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Show Editorial . . . SPEED IS NOT TO BLAME MASSACRE is the word for what is happening on Utah's highways. high-ways. We are contributing a shameful share to the national sacrificial sac-rificial slaughter. Autos claim 40,000 American lives a year, permanently per-manently injure 100,000 and temporarily temp-orarily disable one million. Here's the startling fact EIGHTY-SEVEN PERCENT OP ALL MOTORISTS KILLED AND INJURED ARE DRIVING AT LESS THAN 40 MILES PER HOUR. Approximately four times as many injuries occur in autos as a result of a crash contact of the occupant against some part of the interior of the car than as the result of an actual crushing of the person. One authority said "The way automobiles are designed, the passengers are 'as vulnerable to injury as a teacup shipped loose in a barrel.' " Ten percent of the fatalities and 20 to 30 percent of the injuries are caused by doors that pop open allowing victims to be thrown from the car. Steering wheels pointed at chest organs take their toll. Poor seat design accounts for thousands of so-called whiplash injuries, cervical spine injuries. in-juries. Interior projections are so "" lethal as to defy all concepts of passenger safety. Remember, in abrupt deceleration decelera-tion the occupant continues to move forward at approximately the speed of the car in the instant preceding the accident, until stopped stop-ped by the impact against the steering wheel, windshield, or dashboard. dash-board. Remember, the injury from a blow to the body increases as the area of the blow decreases. For example, a blow to the head from a wastebasket is nowhere near as serious as a blow of equal force from an ordinary hammer because the blow from the basket is not concentrated into a small body area. The automotive crash research at Cornell University Medical College Col-lege also says in most fatal accidents acci-dents the forces involved were within the physiologic limits of the body's ability to withstand them without injury. So, inasmuch as few steps are being taken to improve interior design for safety perhaps it would be well for each of us to take the first step ourselves. That would be to have safety belts that will hold installed for every passenger so that when the car stops abruptly he'll stop too and not go hurtling through space until he meets with a lethal object that will end it all. |