Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 15:40:01 -0700
Reply-To: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Jake de Villiers <crescentbeachguitar@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: vanagon camper seating capacity
In-Reply-To: <00d301caf2ea$95959e00$c0c0da00$@com>
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Well put Robert.
The forces at work in an accident are just too big for the human body to
deal with.
Having grown up at the race track, I wouldn't consider driving without a
seat belt, period.
On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 3:21 PM, Robert Fisher <garciasghostvw@gmail.com>wrote:
> --snip--
> Is life only about money these day??
> --snip--
>
> If you were put in the position of having to decide between your kid, your
> money and your smug feelings of rebelliousness/contrariness, which would
> you
> choose?
>
> It has nothing to do with courage, it has to do with common sense. It's
> relatively cheap to make sure your passengers are properly secured; and as
> to kids being strapped in for 8 hours: it beats the hell out of them flying
> free inside the car at 60 mph for a quarter-second. Besides, DVD players
> and
> DSis and such make it bearable (this from a guy that regularly travels
> through completely unremarkable desert with three kids, and who once rode
> most of the way from NYC to Knoxville on the rear-window deck of a Ford...
> I
> had a hell of sunburn.)
> Sure, more lived than died back in the day, but you could say the same
> thing
> about the plague and WWII- it doesn't mean we should embrace those things.
> It was precisely because so many died unnecessarily that these laws were
> enacted, particularly in the cases of people that would've lived but didn't
> because somebody else became a missile in the vehicle, or because somebody
> lost control of their vehicle and killed somebody outside of it.
>
> I have to wonder if the people that come up with this crap have ever
> actually been in a car wreck. They happen so fast, and with so much force,
> that it's really impossible to comprehend unless one has been through that
> or something similar.
>
> I was in two crashes when I was around 18, both of them quite similar in
> terms of what happened to me in the car. In the first one I wasn't wearing
> a
> seat belt, and I nearly killed my passenger from flying around loose in the
> car (at 240 pounds); I spent a week in the hospital with a concussion/brain
> injury that nearly killed me and I had the ...interesting... experience of
> being blind for about 15 hours with no idea of whether or not I would
> regain
> my vision. In the second, I had on my seat belt, and I got a bump on the
> forehead.
>
> I've worn my seat belt ever since, and so has everyone who has ridden with
> me. My step-dad (who is an engineer) always felt like my attitude and the
> laws were a personal imposition on him until I pointed out to him that it
> didn't do anybody else any good to be strapped in if he was flying loose
> about the cabin at road speeds and of course losing what little control
> over
> the vehicle he might have had (as the driver) if he had been belted in- and
> this was even after he'd sat with my mom by my hospital bed wondering if I
> was going to make it that first time.
>
> In that first crash, the guy that hit me bounced across the road and
> t-boned
> an old couple waiting to turn at a stop sign, injuring them both, and the
> woman severely (she had just removed her seat belt, since they were about
> to
> pull into a UPS place). Several people (including myself) independently
> described to the police that the guy had let go of his wheel and was
> bouncing around the cab of his truck with his hands up. He was cited for
> abandoning control of his vehicle, as well as everything that happened
> after
> the initial impact with me.
>
> People seem to think their decisions with their vehicle are all about
> _them_, and completely ignore the fact that they're also making that
> decision for everyone that comes with their sphere of operation/influence.
> You're not driving in your own little world. Think about those massacres in
> the south-east involving dozens of vehicles that start with one bonehead
> that's driving too fast for the pea-soup fog he's in.
>
> It often only takes one bad decision for everything to go wrong, but many
> good decisions to make everything go right- tires, seat belts, whatever.
>
> Cya,
> Robert
>
--
Jake
1984 Vanagon GL 1.9 WBX 'The Grey Van'
1986 Westy Weekender/2.5 SOHC Suby 'Dixie'
Crescent Beach, BC
www.thebassspa.com
www.crescentbeachguitar.com
http://subyjake.googlepages.com/mydixiedarlin%27
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