OT: Blessings

[Zz Yzx]

Yesterday afternoon, my 16 yo daughter drove off a country road and rolled the Honda Accord 3 times in the irrigation ditch along side the road.

There were two other kids in the car. She and the front passenger walked away with no more than chaffing from the seat belt. The girl in the back seat had some major road rash and a badly bruised arm and wrist. No broken bones, no stitches. Had there been a kid in the left rear seat, they would have died.

Other people on the road stopped and helped. The hurt girl was bleeding badly, and one man stuck his arms through the broken window to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. She came home from the emergency room last night.

The Great Woodworker was looking after my family yesterday.

-Zz

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Glad is was not any worse. Seatbelts sure help.

Here is CT they are looking into taking drastic measures to minimize teen driving accidents. Quite a few deaths in the past year that could have been easily prevented just by following the laws. .

[rich]

No injuries =3D a good lesson. Give your daughter a big hug and tell her you love her. You can probably skip the yelling about the car. You could always be creative, and mount the seat belt on a nice wooden plaque for her birthday as a gift.

[Swingman]

Every parent's nightmare. I'm still shuddering thinking about the OP's experience.

While I adamantly agree, it's tragic that sometimes it's just the opposite.

My youngest went to a funeral for one of her sorority sisters last Friday morning. The young lady, who they'd just pledged the very afternoon of the accident, was burned to death because she could not get out of the seat belt after the car rolled and caught fire. The driver boyfriend, not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown out and survived, although it appears he will be paralyzed for life.

A car, to most of the young folks driving today, is a god given right/accessory, not considered any more dangerous than a cell phone or iPod. Just watching them drive on the freeways around here, you come to the inescapable conclusion that most have no concept whatsoever that a moments inattention, in a machine that can kill you, often will ... or someone else.

The carnage that I witnessed on almost every trip as a kid, on our mostly two lane highways back then, still has me driving cautiously. And if that wasn't enough, in Driver's Ed in those days they also showed horror flicks of terrible wrecks, complete with blood and gore, at every opportunity during the course.

... what do you wanna bet that no longer is the case because it would damage the self esteem of the coddled little yuppie puppies of today?

[Lee Michaels]

"Swingman" wrote

Where I grew up, there was tourists each summer with a lot of deer. The damn tourists would crash into rock walls or drive over cliffs trying to avoid hitting the deer. They almost always hit the deer and killed their families in the process.

I learned early, if a deer jumps in front of the car, hang on tight to the steering wheel. Slow down and take a big thump on the front of the vehicle. And DO NOT swerve and kill everybody in the car.

You would think that they would cover this in drivers ed. But it is probably politically incorrect to kill Bambi.

I will always remember that awful visual of the guy thrown from a high speed wreck and hitting a chain link fence. A considerable amount of his flesh and soft tissue was forced through the chain link fence. All the bones stayed on the other side of the fence. At least a quarter or third of him was strained through that wire mesh. I can still see it to this day.

And yes, I am very careful while driving. I lost a number of friends over the years who never did grasp the idea of driver safety.

[joeljcarver]

If he really was looking after --- the crash wouldn't have happened in the first place.

That said, I'm glad that no one suffered any real damage, and I hope your daughter grows up to be an outstanding woman.

[Fred the Red Shirt]

They covered it when I took drivers' ed and I cannot count the number of times I have read or heard the advice "Do not swerve to avoid hitting an animal".

A deer, horse, cow or other large, heavy and TALL animal, however, can crash through the windshield and kill the occupants. So those cases are a tough decision that has to be made without any time to think.

The best strategy is probably as you suggest. Braking may give the animal time to get out of the way, and if not, will reduce the force of the impact.

[Fred the Red Shirt]

Evidently it is not uncommon for the force of an accident to damage the seat belt buckle so that it will not release.

There are emergency extraction tools sold that include a seat belt cutter. I have one small enough to go on a keychain. I keep it tied to the parking brake release instead.

are large variations designed as a hammerlike multitool, but those could not as easily be secured close at hand

--

FF

[Robatoy]

Wanna talk about the yuppies' little crotchfruit on skateboards...at dusk, dressed in dark clothes and no lights? How about their little Snowflake on a bicycle flying out of side streets and then giving ME a dirty look because I gave them a little Italian Airhorn?? Two very brave(stupid) ones, on skate boards, gave me finger once and were soooo surprised to find me parked in front of the house where one of them lived. They left little tornadoes, (a la cartoon style departure), on take-off. Very funny to watch. I could almost hear that Yogy Bear gunshot take-off sound.

r

[Robatoy]

Excellent. Nothing teaches like a close call. It teaches safety and an appreciation for your brood.. a signal to enjoy them to the max while they are still with you.

I got a phone call at my office...15 years ago.. that my oldest was hit from behind by a car. She had been on her bicycle. The cop told me where it had happened so I had a bit of a feel that it wasn't minor. Cars go pretty fast under that overpass. That is ALL he would tell me. He told me what hospital she was in, and I quickly made a call to get some details. They wouldn't tell me either. That was the longest 25 minute drive of my life. I made a lot of promises to God, my kid and myself during that 25 minutes. I think I'm doing pretty good at keeping most of them. I caved on the beer thing.. I just wasn't thinking straight at the time. A little bruised, a bump on the back of her head. She had been thrown over the car that hit her, but landed just right. I became a different dad that day.

r

[Robatoy]

A client of mine gently rolled his Volvo into a field. I say gently, because the road was elevated with rather steep banks. It was a gravel road, and he swerved a bit and slammed on his brakes and drifted to the side of the road where the car just barely rolled onto the roof. Surprisingly little damage, just some cosmetic sheet metal. All the glass even survived. So I asked him about that rather nasty bump on his bald head. He told me that happened after the accident. When he undid his seatbelt. Way funnier if you knew the man, a psychiatrist of about 5 foot tall, with a huge proboscis and then with a egg-sized bump on his head.

Guess you had to be there.

[Bonehenge (B A R R Y)]

Glad to hear everyone's OK.

My wife's 16 year old cousin + 1 were killed 4 weeks ago last night in a car crash.

Both kids were honor students who didn't drink or drug. Her cousin, the driver, wasn't a daredevil. He broke 'em off on me for flying and sea kayaking, because "that's dangerous!" The kid's best friends were his dad and a priest. He was truly the last kid you'd ever expect to screw around, but he was still a 16 year old in a car.

Give your kid a hug and make sure she knows what could have been.

[NoOne N Particular]

I remember an incident in my youth involving a deer. My next door neighbor had just taken possession of a new 1964 (I think) Ford with the HP 390 and a four speed stick. He got it as an insurance settlement for his other car that he had loaned to a friend, and this friend was killed in it when he left the road at an estimated 120 mph.

Anyway, we were driving home one night from a work site that was a couple of hundred miles from where we lived. We had to drive through some forested land we came to a "straight" section of the road. Just about the time he topped 100 mph, we saw a deer standing in the middle of the highway. He (my friend, not the deer) stood on the brakes and the car started leaving two loooooong strips of black rubber on the road. These two strips started separating into four strips as the car started to turn sideways. I can remember seeing the deer passing in front of the windshield in slow motion as the car skidded past it. It seems as though we were so close that there must have been some deer hair stuck on the front of the car somewhere but we didn't see any.

Fortunately for us, we were on the straightest part of the road for miles around and the car finally came to a stop. Nothing or no one hurt. The rest of the trip home was quite a bit slower. And with two pairs of VERY soiled shorts it was also a LOT smellier. But ever since then I am much more watchful and careful in forested areas.

Wayne

[Leon]

I believe that the "Great Woodworker" felt that there was a lesson to be learned. He was kind enough to let the young'ens walk away with a healthy new respect of what can happen.

[Leon]

Absolutely correct.

[George]

I've cut three dead from seatbelts. AFTER prying apart the metal with jaws to get to them. All but one of the free-fallers have perished. Wear 'em, and buckle those kids in the back seat in a proper carseat as well. Can remember few finer feelings after digging a snow tunnel and looking inside a car than seeing two kids and momma calming each other upside down in their belts.

Saved my daughter last spring.

[Leon]

Well sometimes we don't always understand why things happen. It happened for a reason as does every thing else.

[George]

Two fatalities from deer in the face in my experience. Too many wrecks attributed to "swerving to avoid a ... to count. It's almost like having that third beer. Hardly ever booked a drunk who has more than a "coupla beers."

Brake and center is the way. We have brush guards on our vehicles, and I have taken on one directly and still made it to the cardiac. Have also had one that nearly caused a cardiac in my partner when the deer ran into the side door of the rig.

[Fred the Red Shirt]

A friend of my father used to work down the hall from a lab with a dynanometer where they would test tires. Just for kicks, onse they had completed all of their test work on a particular tire the guys would run the machine up to 100 mph. A typical consumer tire would delaminate within two minutes.

[Zz Yzx]

Thanks for your replies and kind thoughts.

I went to the crash scene (even beat the cops and EMTs), and saw what happened. And I've had a chance to talk serioulsy with her today. Here's somethings I found out:

She wasn't speeding or screwing around, just driving 55 mph on a dead-straight, narrow, flat road surrounded by alfalfa and dormant tomato fields. There's a 4-6 inch drop off from the pavement to a soft shoulder, then the 4'-deep ditch. She doesn't like driving those narrow roads because people drive fast, there're a lot of BIG pickem-up trucks and farm equipment and other stuff. She was hugging the yellow line to avoid the shoulder. A big pick-up came from the other way, she moved to the right, just a tad too much, and the right front wheel caught the lip of the pavement. That was all it took.

In the scheme of Loss Prevention Systems, the root cause of this incident was "lack of skill or knowledge".