Well, my comment is that the "incompetent driver" part negates the rest
of it. Or, that aside, IMO no conceivable safety system could protect the
occupants of a minivan in a head-on collision with a semi. It seems to me
that the only thing that could have saved these people is a deeper median
ditch. Perhaps you should direct your ire at the highway engineers.
Frankly, it's a little difficult to tell what you would consider an
adequate safety system. One that let you survive a 400 foot roll down a
canyon? or a head-on with a semi at 60 mph? One sure-fire solution might
be to limit highway speeds to 20 mph. Then a head-on would only be the
equivalent of a 40 mph barrier crash, which should be survivable with
airbags... but what if you drove off the road into the canyon? Gosh,
maybe people shouldn't be allowed to drive at all...
James H. Nazarian had this to say:
>...Word had it on the CB channels that an eastbound minivan rubbed shoulders
>with some other eastbound vehicle, thence the driver lost control of the
>vehicle,
>drove it across the grassy median (at least 100') banged the front bumper
>into a
>deep drainage ditch in the center that should have stopped it; that blew the
>balloons off, sealing the fate of all in the minivan. The vehicle continued
>across the median to collide head-on with a massive 18 wheeler that tore the
>minivan in two as it ran it over. Those airbags did nothing to protect the
>occupants (they all blew in the ditch.) nor did those flimsy seat belts help
>anyone, nor did the State of PA or the US Govt. and whatever other lax
>government
>agency that claims to be interested in safety. Do I sound angry? Damn
>right I am.
>I hate seeing people who were alive a few minutes earlier torn to shreds in a
>brutal accident that they thought they were protected from. I will have
>nightmares for months re-seeing the horrid aftermath. Airbags are
>dangerous, if
>for no other reason than they lull people into the infamous "false sense of
>security". Watching a fire truck washing human blood off the pavement is too
>sickening for me. That poor family was being driven by an incompetent
>driver, in
>an incompetent vehicle, on an incompetent highway, patrolled by
>incompetent cops.
>That carnage should never have been able to occur. We should wake up to the
>reality that air bags are next to useless, and demand their replacement by a
>safety device that works.
>
>IMHO
>
>Jim
>
>
>REwald9535@aol.com wrote:
>
>> Jim,
>> A couple of point I would like to discuss
>>
>> In a message dated 01/07/2000 12:10:25 PM Pacific Standard Time,
>> microdoc@apk.net writes:
>>
>> > We all know that money rules. It is the bean counters who actually make
>> > most of
>> > the decisions about what solutions will most effectively meet the
>> > requirements of
>> > some new regulations.
>>
>> Not all the time in every company. Some companies do care and do a better
>> job than the regulations require. One example, in the frontal impact crash
>> test there is a measurement of damage to the dummies head called HIC (head
>> injury criterion) the government requirement is that the HIC not exceed 1200
>> units. (I have no idea what a unit is BTW) My company's internal
requirement
>> for the same crash is that the damage must not exceed 600 units. In other
>> words our requirement is twice what the government requires.
>>
>> > The matter that was raised about the difficulty of entering a race car
>> > through
>> > its window because the door was welded shut, can also be dealt with in a
>> > cost-effective and simple matter: don't weld it shut.
>>
>> I brought this up and I was not talking about a car with welded shut doors,
>> it was a door slammer with a cage in it. Climbing in over a side intrusion
>> bar(s) and not banging your head on the hoop gets old after a while. Before
>> you say wait a minute nothing was said about a cage, just belts. Well, what
>> are you going to mount the belts to? Particularly the shoulder harness, a
>> sky hook?
>> Rick
>
>
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