IMHO,
I think you call them "B" pillars. Mount the belts to the "B" pillars. If they
are not strong enough to support the safety belt... throw the whole car design
in
the dumpster where it belongs and start over. This past weekend, actually
yesterday, I had another first hand view of a fatal collision on I-80 in Western
PA. 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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