new government regulations

[carnuted]

Just read how the government is going to start requiring a whole bunch more stuff on cars, which is going to make them heavier and more expensive. This is the same government that just spent billions of our dollars to bail the "big 3" out because they couldn't make any money, and is requiring them to get better economy. Some of these things make sense, but I do not want a computer telling me how to or monitoring how I drive. On my Q, I can hit a button and shut the traction control system off, but I have a friend with a crown vic, and he has to pull his fuse to disable his system. If the govt requires these things, shutting them off and disabling will probably not be an option without some serious workarounds. Imagine buying a GT-R, and then having the computer shut it down every time the tires break loose or you try to drift a little bit.

Here's the list of new requirements: http://www.automedia.com/Auto_...1ss/1

[HashiriyaS14]

This is why you shouldn't buy a new GTR in the first place.

Buy a GC10 Skyline instead. All the best cars that will ever be made have already been made.

[dusred]

All the best cars that will ever be made have already been made.

Until the free market is back on its feet and the auto industry is de-regulated. Notice how all the cool cars were made back when there were few regulations?

Go figure. . .

Of course this is assuming that Obama won't succeed in turning our country into a USSA because if he does I may have to break out the AK 47 and join the revolution.

[HashiriyaS14]

Until the free market is back on its feet and the auto industry is de-regulated. Notice how all the cool cars were made back when there were few regulations?

Stuff like safety will never be de-regulated.

Keep your 10 airbags and 400 extra pounds. Give me a bugeye Sprite with a 13b and a straight pipe.

[dusred]

Ironically I just gave someone a sermon on another thread (i'm sure you'll see it) about how he was a dumbass for saying seatbelts don't save lives.

I'm not talking about safety. As far as I'm concerned you can't have too many air bags. I'm mostly talking about the gov't requiring car manufactures to build cars "green" to the point where it's ridiculous.

edit- oh, I forgot to mention the Unions. They are the other 80% of the problem.

[carnuted]

Seatbelts save some lives, but they definitely take others. I was in an accident where getting thrown from the car saved my life. If I had been strapped in my seat, I would certainly be dead. If you ask an honest cop who has been on the job long enough to work traffic fatalities, most will tell you that it is a 50/50 thing. Half the time they weren't wearing them and should've been, and half the time they were wearing them and might still be here if they weren't. Our government needs to stop treating us like babies and let us make our own decisions. Over regulating everything has pretty much, and soon will, regulate our country and freedoms out of existence.

[dusred]

BULLs***!

Seatbelts may take 1 life out of ever 50 they save. Certainly isn't a 50/50 thing.

[C-Kwik]

Seatbelts save some lives, but they definitely take others. I was in an accident where getting thrown from the car saved my life. If I had been strapped in my seat, I would certainly be dead. If you ask an honest cop who has been on the job long enough to work traffic fatalities, most will tell you that it is a 50/50 thing. Half the time they weren't wearing them and should've been, and half the time they were wearing them and might still be here if they weren't. Our government needs to stop treating us like babies and let us make our own decisions. Over regulating everything has pretty much, and soon will, regulate our country and freedoms out of existence.

Its not 50/50. Certainly there are times when being ejected from the vehicle might have saved a life, but most people who are ejected die or end up with serious injuries. And certainly, there are probably times when a seat belt might have contributed to someone's death. But statistically speaking, you are much better off with seatbelts than without. Consider yourself lucky to be alive. 73% of people who are ejected from a vehicle die regardless of if they are wearing a seatbelt or not. Something you should think about when you consider how it compares to what might have occured had you been wearing a seatbelt; along with how often an accident is not going to fall within typical accident scenarios (very few accidents are fatal and very few accidents involve passenger ejections). The statistical odds of you being in another accident in which being thrown from a vehicle will save your life are much slimmer now. That is, the chances of surviving one accident in which you are ejected is 27%. A single person surviving 2 such accidents drops to 13.7%. This factors in nothing about accidents in which you physically hit the steering wheel, dash, or windshield.

Consider what happens in a frontal collision. The accident investiation business tends to regard all car accidents as having three impacts. That is one between a car and another object, the impact between the passenger and car, and the impact between the internal organs of a passenger and the parts of the body that hold these organs in. For the purposes of what I will discuss, we'll focus on the first two.

When you wear a seatbelt, typically, what happens is there is the collision between the vehicle and another object. This collision begins slowing down the vehicle. Crumple zones in vehicles tend to slow down the portions of the vehicle behind it at a slower rate (consider a rigid body that doesn't deform; the passenger compartment would stop immediately). The seatbelt catches the passenger and essentially slows the driver down at the same rate as the passenger compartment.

By contrast, with no seatbelt, the passenger compartment begins to slow down. But the passenger doesn't. The passenger continues at the speed the vehicle was travelling prior to the impact until they hit some part of the car. Since it takes time to travel the distance from the seat to the steering wheel, dash or windshield, the car will have slowed down much more than the passenger. As such, the passenger will hit the inside of the car with a almost all the energy he carries as a result of the speed he is traveling in relation to the car itself. As such an impact disperses this energy nearly instantaneously, the amount of force exerted on the passenger will be much greater, which increases the chances of injury and death.

Going back to the article, the regulations discussed would further reduce the chances of injury. The items discussed in it are:

-side airbags-active head restraints-electronic stability control-anti-lock brakes-rearview cameras

Side airbags have been a huge help in protecting drivers in side impacts. If you've ever watched video of a side impact on a high speed camera, you'll see how if a lower profile vehicle is hit by a truck, the crash test dummy head can hit the front of the truck through the window. While they do add some weight and hardware, they do provide much more safety than passive systems for side impacts.

Active head restraints on the other hand, have little effect on the overall weight. They are designed so that the headrest pushes forward in a rear collision and reduces whiplash. Contrary to popular belief, whiplash does not occur at the back of the neck. It actually occurs at the front when the front of the neck becomes stretched as the head is whipped rearward. By actively pushing the head forward, it reduces such stressing and the resulting injury. The system works mechanically and is actually a pretty simple device as the force of your body's mass on the seat pushes on arms that attach to the headrest. As these arms are pushed rearward by your body, it uses a lever type of action which pushes the top of the headrest forward. As such, it involves a nominal increase in mass. The other option would be to have the headrest in a forward static position, but that tends to be uncomfrotable for drivers.

The electronic stability controls, anti-lock brakes and rear view camera/sonar try to reduce injury/death by reducing the chances of an accident occuring in the first place. There is a little bit of additional mass, but its unlikely that it will be significant. But all are effective. The rear sonar or camera likely wouldn't have any effect on reducing injuries to passengers, but would likely reduce potential injuries to pedestrians and damage to bumpers. A lot of accidents occur in parking lots which involve someone backing into someone else. Both the camera an sonar are also a huge convenience. I have both on my Titan and its made backing a lot easier. I can easily get to within a foot of anything behind me pretty precisely. Hell, I can more confidently and precisely place my truck close to an object behind it than I can in front of it.

[themadscientist]

I have been saved by a seatbelt. Blaming the seat belt as a cause of death in a wreck that obliterated a car is rather asinine. Can you show me a study that recommends high speed ejection as a viable safety model?

I agree that safety should be a personal choice though, 100%

[AZhitman]

If you ask an honest cop who has been on the job long enough to work traffic fatalities, most will tell you that it is a 50/50 thing.

You were lied to.

<-- Former accident investigator.

Please keep misinformed and baseless statements off the forums.

[srellim234]

If you ask an honest cop who has been on the job long enough to work traffic fatalities, most will tell you that it is a 50/50 thing.

<------- wife has been a Los Angeles sheriff's deputy for 18 1/2 years. She's never seen a wreck where not wearing the seat belt saved a life. One of our closest friends is a California Highway Patrol officer. I just asked him. In 16 years of patrolling the freeways around here he can recall exactly two instances where the lack of wearing a seatbelt might have saved the driver's life, both times when the car was crushed under an 18-wheeler and the driver was thrown clear. He's seen a lot of dead bodies as a result of people not wearing seatbelts and being ejected from the vehicle, though. That is much lower than 50/50, and don't tell me they're liars.

[AZhitman]

To add to what I stated earlier, I've never seen an ejection that wasn't a fatality.

There's other reasons to buckle up, but the people who oppose it are too stupid to comprehend.

You can't handle an evasive maneuver without being belted in.You can't control your vehicle's secondary motion after an initial accident without being belted in.You can't hold yourself in place in the event of mechanical failure without being belted in.

See, in all those scenarios, you become a risk not only to yourself, but to me. And when I am at risk, I don't give a damn about your freedoms.

[carnuted]

Well, I will stick with the experience of the officers I have talked to, and I have worked with law enforcement for a few years now, and my own personal experiences. But even is it were only 1% of a difference, that still means we, as adults, should get to choose whether or not we wear them. Consider a t-bone collision. If the person in the seat being hit is stuck in their seat during the collision, they will be where the metal from there car is after being hit. Without a seatbelt, they could be pushed to the other side of the car and not held in place to sustain the full brunt of the impact. I'm not saying that that would be ideal in all t-bone collisions, but in some it may be, so it should be our choice since, as a driver, we should have some idea about the situation we are driving in and the possible dangers of it, which means it should be our choice.

[srellim234]

While I agree somewhat on the personal choice, on the T-bone instance you use for an example, that loose moving body becomes a lethal projectile to anyone else in that car. In that case, besides just the person in that seat others in that car can die because someone didn't wear a seat belt.

[AZhitman]

Again, as a trained accident investigator, in that example, the head goes through the side window, slamming into the hood of the colliding vehicle (or being crushed by the secondary impact).

My statment regarding the importance of a belt in a NON-accident situation stands, and should be important enough to encourage people to buckle up.

My position on personal freedoms is this: Driving is NOT a right, it's a privilege. And if I am unlucky enough to be in an accident with an unbelted person, I'd like to know that they've taken all possible steps to prevet unnecessary injury.

It's the difference between being sued for $3,000 to fix a car or $30M to compensate for loss of a life.

BTW, your example about intrusion into the passenger compartment, while interesting, is pretty invalid. The human body can withstand compression into a confined space much better than it can endure the violent multiple collisions that occur WITHIN such an accident - those are the ones that cause death.

More than one case I've observed where the driver was ejected, survived the impact, and a split-second later was killed by a secondary impact, either by their own car, the colliding vehicle, or an uninvolved vehicle nearby.

[themadscientist]

I've witnessed the side collision scenario as it happened. At the drift spot, a port lot, populated with shipping containers. The guys would race around between the containers and in a large open area make a wide loop back around. A kid in a cefiro sedan came around the loop and had to switch to the right and then he was supposed to clear the container and switch hard to the left. he came in too fast and his drift became a sideways four-wheel skid. His car slammed into the container flank to flank and I watched in mock horror (I found it hysterical) as his body flew sideways, across the car and through the passenger window. He smashed head first into the steel container and went limp collapsing back into the car. I don't know if he survived, everybody got the cue it was time to leave. had he been buckled in, he might have escaped with whiplash, I don't see him having survived that.

Your logic is seriously flawed carn. I agree buckling up should not be required by law except in the case of people under the age of 18, but to suggest that no belt is safer in anything but a one in a million freak collision where a pipe punches through the driver's chest or something, is ridiculous.

[carnuted]

"While I agree somewhat on the personal choice, on the T-bone instance you use for an example, that loose moving body becomes a lethal projectile to anyone else in that car. In that case, besides just the person in that seat others in that car can die because someone didn't wear a seat belt."

----true, but what if you are the only one in the car?

And I do agree about the secondary impact. I have heard of, and seen once, someone being ejected and then ran over, and I saw a guy run into the back of a parked semi at night that had no lights on. He ended up under the dash, and unless you looked at the floor of the car you wouldn't have known there was anyone in it. If he had been buckled in, he would've just lost his legs, though personally, I would rather be dead.

I train in MMA, and we are taught that when punching someone on the ground, it is better to hold their head on the ground when striking, even though it might look cooler to see their head bouncing off of it. By having a backstop behind their head, they absorb the full force of the punch. If their head is off the ground, they may receive a secondary strike from the bounce, but they will both be dampened by the bodies natural reaction to resist being moved. It is this logic I apply to being buckled in during an accident. I would rather be free to be moved out of the way than strapped in place to absorb the full force of whatever I am hitting.

I am going to try to attach a picture. If you were the driver here, would you rather be strapped in or free to escape the full force of the impact? [IMG][/IMG]

Link in case photo doesn't appear http://www.car-accidents.com/p....html

[srellim234]

That's only one accident of many pictured at that site. Looking at the others, in almost every one sealtbelts would have guaranteed survival. Lack of seatbelts would have made it a toss-up once the bodies began careening around the insides (or outsides) of those vehicles. Again, in the vast majority of instances the seatbelt saves lives. There's just no way to truly quantify how many.

[telcoman]

Just read how the government is going to start requiring a whole bunch more stuff on cars, which is going to make them heavier and more expensive. This is the same government that just spent billions of our dollars to bail the "big 3" out because they couldn't make any money, and is requiring them to get better economy. Some of these things make sense, but I do not want a computer telling me how to or monitoring how I drive. On my Q, I can hit a button and shut the traction control system off, but I have a friend with a crown vic, and he has to pull his fuse to disable his system. If the govt requires these things, shutting them off and disabling will probably not be an option without some serious workarounds. Imagine buying a GT-R, and then having the computer shut it down every time the tires break loose or you try to drift a little bit.

Here's the list of new requirements: http://www.automedia.com/Auto_...1ss/1

You are aware of these aren't you?

http://www.harristechnical.com/cdr.htm

Telcoman

[C-Kwik]

I am going to try to attach a picture. If you were the driver here, would you rather be strapped in or free to escape the full force of the impact?

Probably wouldn't matter much. The driver suffered the full force of the impact. You know...the one from the truck that would have pushed her to the other side of the vehicle had she not been belted in. There is no "escape" from the impact. As Greg mentioned, the human body can withstand compression. Most internal injuries occur not because of crushing or being pierced. Its because your organs have mass (which meanst it has momentum) and are essentially suspended in a fluid. Any time your body is subjected to a force, your organs take time to catch up. With a hard enough force, your organs will actually hit the inside of your body hard enough to cause some level of trauma to them. The more your body is accelerated in any direction during an accident, the greater the chances of injury.

And as for your MMA reference, hitting them with their head against the ground merely transfers the force into the ground. Sure, there will likely be some local trauma to the points of impact, but much of the force will be dispersed into the ground, by the skull. If I wanted to knock someone out, I'd be looking to maximize head movement to try and cause a concussion (which is bruising of the brain caused by the brain hitting the skull):

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/...ckout/

[AZhitman]

Your physics are wrong on the MMA strike. The more movement of the outside of the head (violent changes in direction) you can incur, the more damage is done.

If I knew I had to take a punch in the forehead, and I have the choice between having my head against a wall, or in free space, I'll take the wall.

The energy of the punch is transferred through my dense noggin into the wall, thereby negating much of the energy.

Knockouts don't happen if the head doesn't move. Period. End of story.

Your physics are equally wrong on the car accident. But, believe as you wish... Know that every professional and amateur racer in the world disagrees with you, as does every accident investigator, insurance underwriter, trauma surgeon, all actuaries, paramedics and 99% of law enforcement.

By the way, in that picture, the driver suffered an internal decapitation. She was DOA with or without a belt. Side curtain airbags MIGHT have helped somewhat...

If you'd go out and actually LOOK at cars that have been hit like that, you'd see that the body IS free to move away from the intrusion... The seat belts tighten instantaneously on impact, and loosen just as quickly on rebound... I'd bet $100 she had no pelvic injuries from the intrusion... Maybe some severe bruising from the belt, and from the center console.

[nissangirl74]

it should be our choice since, as a driver, we should have some idea about the situation we are driving in and the possible dangers of it, which means it should be our choice.

Some rules exist to protect the masses because the masses will not make the choice to protect themselves. If everyone paid attention to the rules of the road, never drove over the speed limit, never rolled through a stop sign, never blasted through a red light, never texted while driving, or never drove under the influence, the odds of being in an injury car accident would be about the same as being in a plane crash. Mechanical car failure accounts for a very slim margin of car accidents involving injury / death. They are primarily caused by driver failure. Due to that fact, the mistakes of many are the basis for the laws that everyone must follow.

If you don't want to wear your seat belt, use public transportation. They don't obligate you to protect yourself but you ride at your own risk. If you are involved in an accident and are injured their insurance isn't obligated to pay you a dime because you made the conscious choice to not use a restraint device. In this situation, you are responsible for you.

However, when you are operating a vehicle on a public roadway, you are responsible not only for yourself but all the people who share the road with you. If you do something that puts other people in danger, that is no longer exercising your right; that's blatant irresponsibility which in an extreme situation could lead to an assault with a deadly weapons charge or involuntary manslaughter; both of which will send you to jail or prison and take ALL your rights away.

[AZhitman]

^ THIS.

God forbid you ever get lightly tapped on the roadway, pitching your carcass out of the driver's seat, rendering you unable to steer or brake, and giving you a front-row ticket to witnessing the death of another person by the front of your 4,000-lb out-of-control car.

I'd call for the death penalty.

Just sayin'.

[themadscientist]

Cmon Greg. "lightly tapped" and "pitching your carcass" imply two different levels of force. The restraint leads to improved base for control argument has some merit but you are giving it T-rex incisors when it's more like human molars.

The old codgers back in the day seemed to be able to keep those finned boats on the road with no belts, sitting on a bench seat. Not saying it's preferred but it's not the 100% death scenario you are attempting to paint.

[smockers83]

If you're crushed under an 18-wheeler, how is no seat belt going to save you? As someone in safety in the transportation industry, seat belts work. They are not a save-all application, but they save more lives than one would think.

Not to discredit your police friends, but I've dealt with a lot of cops that make outrageous assumptions of a crash, such as that person would have survived had they not been wearing a seat belt.

[AZhitman]

Cmon Greg. "lightly tapped" and "pitching your carcass" imply two different levels of force. The restraint leads to improved base for control argument has some merit but you are giving it T-rex incisors when it's more like human molars.

The old codgers back in the day seemed to be able to keep those finned boats on the road with no belts, sitting on a bench seat. Not saying it's preferred but it's not the 100% death scenario you are attempting to paint.

I don't disagree.

But when you've seen a fatality result from a run-of-the-mill fender-bender under 15mph in a parking lot, it really points out that the possibility exists.

Those old guys croaked on a pretty regular basis. Look at the NHTSA stats... Seat belts save lives, more so than stupid speed limits and equipment restrictions.

Even a quick and temporary distraction is enough to spool most modern drivers into a death tizzy... You know as well as I do: These people JUST CAN'T DRIVE.

[themadscientist]

O, I agree about modern drivers. The old folks back in the day weren't as distracted as today's drivers. Most people file controlling the vehicle at best second on their list of priorities behind the wheel. I though about that as I commented on the jerk talking on the cell phone next to me only to realize I was eating a BK double cheeseburger and steering with my elbows at the moment.

[carnuted]

Even though I hate being told I have to wear my belt, I do wear it in all my cars except for my 1967 Tempest, which didn't come with them. Would I wear it if it wasn't the law? Probably. Would I make sure children riding with me were buckled up? Definitely. It chaps my a** to no end when I see little kids standing up on the seat of a car so they can see out the window. Of course, these same kids usually have parents who smoke around them, drank while they were pregnant, think the dog makes a good babysitter, and blame the system when their kids flunk out of school. Last year I was coming into a town with a 45MPH limit on my motorcycle, 4 lane highway, no turn lane. An older bronco II pulled up to a stop sign at an approaching intersection, looked right at me, and then pulled out in front of me. I was aiming at the passenger side. They crossed the opposing lanes of traffic, and then slammed on their brakes right in my lane. My brakes were locked, my bike was leaning, and I was sure I was going down. There was oncoming traffic, so swerving around them was not an option. I saw the passenger yell at the driver, and at the last second they stomped their accelerator. I missed them by inches. Thought I felt the bumper on my leg, and managed to recover. I turned around visualizing myself dragging the driver out their window and beating them to a pulp. They had pulled over into a parking lot. When I pulled up next to them, I saw the driver was a young girl, probably about 20 or so, the passenger was her boyfriend or something, and he was holding in his lap a baby that was about 3 or 4 months old. She apologized and said she didn't see me, asked if I was ok, which I was except for some bald spots on my tires. She said she would pay for my tires, to which I commented how she could do that if she couldn't even afford a child seat. I then told her to think about what would've happened if I had been going a couple MPH faster, or if she had pulled out a second or two sooner. I think she got the picture. That baby would've been sliding down the highway looking like hamburger. I rode off after that, hoping she learned something from it.

Long-winded, I know. Point is if people don't care enough about themselves or their children to do what is right, then they don't care enough about anyone else to be safe on the road, and therefore shouldn't be there, and THAT is where our money should go, prevention.

[carnuted]

On a related side-note, I just saw that Texas raised the speed limit there to 80 MPH. Makes me want to plan a road trip. http://www.automedia.com/Stric...1ss/2

[srellim234]

Texas has been at 80mph for years. I've driven through on my way to Florida each of the last three years on I-10. 80 during the day, 65 at night.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197072,00.html