed, has been proven to prevent death and reduce injuries in the majority of accidents in the Shetland situation.

 

2) I object in the strongest possible terms that the Government thinks it can legislate and dictate how anyone lives their life in issues where no-one but the person in question can possibly become the "victim".

[enkelt skapninger]

2) I object in the strongest possible terms that the Government thinks it can legislate and dictate how anyone lives their life in issues where no-one but the person in question can possibly become the "victim".

 

I've seen severe injury due to collision with a flying human cast aloft in a road accident.

Also, if you spend months in hospital (ICU, neuro-rehab, etc) recovering from your accident, you're causing harm indirectly by taking up hospital beds that somebody else could be using (not to mention costing a vast amount of money).

 

With regards taking your chances against the tar, I wonder if you have considered the fact that your skin will shear from your body as you scoot along the rough road at 60 miles an hour. Google "degloving injury images" with safe search off - an injury seen in motorcyclists without protective gear, also seen in drivers who use the road surface to deccelerate after flying through the windscreen.

[Ghostrider]

2) I object in the strongest possible terms that the Government thinks it can legislate and dictate how anyone lives their life in issues where no-one but the person in question can possibly become the "victim".

 

I've seen severe injury due to collision with a flying human cast aloft in a road accident.

Also, if you spend months in hospital (ICU, neuro-rehab, etc) recovering from your accident, you're causing harm indirectly by taking up hospital beds that somebody else could be using (not to mention costing a vast amount of money).

 

Which I've paid for through taxes, and therefor have a perfect right to use as and when and if I wish to.

 

Strangely enough were I to be injured equally as badly through participating in some sort of un-necessary "for fun" "sport" or "recreation" pursuit, even if it was through doing something "un-recommended" I'd get sympathy and understanding. Yet if it occurs as a result of transporting myself from A to B, I'm to be made to feel like I am hogging facilities I have little right to, and being a parasite on those funding them.

 

With regards taking your chances against the tar, I wonder if you have considered the fact that your skin will shear from your body as you scoot along the rough road at 60 miles an hour. Google "degloving injury images" with safe search off - an injury seen in motorcyclists without protective gear, also seen in drivers who use the road surface to deccelerate after flying through the windscreen.

 

I'd see it as the lesser evil to internal or brain injury.