Just in case you forget why you should wear a seatbelt
Do you remember your drivers ed classes? You know, those classes where the instructor would ask… "Now class, what is the first thing you do when you get into your vehicle?" I know you remember them. It’s too bad a lot of people don’t remember that aspect of drivers ed, the part about wearing your seatbelt. Maybe if the following was adapted for classes people would be a little more weary of starting a car without being strapped in.
In a collision, you have three or four sub-collisions all taking place in sequence. First, the vehicle hits some object. The vehicle abruptly slows, but unrestrained objects inside it continue at the same speed, in the same direction. Then the unrestrained body hits the interior of the vehicle, and starts to slow. That’s the second collision. That body’s internal organs are still moving at speed until they hit the inside of the chest (or get cheese-sliced by their supporting ligaments—and that’s where you get things like bisected livers or aortas). The fourth collision is when the bowling ball you left on the rear deck hits you in the back of the head, because that continued at the same speed in the same direction. Newtonian physics: Learn it, live it, love it.
It’s an scary / thrilling feeling. The feeling of being strapped into a vehicle as it collides with another moving or immovable object.
