seat belt advert...

[imamartian]

have you seen the recent seatbelt awareness advert?

it shows a slowmo vid of a carcrash, saying it's not the windscreen that kills the driver, and it's not the airbag that kills him.... but it's his lungs continuing towards his ribs, breaking a rib and puncturing his lung, and a bone severing an artery that kills him.

and that we should all wear a seatbelt....

but what i don't get is.... how does a seatbelt stop your lungs hitting your ribcage?
i reckon a seatbelt stops my face making a mess of the dashboard.... but my internal organs are a victim of inertia whatever outside forces stop my body !

 

[Trazor]

Lets assume you hit a solid wall at 30 mph.

When wearing a seat belt, you decelerate with the car, crumple zones etc.

If you don't wear a seat belt, the car decelerates but your body does not, thus you get stopped instantly by the dash/steering wheel/windscreen....Greater inertial force.

Belts do injure people, but no where near as much, they also save you from being thrown out of the car.

 

[imamartian]

what tosh (with respect)..... the advert says when your body stops your organs continue... and that is the same whether a seatbelt stops you or an airbag!

 

[^woody^]

The premise is that our bodies are completely empty, and all our internal organs are free to swing around and bash against our insides like some junk in our car boots.

We must go through fashions of killing ourselves in different ways - a few years ago it was cool to hit the windscreen, then that was not enough and you simpily had to be thrown through the screen to get anywhere, then it was up to our kids to kill us as they nutted us from the back seat

I just wonder, in all the road accident driver/passenger deaths, just how many people have died due to there internal organs zooming about as advertised?

 

[xerxes]

If you are wearing a correctly fitted seatbelt and have a collision, the seatbelt absorbs some of the energy of the deceleration. This doesn't guarantee that you will survive or be uninjured, but it reduces the incidence of both external and internal injuries.

For this reason you should replace seatbelts after a serious collision: they will have stretched to the extent that they no longer provide the same protection.

I'm not sure, though, that the current advertising campaign will do much to change behaviour among those who still don't wear belts; most of them probably believe 'It will never happen to me'.

 

[imamartian]

so the purpose of the seatbelt is to prevent external injury?!

 

[WDIK]

put an egg in a tin box on a conveyor belt, scrub that

 

[WDIK]

same egg tin box and pack it with absorbent packing all round.

chuck it at a conveyor belt

retrieve box open lid remove egg immerse in boiling water for 4 mins take off top and enjoy with toast,

same detail remove packing.

complete above instruction.

open lid make scrambled egg,

crunchy isnt it?

 

[xerxes]

so the purpose of the seatbelt is to prevent external injury?!

No, the purpose of the seatbelt is to reduce the chances of both external and internal injury.

External injuries are reduced because there is less chance of hitting hard objects by being thrown into them. Internal injuries are reduced because the belt stretches and absorbs some of the deceleration of the human body.

 

[Deluks]

I know a guy, friend of a friend, had a crash on the motorway (don't think it was excessive speed), hit a slippery patch and went into the crash barrier. The guy not belted up was in the passenger seat and was thrown from the car. The emergency services found him in an adjacent field barely clinging on to life. The injuries he sustained means that he now lies in a hospital bed, needs 24hr care, can only move his eyes and fingers involuntarily. He has visitors, and whilst they chat to him they have no idea whether he's taking anything in or understands what they're saying as he is unable to respond. The guy driving (his best mate) was belted up and suffered whiplash/minor injuries.

So regardless of anything else discussed here, the only point that needs to be made is that you should always wear a seatbelt. End of.

 

[joe-90]

Can anyone remember those seat belts that used to tear when you hit something so that it slowed you down a bit less solidly? It was like a stitched section up at the top.

 

[tim west]

Is the conveyor running against the egg or with it?

Could be why they used to say go to work on an egg?

All drivers should have an operation perhaps through keyhole surgery where they fill your chest cavity with cotton wool?

 

[Rob]

Agree with what ^woody^ says. It's just another advert to shock into getting a reaction.

Ive never heard of this type of injury till now, why couldnt they have mentioned it previous adverts.

Also the bike adverts seem too have died off a little. Have they all stopped being knocked off?

 

[2scoops0406]

Can anyone remember those seat belts that used to tear when you hit something so that it slowed you down a bit less solidly? It was like a stitched section up at the top.

It's generally the seat belt mountings that are designed to absorb some of the engery, but yes, the purpose of the seat belt is to decelerate you slower than the steering wheel and dashboard would.

 

[securespark]

what tosh (with respect)..... the advert says when your body stops your organs continue... and that is the same whether a seatbelt stops you or an airbag!

It's not tosh.

If you are correctly seated and correctly restrained, there will not be a great deal of movement.

Sure, there will still be a small amount of movement, but the internal organs will not be subject to the great deceleration forces created by a body being allowed to move forwards for a distance before being halted by a solid object.

I have been both stupid & unfortunate enough to experience hitting a solid object at speed both with and without a seatbelt.

In the seatbelted collision (where I was hit in the side at well in excess of 30 mph), the airbag deployed also and the belt itself stretched (as it is designed to do) to allow some give (otherwise you may well break a few ribs). The damage to the seatbelt mechanism meant the belt would not retract . The vehicle was written off.

Suffice to say that if I had not been wearing a sealtbelt, even allowing for the airbag, I would have certainly received some injuries. As it was, I walked (or should that be staggered ) away completely unhurt.