Just in case you forget why you should wear a seatbelt
This post was published 2 years 7 months 8 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.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.
My governor should have remembered this.
This may sound dumb but one time I walked right into a glass door. It was really clean. Needless to say I almost broke my nose. Ever since then I always were a seatbelt.
A human walks at around what… 2-3 mph? If I walk into a glass door and almost break my nose, I can only imagine what would happen if I was traveling at 45mph and ran into a tree or oven worse, an oncoming object.
Mythbusters did a show on unrestrained objects sitting in the back of a vehicle on impact. It was scary watching how much damage a bowling ball can do.
this is a nice one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KygP9pU_Rro
also watching some crash test videos did the magic..
It really makes you think…
I always wear a seatbelt, and I haven’t yet got my license.
I hope some people learn a thing or two.
I work for a newspaper and last year, a teenager in our city was killed when her car was struck by a drunk driver. The responding police officers told us, off the record, about her injuries in great detail, including how most of them resulted from her NOT wearing her seatbelt. To spare everyone the gory details, she was partially ejected from her car through the CLOSED moonroof (she didn’t make it all the way out) and the car rolled over on her neck. Since then, I NEVER EVER EVER EVER drive without my seat belt on. NEVER.
In Ireland it’s illegal to be in a car without wearing a seatbelt, wether its a passenger or the driver. If a driver is cought without his seatbelt, or one of his/her passengers is without a seatbelt, then that driver can loose their licence