\ WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER \ 4 \ Car Seat Belts a re . a ll & gOS. ' quently in an auto accident? or objects inside the c - eent of the doors opened. Of the per- sons killed, 47 per cent were thrown eut. A broad study by Cornell shows - that in injury producing accidents in- ) volying 3,261 cars and 7,337 occu- _ were completely ejected. Two California Highway Patrolmen in nahisuit of a lowbreskor ran ele car off the road to avoid hitting an innocent driver. Both of them stepped out of this total wreck completely uninjured. They both wore seat belts—as do all ealitounia iis cae \ THE CASE — For The use of seat belts in automobil of such protection go back as far as es is not a new idea. Investigations 1941 in Germany, and 1946 or 1947 in this country. Racing and stunt drivers have used them for years. In 1949 Nash offered a belt for its cars, but due to inadequate design and lack of promotion, practically no one bought them. Then in 1951 the Cornell Crash Injury Research Project; an outgrowth of aviation re- search, caught the public fancy with phrases such as “packaging the passenger.” From Cornell, other univ ersities, auto makers and the armed forces came an impressive flow of scientific data advocating belt restraint, which was recognized and approved by the National Safety Council and many other agencies. Recently, articles critical of seat belts have appeared in national maga- zines and newspapers. Some of the An increasing amount of confusion companies operating motor vehicles, existing data has been challenged. is being expressed by individuals, and various groups. Are seat belts good or bad? To the questions about seat belts, TRAFFIC SAFETY presents here the best available answe TS. Q What injuries occur most fre- A Cornell found the following: head and facial, 73 per cent; legs, 4 per cent; chest and thoracic spine, 37 per cent; arms, 30 per cent; abdomen- pelvis and lumbar spine, 16 per cent; neck and cervical spine, 7 per cent. Since these add up to more than 100 per cent, it is obvious that many auto crash victims receive multiple in- juries, usually the head and some other part of the body. N Q Do death causes follow the same order? A No. Head injuries are by far the most important cause of death. Chest and neck injuries rank next. Q What usually causes the injuries? A One cause is ejection, or being thrown out of the car, when you really have two accidents in one. Cornell found that ejection multiplies the risk of dangerous or fatal injury five times. Other important ways of getting hurt are striking the steering in Jenuary, 1958, Roy Campanella, star skidded on a w of t pavement at a spee catcher of the Los puasles Dodgers, 30 m.p.h. and hit a pole. Campy was ~ wedged under the dashboard. His injuries left him fee nantly pardiced from the shoulders down, Note the minor damage done to the vehicle itself, wheel assembly and other surfaces car, and receiv- ing neck injury from the so-ealled whiplash effect of a collision. Q Isn't the possibility of being thrown out exaggerated? A An Indiana State Police study of of actual crashes revealed that 55 per pants, 14 per cent of the occupants ter Campy wes although the other passengers in ee the car ‘on auto accident. This time he was wearing a this case was at least 40 m.p.h., he was unin- Q Isn’t ejection sometimes the lesser of two evils? A Possibly—if you can be sure of sailing out of the car without crack- ing your skull in the process, and of landing in a nice, soft spot. The stat- istics, however, are against you. By statistics you mean the state police studies? A Yes, and to pin it down even more, Cornell used the “paired-com- parison” technique commonly em- ployed in the medical world to evalu- ate the effectiveness of various drugs and therapies. Pairs of cars or people with him, who were not wearing seat sie setpes cee demons Spee iE thet Sees Safety Experts Urge Motorists To Install Car Seat Belts The automobile seat belt is the most effective device for preventing serious injuries and deaths that has been developed in recent years, according to the labour department of the Nations! Safety Council. When cars crash into each other, a tree, or some other object, the driver and -passengers, without seat belts to hold them, fly forward until they hit something solid. They may be thrown out when a door opens and hit the ground or the pavement; or they may stay in the car and be slamimed against the windshield or dashboard. The chances of being killed are five times greater when hurled out of a car than in being thrown around in the car. 60% Safer A seat belt prevents a passenger from being hurled out of the car ‘or banged around in it. Drivers and passengers who wear safety belts are 35 to 60 per cent safer in a car than are people without belts. A seat belt has a distinct advan- tage in case a car catches on fire or is submerged in water after an acci- dent. Since a belt holds a driver or passenger in place in the car, the chances of being knocked uncon- scious and burned to death or drown- ed are greatly lessened. A belt can be instantaneously released by a con- scious person with a flip of the hand. SAE Specifications Oo belts meeting the standards of the Society of Automotive Engin- eers should be purchased. The instal- lation also should be in accordance with the SAE specifications. The only sure way to get full alte from automobile safety belts is to develop the habit of fastening the belt on getting into the car, even before turning on the ignition switch. They are useless unless worn whether going a few blocks or on a long trip. It’s: a fact that most people are killed within 25 miles of their homes. Fur- thermore, belts should be worn whether driving at low or high speeds. Most fatal accidents occur at speeds under 40 miles an hour. Union Members “I urge all union members to equip their cars with safety belts for the protection of themselves, their wives and children,” states Lloyd Utter, vice-president for labour of the Nati- onal Safety Council. “Last year 5,000 men, women and children, many of them members of union families, would not have died in traffic accidents if they had been using a seat belt. Furthermore, many more thousands of members of union families would not have beem hurt or seriously injured.” Under no circumstances are seat belts a substitute for knowing and observing traffic rules and regula- tions. Belts only reduce the possibil- ity of a more serious injury or being killed, but do not ‘brevent an acci- dent. were selected on the basis of similar- ity of accident circumstances. The “control” factor lay in the one and only differen¢ée between them—one had a seat belt, the other did not. Q This was to compare ejection with staying in the car? A Yes, and the study showed that (1) users of seat belts experienced less risk of injury to any degree, in- cluding minor; (2) users had less risk of moderate through fatal grades of injury (requiring expert medical treatment), with a frequency 80 per cent lower than nonusers thrown from the car, and (3) users had 85 per cent less risk of dangerous or fatal injury than the ejected nonusers. While the sample was _ relatively small—46 matched pairs—and the percentages cannot be taken literally, the evidence was clearly in favor of the belt. Q Then why do you read so often about someone who was thrown clear in a crash and walked away without a scratch? A ‘Accidents are unpredictable — often freakish—occurrences. Children have fallen out of fourth-storey win- dows without injury, too. But they usually landed in a flower bed, or on some yielding surface that helped ab- sorb the force. One man on record survived a fall of 145 feet from a chimney without serious injury. The fortunate car occupant had some kind of lucky break like that, because stud- ies of hundreds of accidents show the odds are heavy the other way. Q Then the best thing is to stay in the car? A That’s the packaging theory. The shell of an automobile provides some protection. But the problem is more than that. The occupant must stay in his seat, and the inside of the package must be as Clear as possible of unyielding objects or surfaces. Q Is a lap belt the best way to stay in the seat?” A Not the best, but the most prac- tical at the present time. The lap belt combined «with shoulder and chest harness, like the rig used by military flyers, would be better. But most peo- ple wouldn’t use them because of cost and the nuisance of adjusting and wearing them. The hinged back on the front seat of many cars makes’ shoulder restraint difficult to install, too. “ Q Suppose you stay in the car, How do you get hurt then? A The major causes of injury in- side the car, in the order of import- ance fixed by Cornell, are steer- ing assembly, instrument panel, wind- shield, top portion of the front seat back, door structures, lower portion of front seat back, and front corner posts. Q What happens to rear seat pas- sengers? A They are not as important in the accident studies because there are fewer rear seat passengers, and their chances are somewhat better because of the cushioning effect of the front seat and passengers. They can add to the injury of front seat occupants when hurled against them, however. This points up the importance of hav- ing belts for back seat passengers, too. Q Does a seat belt prevent injury inside the car? A It prevents many injuries and re- duces the severity of others by re- straining the force of the forward motion. It makes many accidents sur- vivable which wouldn't be without a belt. a “minor” her. lathe saddest “story of all is e tty z Shae waight have been. “The woman “dieting this car had seat belts in the car, but they were lying on the seat, unfastened, when collision threw her out of the car. The other car ran over her and killed Q Is there any evidence to prove that? : A Cornell’s paired - comparision study also checked 81 cases where oc- cupants stayed in the car, but one of the matched pair was using belts and the other was not. The study indicat- ed that belt users had less risk of in- jury—minor, moderate or dangerous —than nonusers, with the advantage ranging up to 60 per cent. Q What about the criticism that belts target the head on the dash- ard? ow ° A This theory holds that the belt acts as a hinge, permitting the upper torso to swing forward and down in just about the right arc to strike the ead against the instrument panel. The main things wrong with the theory is that it assumes an alterna- tive would be better—that you might be less seriously hurt if you were per- mitted to hurtle into the windshield, or the top frame, or be catapulted out of the car altogether. This is pure conjecture, and overlooks the value of belts in preventing ejection, in min- or collisions and sudden stops. Even moderate restraint, in changing the path of the body from a straight line to an arc, will decrease the violence of an impact. Q Could it be said that present auto design is not suitable for seat belts? A No, seat belts have again, it’s smart to play the odds. While in some cases belts may in- crease the hazard—if a certain type of accident occurs—in the majority of cases the belts are an advantage. Q Suppose the car doesn’t turn over. Belts don’t always prevent death or injury, do they? A Of course not. One of the most ‘unfair criticisms of seat belts is that implied by a newspaper story of a car demolished in a head-on collision or wrapped around a tree. “The occu- pants were wearing seat belts,’ the account states, with the implication that the belt proved worthless. There will always be accidents so severe that they are not survivable — wit or without belts. Even some research- ers have criticized the performance of belts after crashing cars into im- movable objects at 35 mph. The seat belt is not intended to prevent death or serious injury under such condi- tions Q Not at 35 mph? Most people are driving faster than that when they have an accident. A But fortunately not many of them are head-on crashes with a solid and immovable object. While considerably more than half of the impacts occur in the frontal area, most of them are glancing contacts involving collapsing and yielding metal and continuing that in any vehicle. But much could “he done to make them more effective. Clearance between seat and dash, in- strument panels that are padded and energy-absorbing, removal of pro- truding objects on dash aud doors, better seat mounting, positive door locks, built-in anchorage for belts— those are some of the things that would improve matters without radi- cal changes. Some manufacturers have taken steps in that direction. Q Haven't there been cases where a seat belt has actually caused a death that might not have occurred without it? A Certainly. As an example, one in- volved the rollover of an open-top sports car. But since only about 20 per cent of injury-producing accidents involve rollover, and only a few of these are open-top cars, such deaths do not detract from the overall bene- fits of belts. Ordinarily in rollover ac- cidents, provided there is a top, the belt gives added protection, because doors open more frequently in a roll- over than in any other type. Once tremendously de- creases the forces involved. That’s a lot different than a dead stop against a solid barrier. Q What is the maximum speed for a survivable accident with a belt? A No one can say, because the forces of deceleration vary widely with the circumstances of a particular accident. The force that is at work in an accident is measured in units of gravity, expressed as G. G is the pro- duct of miles per hour squared times the constant of .034 (which translates miles per hour to feet per second) divided by the stopping distance in feet. Suppose a car going 40 mph. comes to an abrupt but controlled stop in 10 feet. The decleration will develop about five G. But suppose the ear hits an immovable object at 40 mph. The crumpling of the front end will result in a stopping distance of, say, one foot, which means the G soars to almost 55. The standard set by the Society of Automotive Engi- neers for the strength of a seat belt is that it must withstand a force of 20 G for a 150-pound man.