What’s worse than a guy getting ejected from the car during a rollover?
Half a guy getting ejected. :eek:
I don’t know which was more cringeworthy, the idea of this guy doing a Wile E. Coyote splat on an overhead sign, or the newsies yammering THE Five over and over.
Can’t be that bad. There’s no razor wire around the sign poles.
-_-
Don’t even go there.
[Bill Engvall]
Here’s your sign.
[/BE]
What’s wrong with that? That’s where it happened. What are they going to say? ‘The 134’?
His family has started a Go Fund Me for $50,000.
Facebook is being rather brutal about it
I’m no expert, but I thought the seatbelt pretensioners were supposed to prevent you from hitting the airbag face first? I keep hearing about broken noses or broken ribs from being too close to the airbags when they go off. If the belt doesn’t pull you back, is it possible for the airbag to drive your nose bone (septum?) up into your brain, killing you anyway?
Also, am I the only one old enough here to have the misfortune of being in high school when they showed those horrible films like Red Asphalt? Ugh. Those nasty things are STILL imprinted on my brain, 30 years later. And yes, I wear my seatbelts.
That program that sells surplus military gear to local law enforcement also sells ack-ack guns to gangs? I didn’t know that; ignorance fought!
No no no.
The local ack ack armed cops told him to get on the ground and he didn’t comply.
They’re supposed to keep you mostly upright so you hit the bags with your face and chest, not at an angle and on the top of your head. This is why most carmakers strongly caution against children and people under a certain height in front seats, against sitting too far back from the dashboard, and against letting your seatbelt hang loose. There are often deaths from broken necks in what would be otherwise survivable (sometimes easily survivable) accidents because a small person swings too far forward before the bag fires.
Seatbelts by themselves do a lot to increase survival, but in modern cars their secondary purpose is to help the airbags do the best job they can.
I was on my phone and headed out the door to dinner last night, so I could not take the time to explain in detail. I’m back now so read on.
GJ pretty much nailed it.
Well you could start by quoting the correct post…
As far as my credentials go, I have started teaching SRS system for a car maker (Volvo) in 1992, and I actually edited both the classroom textbook as well as the world wide design and function section of the electronic repair manual. I have taught probably 1000-1500 technicians design, function, repairs and maintenance of airbag systems
You want to know what an airbag does to an unbelted occupant? It saves their life in a frontal collision is the correct answer. Look at the name of the system, SRS Supplemental Restraint System. Supplemental to what? Seat belts. Seat belts save lives so why is a supplemental system needed? Well at the time SRS systems were being developed, very few people wore seat belts, and there were no mandatory seat belt laws, so the government mandated that the car makers come up with a supplemental restraint system to save the people that did not wear a belt. The first airbag equipped car I rode in was a 1975, airbags were required in 10% of the new cars sold in 1987, and the mandatory seat belt law came along for most states in the 1990-91 years as the states would lose federal highway funding if they did not pass mandatory seat belt usage laws. Before airbags people went through windshields, now they walk away. (side note: do you know how they take glass out of your face? They rub cotton across your face and use tweezers when it snags. According to a buddy of mine that had the privilege of having that procedure done to his face, it feels like coarse steel wool and vice grips. Talk about a believer in seat belts, he won’t even back out of this garage without one.)
In two words, mostly no. First off not all pre-tensioners are pyrotechnic. some are mechanical. Secondly the pre-tensioner does nothing to put you anywhere in relationship to the steering wheel or dashboard or anything else inside the car. You are correct that it does rapidly tighten the belt. What the pre-tensioner is designed to do is to remove slack from the seat belt assembly. When the pre-tensioner deploys you have not yet begun to move forward, the pre-tensioner pulls up between 2-4" of belt with about 20-25 lbs of force. This does nothing to put you in the right relationship to the car, it just keeps you from taking a running start at the seatbelt. A loose seat belt is bad. Bad on toast. More on this in a bit.
Sigh. As I said above, the SRS systems were developed to save an unbelted occupant, so most of the scare wording above is wrong. Let’s go over it line by line, mkay?
You aren’t flying full speed as the car has not stopped yet. The car is still crumpling as you come out of the seat, so you and the car together cannot exceed the speed you were traveling before the accident. Also you won’t go into the steering wheel or the dash because there is an airbag in the way.
Seriously? Do you really believe that? Is this how you think an airbag inflates? The airbag does NOT stay inflated. It goes up and deflates when you hit it. This is what it is designed to do. You are not a volleyball. While it is much more violent a better comparison would be going ass first into a bean bag chair. You plop your ass into a bean bag, the bag deforms around your body and you sink into it. Same with the airbag except it is your face and the speeds are much greater.
Again, the car has not stopped at the time you have hit the airbag. You are NOT going the previous speed of the car. You are going much slower as A) the car has not stopped yet and B) the crumpling of the car to this point has absorbed a percentage of the energy.
No they won’t. Jeez. You are not hitting a solid sheet of steel where your body stops, but your organs don’t. Think of it this way. The airbag gives way and deflates in a controlled manner to bring you to a safe stop. the solid steed plate doesn’t. Furthermore If I point a knife at you and push with say 20 lbs or force I can push then knife right into your belly. If on the other hand I hold my palm up and push your belly with the same 20 Lbs of force, not much happens except you get pissed at me touching you. What is the difference? The area of contact. The knife has a very small area of contact, my palm has comparatively a very large area of contact. This is what an airbag does, it spreads the impact over a large area. The human body can absorb a huge amount of punishment if it is spread over time, or area. Seat belts and airbags spread the deceleration over time, and airbags also spread it over area.
Agreed.
More about seat belts and airbags (boring and technical, so skip if you wish)
As seat belt is made of woven nylon fibers that when in an accident, stretch and break absorbing energy. The seat belts is designed to ride low across the hips and up across the chest. when you are thrown forward the belt starts to stretch as you move forward, this stretching slows your body over time. You would be amazed at the how much the belt can stretch. I saw a picture of a crash dummy in a 47 MPH barrier crash taken in the middle of the accident. The rear wheels of the car were off the ground, and the passenger dummy was folded double with his chest against his thighs, to absorb the energy. the belt was tight before the run. That was how much the belt stretched. :eek: Also seat belts are a use it once and replace it item. In a wreck? Replace the belt.
The reason for pre-tensioners is to keep you from taking a running start at the seat belt. A seat belt is designed to stretch with you as you move forward, not to let you have a running start and then hit the belt. If the belt is loose, you will take a running start at it and then your organs will experience a shock load as you hit the belt. Also there is an excellent the belt will ride up across your stomach and all those soft organs get squished. In technical terms this is called not good. This is the reason for pre-tensioners, to pull up the slack. Try this experiment: after driving for 30 minutes or so tomorrow grab your shoulder belt and pull toward the B-pillar. Your belt was an inch or two loose wasn’t it? That slack is what the pre-tensioner removes. This get worse in winter with heavy clothes.
An airbag deployment goes like this:
10ms limit for triggering the SRS system has been reached you are still in your seat.
20ms pre-tensioner has fired, airbag is starting to unfold. Your lazy ass is still in the seat.
25ms or so, pretensioner has finished taking up the slack, you are still in the seat.
30ms you are finally starting to move forward out of the seat, airbag mostly inflated.
50ms your face is planted into the airbag and it is deflating (bout time you lazy so and so ;))
120ms you are moving back into your seat
200ms bag is fully deflated. You are upright wondering WTF happened.
I hope this answers your questions. If not feel free to ask.
Absolutely a superb advertisement, thank you. Ads like that come not just from talent, but the confluence of talent and a unique moment of inspiration that leads to sheer genius.
I’ve now added it to my collection of all-time great commercials and video shorts. This is interesting:
… initially only shown in the local Sussex area, the short film became an international phenomenon after it was distributed on the internet, through social networking sites and YouTube, gaining over a million views in its first two weeks. By 13 February 2010 it had reached 129 different countries, was the 5th top rated video that month on YouTube and was the most top rated YouTube film of all time in the education category. The film achieved the highest rating of No. 8 Top Rated (All Time) film on YouTube, and as of 27 March 2013 it has had over 16,599,000 views. The film has been praised for its beauty and its emotional impact.
Well, the family does have a history of reaching for the sky.
Just to be persnickety, I’ll offer a counterexample.
A family friend was on a business trip in Turkey, when the car he was riding in was hit head-on by a truck coming the other way (driving down the middle of the road, with no lights on). The other occupants of the car were killed. He was not belted in, and was thrown clear, and survived.
Admittedly, he may have wished he hadn’t at times: you see, being a foreigner, he was evidently automatically charged for the accident (never mind he was not even DRIVING the car) and spent some time in a jail until his employers pulled major strings to get him out.
To this day he will not wear seatbelts (and in his case I can’t entirely blame him).
That said: I always belt in. “thrown-from-car-so survived” accidents are a lot rarer than “buckled-in-so-survived” ones. I’ve been in one of the latter sort (Typo Knig has been in two of them).
The one we were both in, one of the kids in the car that hit us had not been buckled in until about a mile earlier. Had something not said in his mind “getting to a winding bit of road, better fasten it”, he would likely not have walked away from it.
As it was, the only thing ruined was our evening plans - 10th anniversary dinner wound up being from Domino’s :D.