We’ve probably all seen news stories or heard anecdotes in which drunk passengers/drivers survive an accident in which sober peoplet are killed. The common explanation is that the more relaxed you are on impact, the more likely you are to survive. I’ve also heard this is true for people who fall asleep (and presumably don’t wake up just before impact), as well as for sleepwalkers and inebriated people who fall down stairs.
Is there any truth to this theory? How would having relaxed muscles improve your chances of survival? If my neck is relaxed, for instance, am I less likely to break it? How would that work? If the theory is sound, it would be nice if we were wired to go limp in the millisecond before disaster, kind of a fight-or-flight-aw-screw-it reaction.
I admit I’m not well-versed enough in either physics or anatomy to figure this out on my own.
THIS article seems to think so.
what’s a safer posture for falling than curling one’s back and tucking one’s chin in? there was one story in reader’s digest about a skydiver whose parachute failed to open. he set his body for the “five impact points” taught to him. he said must have done it right since all five points on his body were broken. he fully recovered.
IIRC, what actually happens is that such people are less prone to suffer injury, but more prone to death. Chemically relaxed muscles can help you avoid getting torn muscles and such, but it also means that you’re more prone to bleed to death when your blood vessels fail to clamp down hard enough.
It depends on the the amount of force involved and the exact stress being applied to the body. But often being relaxed helps because you will flex with the impact instead of resisting and having things tear.
I’ve read that men and women also vary in the damage they take from impacts for the same reason; women are somewhat more flexible and will bend instead of break under some circumstances; under others they’ll take worse injuries because something flexes and tears where on a man it would resist injury by not flexing as far (and men have stronger muscle attachments to the bones). An exception being knees; women tend to lock their knees while standing more than men, and are therefore more prone to knee injuries when their knee fails to flex when struck.