You’ve got a fresh haircut, best shirt and ray-bans. Tooling down the highway. Radio blasting Wolfman Jack and a Lucky Strike, comfortably hanging from your lip. *Your arm is resting on the rolled down car window, on a nice spring day. * Coolest cat on the highway. https://goo.gl/images/3Wosm8
A truck passes you. Suddenly there’s blood everywhere and most of your arm is gone. You’re in shock and manage to drive for help.
Accidents like that appeared regularly in papers during my childhood. I knew a guy in my hometown that lost an arm in the late fifties. He tied a tourniquet from a piece of his shirt and drove to the hospital. AFAIK he’s still alive and still smoking Lucky Strike. He always said Boy what don’t fucking kill me makes me stronger. He was one tough old SOB, ex marine. Really liked him. But, I never got hooked on smoking cigarettes.
You didn’t have to shove your whole arm out the window. Resting your arm in the window sill was enough. Does look cool with the shades.
This was common too. Especially to flick ash off your cigarette without ash flying into your face. I’ve rode wuth family that did this. Their arm was only out the car for a few seconds. https://goo.gl/images/jeiBpK
Oddly enough, I haven’t heard of bikers getting clipped like this. Their arm and leg is exposed. They just get run over.
I haven’t seen news stories about car window amputation in decades.
I don’t know how common this ever was, but I think it’s safe to say that far less people drive around with their windows down these days, since even the cheapest cars and the most utilitarian pickups today are likely to have air conditioning, and also because people are far less likely to be smoking.
I doubt it was ever a “thing.” A rare freak accident maybe. Within the last week or so I opened a link I knew better than to open and saw a similar recent accident. Someone was driving through a gas station parking lot with his arm out the window and clipped another car. The arm wasn’t completely off but pretty close.
Really bad driving has to be a factor in most of these types of injuries. I’d think you’d have to be very close and have your arm pretty far out for something like that to happen. If the OP’s memories are reliable, perhaps the reason for the reduction is that modern cars are more rounded. Two modern cars would have to pass really close to each other for an arm to get ripped off. Older cars were more box shaped, and thus the arm would stick out more.
I saw a vid recently on liveleak at a gas station person had their car door open, other guy drives by with arm hanging out the window. It had an after picture where his hand was amputated but I’m guessing they were prob able to reattach it.
Not an arm, but there was also a story recently with a Russian model partying in the car with her boyfriend I think. Hanging out the car naked, she is struck by a road sign and killed though I don’t think there was an amputation. This was caught on film as well.
If all one is doing is resting one’s arm on the window frame, I can’t see any possible way the arm could be severed without the side of the car being destroyed as well. Also, I don’t remember this being a “thing”. In fact, I can’t remember reading or hearing about even a single case.
I know someone whose college football career was cut short from losing an arm like this. The car he was in was sideswiped by another vehicle. It was pretty big news here at the time. His life took a serious downturn after that and ended up in jail.
Why would anyone think this would be an urban legend? Accidents happen all the time, but only rarely does it get reported what specific injuries occurred. Usually the accidents themselves aren’t even news.
I think it’s not that people think it’s an urban legend, but that it sounds like something that would rarely occur. A freak accident, in other words. (In grade school, though, the bus driver always yelled at us if we stuck out arms out of the bus windows, for exactly this reason. He also got annoyed if you wrote your name in the condensation on the window.)
I couldn’t think of the right search term last night.
Google sideswipe amputation. Articles. Not images.
I don’t see a lot of recent cases. I was pretty sure the number had dropped significantly since my childhood.
People use AC, Car shape is different
The old 2 lane state highways were much narrower. I can remember sections with almost no shoulder. Highway 167 is the main route from south Arkansas to Little Rock. It’s been widened several times. They finally have most of it 4 lane except for a 25 mile section and it’s under construction.
I’m surprised something this grisly has been forgotten.
My mom would never allow me to ride with my arm resting in the window. Never.
Never heard of anyone losing an arm just from dangling it out the car window. However, I did have an acquaintance in college who was touring Europe; he stuck his head out of the top hatch of a bus to take pictures, when the bus went under a low bridge and decapitated him. :eek: That one’s confirmed.
