As long as people are traveling in and on moving vehicles, they are in a potentially dangerous situation. Occupant restraints reduce this risk and include seatbelts, airbags, safety glass, helmets etc. These inventions have saved many lives and are incorporated into many of our vehicles and laws. Restraints have become more comfortable and some basically invisible like airbags, vehicle control systems and safety glass.

Other restraints require drivers, riders and passengers to take action in order to use. These include wearing seatbelts, helmets and placing young children away from forward airbags. Should you become involved in a severe collision and are injured or die. Your family and friends will also suffer.

b

Why Use Safety Belts?

Please click the play button above to view the video

In the event of a crash, seat belts are your best protection. Not only do they keep you from striking the steering wheel, being thrown around or hitting the windshield, but if your vehicle rolls over it will keep you inside the vehicle where your chances of surviving are greatest. In fact, if you wear your lap belt the chances of you surviving a collision double. When both a shoulder and lap belt are used your chances are three to four times as great.

If your vehicle is equipped with both shoulder and lap belts you are required to use both. Any vehicle that is equipped with airbags also requires the driver and passengers to wear both shoulder and lap belts to reduce the danger of being injured or killed by the airbag.

c

3 Collisions in Every Crash

When a vehicle collides with something, the crash is comprised of 3 collisions. Lets go over these collisions and how seatbelts and other restraints operate to distribute their effect.

Vehicle Collision
The first collision is when the vehicle strikes another vehicle or object. In a frontal collision, the bumper to the beginning of the passenger compartment absorbs some of the impact and dissipates it as energy by bending of metal and crushing of other components. The front of vehicles are designed to crush and absorb as much energy as possible to there is less force the occupants must absorb.

Occupant Collision
The next collision is between the occupants and the interior of the vehicle or restraints. When the initial impact occurs the occupants are still traveling forward the same speed the vehicle was traveling prior to the collision. When unbelted, passengers will slam into the dash, windshield or other occupants.

Internal Collision
An occupant's internal organs keep moving, even after the occupant's body comes to a complete stop. Just like the occupants hitting the interior of the car, your organs collide with bone and other organs. This is the most serious collision and many times causes very serious or fatal injuries.

During a crash, safety belts distribute the forces of a collision over larger and stronger parts of the person's body. The belts also stretch and spread the force over a longer period of time. This significantly reduces the severity of internal collisions and prevents or reduces occupant collisions.

d

Seat Belt Facts

According to NHTSA “In 2006, 63 percent of the 4,842 passenger vehicle occupants age 16 to 20 who were killed were not wearing seat belts.”

Look at the table above. If everyone in the United States wore their seat belts 5 to 6 thousand additional lives would be saved.

e

Who's wearing their seat belts?

• Pickup drivers and passengers are less likely than car drivers and passengers to buckle up. According to the NHTSA, in 2004 of the pickup truck drivers that were killed in traffic crashes, 68% weren't wearing their seat belts.
  
• Front seat passengers don’t wear their safety belts as often as drivers.
  
• Women use safety belts more often than men.
  
• Young Drivers and Passengers have lower safety belt use rates than adults.
  

f

Airbags



In 2004, an estimated 2,647 lives were saved by air bags. From 1987 to 2004, a total of 16,905 lives were saved. The NHTSA estimates that the combination of an air bag in addition to a lap and shoulder belt reduces the risk of serious head injury by 81 percent, compared with 60 percent reduction for belts alone.

Nearly every new car and truck is equipped with air bags. Front impact collisions account for the majority of all passenger vehicle occupant deaths. Buy law, since 1998 all new passenger cars have been required to have driver and passenger air bags in the U.S. Front air bags are designed to reduce head and chest injuries. Front air bags are designed to work with seatbelts and will not restrain an occupant in side or rollover accidents.

g

Air Bags (Continued)

It is important to keep the maximum distance between yourself and the airbag. 10 inches is the minimum distance there should be between your body and an airbag at impact.

Previously designed only for frontal impacts, side impact airbags are now on many new cars and trucks. They protect passengers and drivers in side collisions and help contain occupants during a rollover.

h

Billy Cox and Associates has conducted many crash tests involving airbags to demonstrate their effectiveness and the accident reconstruction techniques used to reconstruct collisions where they had been deployed. In this test Mr. Cox was traveling over 30 miles per hour into a parked vehicle. As you can see is isn't something you would want to do for fun. Most deaths and serious airbag inflation injuries occur when people are positioned incorrectly when the airbags deploy. Typically this is from being too close to an airbag when it inflates.

While Mr. Cox walks away from these tests, they 'er not painless and can leave you stunned from being slapped in the face by an airbag inflating at high speed (some airbags expand at over 200 miles per hour). When an airbag deploys, what looks like smoke, is released. It is regular cornstarch or talcum powder, which is used by the airbag manufacturers to keep the bags pliable and lubricated while they're in storage. Contrary to what many people belive the air bag doesn't use an explosive to deploy, it is actually an extremely fast chemical reaction.

i

Air Bags and Children


Does your child ride in the back seat? The back seat is generally the safest place in a crash. Almost all vehicles are now equipped with airbags. With children 12 and under, there is one general rule: place them in the rear seat! Airbags can severely injure or kill children sitting in the front seat. Besides the rear seat is much safer even if your vehicle isn't equipped with air bags. When a child must be seated in the front seat, move the seat as far back as possible. If your vehicle has a passenger-side air bag, the only place for a rear-facing infant seat to be installed is in the rear seat.

j

Please click the play button above to view the video

MADYMO

This video was taken from a crash simulation program used to analyze the effects of a collision where a car wasn't equipped with airbags and collided with a concrete barrier. The simulation shows the violent effects of the car's impact to a front seat passenger. After the incident the passenger was thought to only have broken a few bones. Unfortunately, severe internal injury to the neck was not discovered until it was too late. If the vehicle had been equipped with airbags these injuries would have been reduced or eliminated by reducing the stress to the body by the seatbelts acting alone.

k

Child Passenger Safety in Texas

Drawings Courtesy of NHTSA

Children should use a booster seat when they are 4–8 Years Old or Older, 40 lbs. to 80–100 lbs., and less than 4 feet 9 inches (57 inches). There are 3 types of booster seats, backless, high back and shield backless. The shield backless is no longer used. This is due to a nearly eight fold increase in serious injury when riding in these seats. Based on studies of the American Academy of Pediatrics, crash tests showed that dummies weighing less than 40 pounds were likely to be ejected, and that babies had greater trauma to their upper body, abdomen, and head

n

Booster Seats

SHOULDER BELT BEHIND BACK	SHOULDER BELT UNDER ARM