"Kurt Ullman" wrote in message
"Robert Green" wrote:
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.
Forgot about those. The only seat belt that could kill you while the
car was still standing still. I think their biggest problem was more
convenience. I don't know that they killed that many people because the
consumer complaints got them pulled fairly quickly.
Those mechanical demons must have killed someone. After wrestling with the
belt like Laocoon did with the serpents I understood why EMT's carry those
special belt cutters. I think the very early models didn't even
auto-reverse upon detection of strangulation level forces.
Those powered belts were a bad branch on the tree of evolution like
Esperanto, PL-1 or those devices that shaved off the ridges on people's
fingernails.
IIRC, I was on my way to an accident scene at the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
In the early days of gateless EZ Pass toll lanes, toll booth personnel often
got hit at 40+ mph as they crossed the plaza. The problem was compounded
when there was more than one EZ-pass lane and drivers could change their
destination up until the last second. There's been some astonishing CCTV
footage (oddly, I can't find any on YouTube) of humans jumping around moving
cars just like squirrels as well as being knocked out of their shoes and
thrown 250 feet.
The best I could find we
http://www.theledger.com/article/200...news/906075017
"Parker left her mother's vehicle and walked across a SunPass lane, which is
for vehicles that use a transponder to automatically pay the toll as they go
through the lane without stopping, to get change from a worker in one of
those booths. Parker was struck by a vehicle on her way back across the
SunPass lane, an FHP report said."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPXjE5Rfh0E
Crazy bimbo driver soars like a 747 when she hits the rail at a tollbooth at
DFW airport.
It took more than a few deaths for more safety features to be added (lane
separators, better training (using the CCTV video) and even pedestrian
tunnels and catwalks. People driving up to tollbooths are pretty uniformly
distracted - looking for money, jockeying for the fastest lane and trying
not to hit other cars. Running out in front of such distracted drivers
hoping or thinking that they'll see you and stop is taking a big chance.
Anybody who thinks being a toll booth attendant is a cushy job hasn't manned
a toll plaza in a traffic jam. Despite running seriously large fresh air
vents to each booth, the air quality sucks. I got dizzy just trying to
photograph one particular accident scene because the air was so foul in the
toll plaza.
Some of these poor folks that got launched into orbit were on their way to
the john. Death row prison guards are lucky - they can usually shame a
prisoner into using cotton balls and rubber bands before the big event to
keep the post-mortem a little less icky, if you know what I mean. I am
*sure* Oren does. He's always up on the worst of the worst. (-:
I don't know why I thought of all this just now. I just started thinking
about all the people I've seen hit by cars (it's way too many) and how many
times they get knocked clean out of their shoes, which often remain at the
point of impact, side by side as if they had been carefully removed. Laced
shoes, slips ons, sneakers, etc. The first time you see it, you think
someone placed them there deliberately.
After the third or fourth time it becomes clear it's some quirk of physics
that sucks people out of their shoes after a high-speed impact. It's about
as unusual as the number of infants who survive horrific car wrecks by
falling into the back seat footwell, one of the last places to crush
completely in a high-speed accident. I saw that happen with a multiple
vehicle fatality caused by a drunken driver who was the only one to survive
except for an 18 month old baby of the family he massacred. I'll never
forget him coming up to me, stinking of booze, saying how sorry he was in a
drunken stupor.
He was but one of many people I thought I could kill with my bare hands. It
turned out it was far from his first DWI and he had been driving on a
suspended license when the accident occurred. I, for one, am quite thankful
that people like that are now forced to get alcohol blood level sensor
equipped ignition interlocks to keep them from driving while drunk. They're
quite sophisticated, requiring frequent testing of the driver's breath while
driving so that they can't have a friend start the car for them. Somewhere
I read the cost of a serious DWI arrest is upwards of $7K in some states
because of legal fees, the cost of interlock kits, fines, etc.
--
Bobby G.