Thanksgiving Safety
 This Newsletter is my way of sharing information helpful to keeping you and your family safe, informed, empowered or entertained. John Bisnar |
Think about driving…
Think about drinking…
Think about seatbelts…
- Thanksgiving week Police are placing an emphasis on drivers
who drink, transport kids, and fail to buckle them up.
- Impaired driving is a concern for every person who travels
by car this holiday season.
- It might surprise you to know that the majority of children
who die at the hands of impaired drivers aren't killed by the
impaired drivers who run into them, but are the victims of parents
or caregivers who transport them.
- Two out of three children who are killed in alcohol related
crashes are passengers riding with an impaired driver.
- In the majority of these cases, children were riding with an impaired driver who failed to buckle them up.
WHY SEATBELTS SAVE LIVES
The primary reason the seat belt saves lives has to do with the physics of mechanical forces produced during an accident.Sir Isaac Newton's first law states that an object in motion will tend to stay in motion. This is true of the human body as well as objects.
Once a body and an automobile are both moving together at highway speeds, for example, of 55 miles per hour, a collision causing a sudden deceleration ahead in the vehicle will not immediately affect the continued motion of the human occupant inside, whose body will continue in the same direction at the same speed as it had been immediately prior to the accident. This means that, unless restrained, the human occupant will continue at 55 miles per hour into the steering wheel, dashboard, windshield or (if in the rear seat) into the seat back of the front seat or through the windshield (if no seat back is directly in front).
WHAT WE HAVE NOT BEEN TOLD
How
"safe" are the seat belts we "buckle up" with? Over the past thirty
years, there have been major public safety campaigns encouraging automobile
drivers and passengers to "buckle up" for safety.What the motoring public has not been told is that "buckling up" may not at all ensure the safety the restraint system was theorized to provide.
Moreover, both the manufacturers of these seat belt system components and the major U.S. automakers installing them have known for at least three decades that these buckle systems were designed to be simple, cheap, and (as a result) particularly vulnerable to unlatching during accidents.
NATIONAL OUTCRY FOR RECALL
The death of a 14 year-old girl, who was wearing her seatbelt at the time of the rollover of her family's 1992 Ford Explorer, has prompted a new national outcry for a recall of some of the auto-maker's U.S. vehicles to replace defective seatbelt buckles that have been illegal in European vehicles for the past 30 years.It continues to amaze me that U.S. companies produce a knowingly defective product in the United States, that they do not market abroad - in this instance, the Ford Explorer," said Brian Chase, of BISNAR & CHASE in Orange County California, the attorneys who handled a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Ford which reached final, confidential settlement early this year. "The case against TRW, the manufacturer of the defective buckle, resolved on the first day of trial for a substantial confidential amount, well in excess of their offer of settlement."
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ON SEATBELT FAILURES
If you have important information, or an empowering or funny story that you would like to share with my readers please email it directly to me at: jbisnar@bestattorney.com.
--John Bisnar, Bisnar and Chase, LLP.
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Email this important information
to someone you care about and help keep their Thanksgiving safe.
Look for important Holiday safety information coming in December!
