Had 2 friends not wearing seat belts t-boned, one broken hip, 1 minor injuries, Officer said if they had a seat belt on they would be dead, had a friend rear ended, air bags did not go off until they were slammed into the car in front of them. In front end collisions no doubt they are great, but not all collisions are front end.
In the stations I worked for, there was a strict firewall between traffic (the guys who sell ad time) and news. Advertisers did not get special treatment, period, and anyone who gave it to them would have been fired. Thatâs not to say that this is always the case at every station (especially these days as media ethics continue to fall by the wayside) but in general, the reporter in the field is not going to be thinking about keeping advertisers happy.
Somewhere not long ago, and I think I posted it somewhere on CarTalk forums, I read that one year of Honda Odyssey had never had a driver fatality. I think it was around 2010 or so, but cannot remember.
That is totally amazing to me.
Clearly seat belts and air bag in that year of Honda Ody. worked flawlessly for the drivers. I am not accepting the possibility that none of them were in wrecks.
The article, wherever it was, did not tell how many passengers died.
These are the oddball stories that have nothing to do with the overall benefit of seat belts. Yes, if you KNEW you were going to have a 1 in 1000 type of accident, then sure, take off the belt. But NOBODY can know this, and 999 time out of 1000 youâre much better off with a seatbelt on.
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âŠbecause the air bags are designed to work in conjunction with the seat belts. Those who donât wear a seat belt shouldnât expect the air bags to save their lives.
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I also wonder how much that particular officer knew about safety engineering, making me wonder if he is a certified expert or if he was just talking out of his tailpipe. Itâs pretty amazing how some cops are highly trained professionals and some are people whose conclusions seem to lack any merit at all.
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Everybody knows somebody who had an Aunt Mitilda who smoked three packs a day, drank gin all day and lived to be 103. Most of us who did that would go to an early grave. Same with accidents, some look pretty simple but have horrific injuries, some that look like no one could survive have people out of the hospital in a few days. I have given up on trying to figure out how accidents unfolded, I look at them and just cannot figure many of them out. Specially trained police do the accident reconstruction and are the experts, only larger departments have them.
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I donât know that getting tboned is that oddball of an accident. The constraint properties of a seat belt is not a good thing if you get broadsided, how side impact airbags would improve your odds I do not knowâŠ
"In one study it was found that although side impact collisions occur about 25% of all crashes, 40% of those side impact crashes resulted in serious injuries to the occupants."
http://www.robertkreisman.com/side-impact-car-accidents.html
I am not saying I do not support seat belts, but they are not always a savior.
Why would it be better to not be belted, and fly around the interior, into a passenger, etc? I donât see how belts hurt in a side crash.
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@texases because the seat belt holds you in place in a tbone, thus crushed to death more or less, while no seat belt allows you an opportunity to move sideways, Just saying my friends I know, nothing more than anecdotal, but certainly not as bad as a drunken friend on a cycle that crossed the median and ran smack on into a semi, he lived but never walked without a cane or much pain again.
With most vehicles having bucket seats and consoles where in the world are you going to move sideways to
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Without a seat belt if the side impact occurred on the passenger side the drivers head would come to rest comfortably on the passenger door (like a watermelon out a 3rd story window).
What model year car was in the accident you described?
Donât recall the models but the years were 78 and 82 I think @texases though about 4 years ago a worker bud got tboned, do not know if he was wearing his seat belt but suffered significant injuries, died of cancer last year so I cannot ask him. Imagine the earlier were bench seats but not sure.
I donât think most people can react as quickly as you apparently can
Iâll take my chances, and buckle up every time
It was not a matter of reaction or anything but the fact the seat belt would have locked them in killing them, squashed like a judybug in spring in the side impact collision, not looking for a fight, just an anecdotal story about 2 friends that would have died, nothing more nothing less. 
And as noted previously I am not in defiance of seat belt use just pointing out they may not be the cure for every solution.
Thatâs what I thought, @Barkydog - 1978-1982 were hardly good times for crash safety. A car built since 2000 would be much safer in a side impact. Stories of crashes from 35 years ago donât have much to do with current cars.
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Most cars today have side intrusion protection that cars from 30 years ago did not have. Anecdotal stories aside, the design of cars today and the statistics PROVE that wearing a seat-belt is safer than not. Having an airbag is safer than not.
When I hear people complain that their airbag did not deploy in a rear end or side crash (until the front of the car hit something) I think to myself that the airbag worked perfectly. Front airbags DO NOT DEPLOY unless the car decelerates rapidly, as happens in a front end crash. A rear end collision causes a rapid ACCELERATION, which the airbag CORRECTLY reads as non-deployment condition. When the car then hits the vehicle or obstacle in front of it the airbag then senses the DECELERATION and deploys. Side impacts should trigger any side airbags but, again, the front airbags should not deploy unless the front of the car hits something.
My anecdotal evidence strongly supports both seat-belts and airbags as both my sister (high speed collision with a tree) and ex-wife (high speed, head on collision with a Suburban) survived high energy crashes with little more than bruises. My daughter survived a side and front impact in her Chevy Aveo (death trap) this past October with nothing more than a bump on her head while wearing her seat-belt. Her airbag deployed and the car was a complete loss. She walked away. On the flip side, there have been two recent crashes near me with unbelted drivers and passengers where people have died.
Lastly, when police officers make statements like âshe never would have survived if she was wearing a seat beltâ or other such sweeping, emotional, generalizations, that does NOT make those statements true. How does the officer KNOW that the seat-belt would have killed the person? They donât. They are making stuff up in the heat of the moment.
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+1
Side impact protection on modern cars, along with high-strength steel, âcrush zonesâ, front, side, and side-curtain airbags mean that being subjected to a collision in a recently-built vehicle will almost surely have a different outcome as compared to what happened in a car manufactured without any of those safety advantages.
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Not to mention âsoftâ interiors.
Iâd guess that most of us remember and have owned cars with a STEEL dashboard with NO padding! My first car had one! You smack that baby in an accident and its gonna leave a mark!