Pictures Speak Louder Than Words

Pictures Speak Louder Than Words
by Laurie Lips

SEPTEMBER 2000

Pictures speak louder than words. Professionals involved with safety programs have always recognized the educational value of pictures showing wrecked automobiles. In addition to promoting safety consciousness, it also helps in the training of emergency medical service personnel, firefighters, and law enforcement officers.��

The camera became an important tool for insurance companies documenting damage claims. Seeing some of the newer wrecks at Klode�s Salvage pool in Douglas County can certainly sober a person as you see the carnage that can happen when cars meet head on or roll multiple times over a highway or down a mountain. A visit to Klode�s with a teenager might instill some thought provoking discussions and first hand views of the auto carcasses lined up in rows upon rows for salvage buyers.

When gasoline was just pennies a gallon, men were jumping off running boards to crash test cars. Today, sophisticated computer-aided techniques are used to test vehicles and use the invention of another type of dummy to calculate the damage to the body.

The first known fatal car crash was in the late 1800s. Before fatalities, car companies were mostly interested in making the vehicle move and having some semblance of reliability. Evolutions in safety can be divided into two basic chronological categories: mechanical and electrical. There was a proliferation of mechanical devices by inventors to the U.S. Patent offices. Steering wheels (as opposed to tillers), doors, bumpers, fenders, steel wheels with rubber tires, rollover protective structures, hydraulic brakes, turn indicators, padded interiors with soft control knobs, rear-view mirrors, speedometers, and safety belts are just a few of these items that we now take for granted in today�s automobile. Electrical safety advances included filament-type headlamps, flashing turn signals, horns, multi-speed windshield wipers, electric starters, interior map lights, radios, cruise control, air conditioners, defrosters, ABS brakes, and computers.

Seat belts can be traced back to early aviation when it was thought that belts were installed only to keep pilots from separating from their planes during inverted flight. Hugh DeHaven, an engineer and World War I fighter pilot, became interested in human survival. He barely survived a plane crash wearing a lap belt, and his efforts led to the establishment of the crash injury research program at Cornell University Medical College, now known as Calspan Field Services.

Lap and shoulder harness restraint systems were used in WWII aircraft, space exploration, and in automobiles, thanks to Dr. John P. Stapp, a U.S. Army Air Force pilot and physician, while performing a 49 g. deceleration test. An anesthesiologist and a safety engineer from Volvo developed the three-point safety belt system. In 1959, crash test data indicated that the belts were effective in preventing fatal accidents below 96 km/h, while unrestrained occupants died in vehicles that traveled less than 19 km/h prior to impact.

In 1953, Mercedes designed a patented feature that paved the way for improved vehicle crash-worthiness by developing a design for vehicular energy absorption. The principle was taken a step further and moved to the vehicle�s interior in which the second impact � actually Hugh DeHaven�s concept whereby the occupant strikes the interior upon crash ride-down � is reduced by the use of energy absorbing materials on contact surfaces.

Time and distance are the two factors that affect the energy transferred to the occupants during a crash. The concept is to let the vehicle absorb as much of the crash energy as possible by crushing while transferring as little as possible to the occupants contained in a rigid passenger compartment. The process of absorbing crash energy is called �ride-down.� New designed collapsible steering columns and safety glass with 75 percent peripheral retention evolved to help automobile occupants decrease their g. load.

Awareness of the limitations of newly purchased state-of-the-art hardware will be necessary so that drivers do not attempt to deny the laws of physics with their vehicles.Some manufacturers such as Porsche are now sending customers to advanced driving schools with the purchase of vehicles, while others such as GM and Ford are sending their corporate executives.

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