| Show r l l MOTOR M MAIDS dDS Tests Demonstrate How Seat Belts Save Lives JJ My Dy Jeanne Smith Dodge Safety Consultant IF IP YOUVE YOU'VE EVER WATCHED stock car races race youre you're familiar with the raising hair spills and collisions which many of these drivers experience experience and and then step out of their care can wave to the crowd crowd and and walk wak away unhurt Likewise In n accidents affecting modern modem military mill mili sa tary aircraft 9 r the personnel fr frequently x walk away with hardly a scratch In both cases eases the reason why Miss MIll Smith occupants survive these accidents accident without injury is because they are protected by seat belts which prevent them from being hurled against instrument panels or through windshields Last month at Holloman Air Force B. B Base Alamogordo NM I saw how seat Mat belts belta can ean also curb passenger car ear in In juries Jarin Some estimates ladi cate cafe that seat Nat belts belt could p ps pu vent Tent more than one million automobile injuries and ud deaths deaths' per Jea year More fore than automotive medical and safety lafety experts watched simulated car cu clashes huH at the third annual Automotive C Crash ah and Field and Field Demonstration Conference The tests which were conducted by Col CoI John P. P Stapp DIrector Director of Holloman's Holloman Aero Aero Medical Field FJeld Laboratory involved humans animals animal I and tana ana dummies who were catapulted into quick quick- hydraulic braking stops similar to the impacts of auto collisions r Col Stapp has traveled tra faster on on- the the ground 1 ground than any other human nearly human nearly miles mitel an hour In one deceleration test a bear wearing a safety seat belt was subjected to a measured impact equivalent to 25 26 times the force of ot gravity Although the tho force of the impact threw the the bears bears beara bearshead head and shoulders forward he hewal was wal not thrown from his hia seat seat seat- thanks to the bellAir belt bell Air Force Foree doctors dOdon who ex examined examined ex the bear before and after alter the test teat found that be he had not ot been injured either externally or internally by the jolt In another test an Air Force Foree captain restrained by a safety seat belt went through a B similar demonstration without injury The crash cruh In which he participated particle was w. equivalent to a car being braked from 17 11 miles an hour to a stop atop in six seconds at a deceleration rate of 27 times the force toree of gravity The Impact was similar to a acar's cars car's bean head on crash into a a. a concrete con con- crete crate wall at 30 or 35 miles per el hour bour or a collision alde with another an other car at 60 GO to 65 bb miles per hour hoar A third test teat duplicated the theone theone one la in which the captain participated par except that it w. w was tanned manned b by a dummy duma without a seat sest belt When subjected to the same e shocking atop which the captain survived without Injury the unrestrained dummy dum a my was waa thrown 12 feet These and other demonstrations demonstrations tion vividly P point up how seat belts belli can ean be the solution to our traffic injury problem |
