"Robert Green" wrote in
:

"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

Definitely worth a click.


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.