manny34711

what happened to the people driving them?

FDNewbie

iTrader: (10)

LOL. You read my mind...

I personally think anyone who's dumb enough to drive w/o a seatbelt on should be shot on the spot. It's the epitome of stupidity...

gabberguy

I agree. I cant understand why the hell some people drive without it... Its not like it takes 5 min to get it on. I guess its a part of natural selection...

FDNewbie

iTrader: (10)

LOL!! I was gonna say the same...it's the simplest form of survival of the fittest haha. But seriously...ppl think it's "cool" to drive w/o your seatbelt. If it's so cool, make it a point to drop by your local ER on a Friday or Saturday night, and look at the faces...just the faces of the ppl coming in from accidents that weren't wearing their seatbelts. The extent of injuries to their faces will be more than enough to convince you that it's not so "cool."

Seatbelts are proven beyond a doubt to reduce injury and fatalities...

rzograbian

HAHA ... nice!

i just have a habit of wearing a seat belt when i get in. also, my parents have SUV's and i feel more in danger when i drive those because in the fd, you can manage to control the car to avoid the accident like turn the wheel going 50mph but in the Jeep, its brace for impact!! thats scary IMHO

jimlab

Trev Dagley had his seat belt on when he left the road in his father's CYM R1 at an estimated 135+ mph. When the rear of the car struck a large boulder, he was thrown free of the car by the momentum of the end-for-end spin that resulted.. despite having his belt on. His passenger was also wearing his seat belt. Jon ended up with his head under the dash and his feet over the back of the seat... still in his belt. Both died of massive head injuries.

Seat belts do save lives, but they're subject to the laws of Physics, just like everything else. Having one on doesn't necessarily mean you'll stay in the vehicle.

XSTransAm

the guy i was talking about was also wearing his seatbelt. the story is on the forums somewhere

scratchjunkie

i remember that too, it was a guy from northern cali.

FDNewbie

iTrader: (10)

Oh God... That was pretty graphic Jim. It's probably really late, but my condolences to their families. That's simply horrible. Was this tragedy recent or from back in the day?

Definitely not trying to argue facts here, but how did the seat belt allow him (or his head at that) to reach so far down, under the dash?

Of course. I don't believe seatbelts are the end-all, and are an absolute assurance you'll survive. But I'd be willing to put my money on the guy wearing a belt vs. the one not wearing one, every single time. That's why I said they're proven in reducing injuries and fatalities. It's an added assurance, but you can't be reckless and start doin a 150mph run thinking "hey, I have a seatbelt on, so I'm good..."

jimlab

June of 2000. A picture of the car has been posted, but I can't find it for some reason.

Think about the forces involved in a spin instigated by hitting a boulder with the back of the car at 135+ mph. Seat belts have a zone (the stitched area) which is designed to give under extreme forces. Add a few inches of slack to the belt, and it's not difficult to see how it could happen.

The point was that it doesn't necessarily take a 135+ mph crash to pop someone out of their belt and out of the car. Strange things happen, and seat belts are not 100% dependable.

Speed of light

iTrader: (8)

Originally posted by Jimlab:

The foregoing is true, however; the primary physical reason that speed is soooo dangerous is because the crash forces increase exponentially as the square of the increase in speed. What this means is a crash at 135 mph will have more than 4 times the amount of energy to dissipate than the same crash at 65 mph.

Additionally, violent spinning intiated by a high speed crash (as described elsewhere in this thread) would have created very, very high centrifugal acceleration (aka g-force) away from the axis of rotation AND is capable of launching you out as though you were in a sling shot.

FDNewbie

iTrader: (10)

DAMN...I didn't know that! I figured it was more of a linear relationship... Wow..that's pretty bad. I gotta start slowin down a bit...and wearing my harnesses when I go real fast

BlueRex

E=1/2 mv^2

I'm guessing that's where he got it from.

FDNewbie

iTrader: (10)

LOL. Thanks. That's what happens when you "figure" but don't really think

neit_jnf

iTrader: (17)

Always wear the seatbelts correctly!

A few years ago I read in my local newspaper that a teenager died after crashing at 100+ mph with a concrete wall. He was wearing the lap part of the belt but the shoulder part was behind his back... His upper body was ejected through the windshield, his lower part stayed in the seat.

Nghtstlkr7

whoa

broken93

He wouldn't have lived either way.

dgeesaman

iTrader: (7)

Exactly. My aunt hit a crossing big rig right at the axles under the 5th wheel. Basically a metal wall. At 35mph, she still hit her face on the wheel and the belt broke several bones including her sternum.

Seatbelts occasionally cause weird results, but overwhelmingly they increase your odds in bad wrecks and reduce overall injuries in non-fatal accidents.

Dave

badddrx7

iTrader: (7)

Trev Dagley had his seat belt on when he left the road in his father's CYM R1 at an estimated 135+ mph. When the rear of the car struck a large boulder, he was thrown free of the car by the momentum of the end-for-end spin that resulted.. despite having his belt on. His passenger was also wearing his seat belt. Jon ended up with his head under the dash and his feet over the back of the seat... still in his belt. Both died of massive head injuries.

Seat belts do save lives, but they're subject to the laws of Physics, just like everything else. Having one on doesn't necessarily mean you'll stay in the vehicle.



I remember when that happened. We were on the old list at the time. He went thru the woods something like 100 yards or so.

Tom

Valkyrie

Seeing crushed FDs makes me sad.

Seeing crushed Minis...nothing.

Good thing there's still a bajillion JDM 7's left.


*cough* rollcage *cough*

jimlab

Yep, the car traveled about 100 yards from the road, touching down only twice during that time, at about 5 feet below the road surface (the boulder), and again about 15 feet above the road surface (a fallen log). It cleared the hill the log was on, and went on to hit a row of trees about 20 feet in the air (evidenced by the lack of bark), slid to the ground, and partially burned.

TEDDER1

iTrader: (1)

Ever here those people... "I knew someone, that knew someone who's second cousin's friend was wearing a seatbelt and they were killed by it. So I will NEVER wear one." You ask "what happened?" They reply with "Well they drove under a semi" or "They drove into a lake at 150+" You find yourself thinking this person is an ignorant ***.

They never realize that yes people can have an accident where the seatbelt will kill them. But the chances of it are what, 1 of 2000? They seem to forget that 90% of wrecks are probably rear end collisions where the seatbelt will reduce the impact.

Kento

Nice play-by-play color commentary, Jim...j/k

Just goes to show the amount of energy a car traveling at that speed has once you lose control.

jimlab

I walked the crash site with Trev's father and step-mother and helped recreate what happened for them, since the police report amounted to little more than "death by misadventure", and they needed more closure. By looking at what ended up where (pieces of the car were strewn almost the entire distance) and having seen the car after the wreck, I was able to figure out what happened.

The police had him leaving the road at about 90 mph based on skid marks, but the RX-7 isn't the average car, the car still had ABS and almost brand new BF Goodrich R1 track tires on it, and the in-car video (the camera mount was a new addition they were trying out) showed 4 shifts before the segment which was destroyed when the camera was thrown from the car.

The tires and camera mount were for a trip to Willow Springs a few days later that was meant to be Trev's birthday present.

moconnor

iTrader: (14)

Which, to be pedantic, implies a quadratic relationship.

Also, there is a big difference between hitting an immovable object (like a boulder or a wall) and hitting a movable object. The angle at which the object was hit also plays a huge factor. You can easily die in a 30mph direct impact crash with a wall whereas a much higher speed crash can be survivable if the impact(s) are glancing or offset.

High speed crashes are dramatic but they are a tiny factory in overall accident fatality rates. Only about 5% of US fatal road accidents are on highways and of those about half involve alcohol so at most 1 in ~50 fatal (sober) accidents are caused by high speed impacts.