I drive a 2006 Dodge Stratus. A couple of days ago, I was in an accident. I attempted to stop at a yellow light and the Chevy Silverado behind me did not. Impact ensued. Both vehicles were damaged, but my car, being outweighed by a ton or so, came out with the bulk of the crunching. However, the car took the hit and my son and I (and the occupants of the Silverado) are fine. The insurance adjuster has not inspected my car yet.
At the moment of impact, my seat (driver’s seat with six-way electronic adjustment) moved considerably during the impact. When my car came to rest, I had to lean forward to reach the accelerator pedal and steering wheel in order to maneuver the car to a safe stopping point. The seat was nowhere close to where I normally set it. The front passenger seat, occupied by my adult son, also moved. In fact, it will no longer adjust front-to-back. (It does not have power seat adjustment.)
So, my question: is so much seat movement normal or acceptable in a collision? I have no idea what the speed differential was between the two vehicles, though it would not surprise me if it were 40mph or more. (The stop light was on a highway – SH71 Westbound at SH130 Northbound access road, if you’re familiar with Austin.) The weight differential was considerable, but not like I was hit by an 18-wheeler. Everything in the little cubby holes on the dashboard was knocked out by the impact. Should I be upset with Chrysler for a shoddy product or did the seat movement help minimize injuries?
I would guess that seats are far more anchored against forward movement than backwards, and am unsurprised that a hard rear-ender would drive the seat back.
Does it adjust normally now? Or is the track/seat damaged or deformed somehow?
I was rear-ended hard in a 1979 Mustang and the driver’s seat bent back around 10 degrees, a permanent deformation I had to correct with different seatback settings. (Insurance did not pay to replace it.)
What moved? The seat bottom moved fore/aft, or did the seat back recline a bit?
If it is the seat back reclining a bit that could be part of a designed anti whiplash system designed by Volvo back in the 1990s.
Read your owner’s manual for more info.
If I had to venture a guess I’d say the impact was bad enough to deform the floorpan of the car, which is what the seat bolts to. no car can offer complete protection in all kinds of crashes.
Yes, but not stopping is a good way to get a ticket. When I was learning to drive, I was told in no uncertain terms that it is a violation if you are still in the intersection when the light goes red. The purpose of the yellow is to warn you to stop if you have not entered the intersection. Some slack is cut for people making left turns.
Of the three tickets I have received in my 60 years of driving, one was for exactly that. The light was yellow when I entered the intersection, but had turned red before I was out of it.
Well, ideally it shouldn’t really be normal at all and I hate to be that guy, but Dodge has never exactly been accused of being at the top of anyone’s list of manufacturers with stellar build quality or high safety ratings. I’ve been around enough Dodge/Chrysler vehicles both with friends and family and known of all kinds of safety-related issues stemming from their knack for so-so engineering and below average build quality. And that’s putting it pretty nicely.
In short, no, it is not normal for your seats to behave like that after a relatively low speed rear impact that hasn’t devastated the rest of the collision-absorbing parts of the car and yes, you should be disappointed with Chrysler.
It may be normal, but building up statistics from accidents is what they do. So every report is worthwhile. The page looked pretty easy, though you need your VIN number and the actual report, minus identifying information, is publicly available.
Oh, the Dark Days, eh? And I just fell off the turnip truck, right? Wanna swap stories?
I was there during a particularly dark day when a Chrysler product spontaneously fell out of park due to a faulty brake shift transmission interlock and rolled down my driveway into the street, potentially hurting or killing someone and causing significant property damage. Not to mention countless other mechanical problems, safety recalls, and failures to disclose engineering issues to me, friends and family members who owned Dodge products (both during the “Dark Days” and otherwise) that I’ve never even HEARD of on other cars. Things that sound like they should have been manufacturing defects half a century ago. Thankfully there’s a Dodge apologist here to show me the error of my ways.
Drum God, I stand corrected as I speak from a position of complete ignorance both as a former Dodge owner and as someone who’s been through some pretty rough situations in other non-Dodge vehicles where my seats did not behave this way. I would like to say the seats in your Dodge Stratus coming loose and behaving strangely is perfectly safe and absolutely normal behavior [for a Dodge product], and completely acceptable in a low speed crash. Just imagine how great they’d have performed for you if the crash were even worse!
This is me being facetious by the way; any sensible person with a modicum of experience dealing with cars will tell you this is not normal, whether they’re Dodge apologists or not. Following rbroome’s advice and filing an incident report with the NHTSA is not a terrible idea either.
look, the OP doesn’t even know how hard his/her car was hit. like I already said, no car on the market can be rigid protection for every possible type of crash. OP said it might have been at 40 mph which is not “low speed.” You swooped in to shit on a lot of people who (IME) are more than competent engineers (when I say I was “there” for the Dark Days of Daimler, I mean I had a desk located in Auburn Hills, MI.) Yes, from about 2005-2010 a lot of Chrysler group cars were, shall we say, less than perfect. but that wasn’t because their engineers weren’t competent. It was because of malicious mismanagement from Stuttgart (you know, those people we all assume are the best automotive engineers because their cars are really expensive.)
Damage to the seat attachment mechanism is completely normal and expected. It is designed to be damaged and absorb energy so that it does not travel to the soft human tissues and damage them.
Anamnesis, sorry but your extensive and tragic experience being a dodge owner doesn’t really qualify you as an authority in the subject. What you went through is your experience, but is just anecdotal.
Also the seat belts are anchored to the frame of the vehicle, and are designed to withstand the weight/inertia of an occupant plus the weight of the seat itself (which is considerably less than an average adult). The seats can only weight so much otherwise the occupant would get crushed between them and the seat belt in a front-end collision. Plus modern seats are, you know, padded and soft, like rear facing airbags.
Huh. This is definitely not true in Chicago, at least with red light cameras. You only get a ticket if you enter the intersection when the light is red. (Cite at the FAQ.) The Illinois Rules of the Road similarly only says that you may not enter the intersection on a red light, but nothing about a yellow or clearing an intersection on a red. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something that varies by state or municipality. (It would be madness driving in Chicago if you got a ticket in the intersection when the light was still red. There’s plenty of intersections with no protected left turn signal and if you were not allowed to go into the intersection and complete your turn after the light turns red and the traffic stops, you would never be able to make that left turn.)
[QUOTE=Illinois Drivers manual]
Yellow light
— The yellow light warns that the signal is changing from
green to red. When the red light appears, you may not enter the intersec-
tion
[/QUOTE]
If you were in MA you would earn a ticket
[QUOTE=Massachusetts Drivers Manual]
Steady Yellow
A steady yellow light means the traffic signal is changing from green to red.
You must stop if it is safe. If you are already stopped at an intersection or a
stop line, you may not proceed.
[/QUOTE]
Chicago did go to the shortest yellow lights in the country so if you see a yellow you better be very close to the line, if you are a few car lengths behind accelerating isn’t going to get you across the line before the red
Quote:
Originally Posted by Beauregard Porkypine View Post
“I attempted to stop at a yellow light”
As a side note, this is a very good way to cause a crash.
No it isn’t. A yellow light means "stop."
No, it does not. A Red means stop. If Yellow meant “Stop” it would be completely redundant to the red. Why would you possibly need both signals that mean exactly the same thing?
A steady yellow displays that the signal is “preparing” to turn red. There is a “Point of no return” area before an intersection where a vehicle cannot stop safely before the intersection. Therefore, it is best to continue at your current speed through the intersection, but be cautious as you pass
through. The higher the speed limit at the intersection the longer a yellow light should display its warning. A car traveling towards the intersection at the speed limit of 45 mph is traveling right at 66 feet per second. An average reaction time of 1.5 seconds means the car will travel 99 feet as the driver reacts to the light changing. The car will take approximately 60 feet to stop from 45 mph. So, reaction distance plus stopping distance is going to be around 160 feet. If you are within 160 feet of the intersection when the light turns yellow you should proceed through with caution and the length of the yellow light should be adjusted to the speed limit to allow this.
Imagine if there were no steady yellow warning display; just red and green. Intersections would be much more dangerous.
Right. But, there’s clearly a point at which a car, approaching a signal that turns yellow, will decide to slow down and stop rather than keep going through. If I decide that I’m not going to make it well into the intersection before the light changes to red (or maybe I see that traffic on the other side of the intersection is stopped and thus I’d be stuck in the intersection not moving when the light turns red), I will come to a stop. Yes, if I don’t time it exactly right, there may be a second of me stopped at a yellow. Just because you want to squeak through under the red light doesn’t mean you get to ram me.
In other words, it’s the jerks who ignore the meaning of the yellow light (go through if it’s too late, otherwise slow down) who are at fault in a rear-ending at a light, not the jerks who slow down and prepare to stop at a signal.
I’ve received tickets on two occasions for going through the yellow light and trying to beat the red. Nowadays, if the light has been yellow for more than half a second, I stop, driver behind me be damned.
