"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message news
Y-
"Pete C." wrote:
Nobody has ever been killed in an accident caused by a seat belt, the
same is very much not true for airbags.
Actually that is not true. There have been a number of people (I had
one personal experience when I was working on an ambulance) where the
chest belt decapitated a rather dimunitive adult. This is the main
reason that car seats and boosters are mandated. To protect the children
(in this case from the gov't.)
I recall some very hairy moments in a rent-a-car that had those abominable
motorized shoulder belts trying to strangle me as I reached out of the car
trying to retrieve a parking pass that had fallen out of the car. I can
easily believe those sorts of belts caused some pretty serious accidents
because they disappeared from the scene pretty quickly. That's usually an
indication that something was wrong with the technology.
I recall the last time we discusses those motorized abominations, there was
more than one person that had a bad experience with them. As Kurt noted,
the major failing with those belts is that they tended to make people to
forget to buckle the lap belt, resulting in very serious injuries and in
some cases, decapitations. Not what you want in a safety device. )-:
But "Easy Meat Pete" insists on posting from the hip. It's just like when
he tried to claim that the experiences that he and his four friends had with
a few hundred CFL's (out of a billion that have been sold) were somehow
statistically relevant to the question of slow-to-warm-up CFL bulbs. I'm
sure he'll keep sniping away at me until he feels avenged and maybe one day
he'll be right. (-: It's not today, though.
There are lots of sites that describe very serious issues with seatbelts, so
let's review:
As automatic belts came into use, their defects and failures became
apparent. Automatic shoulder belts with separate manual lap belts had very
low lap belt use rates because the automatic feature of the shoulder belt
engaging lulled occupants into forgetting to buckle their lap belts. The
more cumbersome door-mounted belts were often detached by the users
rendering them ineffective. The shoulder-strap-only belts often caused
serious neck injuries and even decapitated occupants; and door mounted belts
completely failed to protect when doors opened in crashes, as they do 10% of
the time. The failures of automatic belts are showing up in a growing
number of personal injury lawsuits that will soon grow into a flood.
source:
http://www.jimadler.com/defective-seatbelt-lawyer.html
As for the claim that no one was ever killed by a seatbelt:
(October 28, 2008)-A 13-year-old boy who was pretending that he was being
strangled by a seat belt died after his neck actually got tangled in the
belt, Houston police said Tuesday. Houston police spokesman Victor Senties
said the teenager's death appears to have been an accident. The name of the
victim was not immediately released. Autopsy results were pending Tuesday.
Senties told The Associated Press that the boy and a friend were riding in
the back seat of a vehicle driven by the friend's mother Monday night in
northwest Houston. Senties said the teenager wrapped a seat belt around his
neck, pretending he was being strangled, when he started "choking for real.
Evidently he got tangled up in the seat belt," Senties said.
Police say the woman managed to free the teen who was transported to a
Houston hospital and pronounced dead.
http://www.kwtx.com/home/headlines/33445154.html
But wait, there's MO
Seat Belt Strangles Boy - A seat belt malfunction left a 5-year-old boy in
critical condition yesterday after his seat belt nearly stangles him after
became wrapped around his neck Monday on I-95 near Washington, DC. The child
's mother, Yuko Harris, pulled over and called 911 after seeing her son,
DeAndre Harris, in the rearview mirror being strangled by his seat belt
while sitting next to his 2-year-old brother.
DeAndre had no pulse when a Maryland State Police trooper arrived. The
trooper had to use a knife to cut away the seat belt.
(Some reports indicate the boy subsequently died, but I haven't been able to
confirm that. It's hard to separate incidents of death caused by seat belt
failure in an accident from seat belts killing kids on their own. It's
clear, though, that the automatic retractors can pull the belt hard enough
to cause strangulation.
http://a11news.com/1234/seat-belt-strangles-boy/
Belt Entanglement
Children can become entangled in vehicle seat belts. If a seat belt features
a locking mechanism, it may retract and strangle the child.
https://www.usaaedfoundation.org/Saf...round_vehicles
If I had more interest in this area, I'd pursue it further, but I think the
original point I made is still quite valid: seatbelts and airbags save
lives, and certainly more lives than any bizarre accidents with either might
cause.
--
Bobby G.