HOW MOTORISTS DIE

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30953, 8 January 1966, Page 5

HOW MOTORISTS DIE

PROFESSOR WILLIAM GISSANE studies death. He is the director of the Road Injuries Research Group at Birmingham Accident Hospital, an ugly red-brick building that handles 4000 road victims a year. Of these, 50 die and 660 are seriously injured —many, saved by modern surgery, will be crippled or disfigured for life.

The Road Injuries Research Group, financed by the Automobile Association, was set up in 1960 to gather and evaluate data, yielded by the bodies of road accident victims, dead and injured.

The group does this in three ways. It reads coroners’ reports; it visits road accidents when they happen; and it visits the injured in hospital or the dead in the mortuary. Its reports make chilling, compelling reading. And even if the findings are primarily concerned with road deaths in Britain, they could help to throw some light on road deaths in New Zealand, because in all countries where fallible human beings drive cars, certain common factors are involved. In 1964 the Birmingham group studied 400 deaths among car occupants.

“Impaction” killed 208 — they were mutilated or crushed by parts of the car being driven into them. “Momentum” killed 184 — they were either flung on to a part of the car such as the steering wheel, dashboard or windscreen, or else thrown out of the car completely. It used to be thought that it was best to be flung clear of the car in an accident, but this has been disproved: an American study shows that “ejection” causes 36 per cent of all car-occupant deaths. . Eight people were burned to death after being knocked unconscious.

exactly what happens to the human body when it is brought to a halt from high speed in just a few inches. The heart was ruptured in 47 out of 183 car-occupant deaths, simply by being jerked forward. The brain and lungs are vulnerable in the same way.

There is one simple method of cutting down threequarters of serious injuries: the use of efficient safety-belts About 10 per cent of cars in Britain are fitted, with them, but a third of the people with belts do not bother to use them. It is not yet compulsory for manufacturers to fit even belt-anchorage points. But safety belts are only a part of what Professor Gissane calls “integrated safety engineering.” A number of injuries are caused when a ear seat collapses or comes adrift. Seats that tip forward can act as catapults, with disastrous effects —particularly when a baby in a seat is hung on the back.

But a seat has been designed that is firmly mounted, bucketed, highly stressed, and with integrated safety belt which gives freedom of movement but which will jerk tight in emergency. It also has a head rest which prevents whiplash injuries caused

by rear collisions —l2 per cent of all crashes. The seat has been designed to withstand a deceleration of 30g—that’s equivalent to a head-on collision with a thick concrete wall at 30 m.p.h. and 5g more than the human body can normally withstand. Of course there always will be] appalling head-on smashes with combined impact speeds of over 100 m.p.h., and no safety feature is ever going to help the victims. Designers have come to realise that the driver needs to be “capsuled” as securely as possible. He should be protected from the possibility of machinery being driven into him in a crash. Pininfarina of Turin has designed a car—the Sigma—with solid bulkheads between pasenger and engine compartments, and designed so that in a head-on collision the engine is forced under the car and not through it. Some cars have long steering columns that would spear into the driver’s chest in a crash. The answer to this is to make a column which collapses in a crash—this is Triumph’s method—or to keep the column short and ' away from the engine. Other causes of particularly frightful accidents are gimmicky styling append- ' ages, or even just badly designed regular fittings. A ■ motor-cyclist had his foot \ sheared clean off at the ankle : by the leading edge of the i rear bumper of a car passing . the other way. I A boy was killed when a

How a driver without a safety-belt dies in a headon collision: 1. The moment of impact. 2. The driver slides forward and injures his knees, thighs and abdomen on the dashboard. 3. He bounces up, injuring head, brain and spine on the roof. 4. He recoils, impacting chest and abdomen on the steering wheel. 5. His face crashes through the windscreen. 6. He slumps forward, dead or dying.

forward-pointing car door handle pierced his heart. A woman driver was stabbed to death when she was thrown forward on to her gear lever.

Yet there are thousands of small cars on the road with forward-pointing door handles. Some safety features are being developed, like anti-lock braking systems. The idea is for a four-wheel drive system with anti-lock braking—the disc brakes go on and off at least five times a second and so before the wheels have a chance to lock they have been released again.

Safety Car Flopped

The system undoubtedly works but has not yet been incorporated in any massproduction car on the market today. Why not? The problem is inextricably linked with marketing. Car manufacturers exist to make a profit, and safety has never been seen as a marketable commodity. In 1957 Ford of America put out the Ford Edsel with a number of safety features, and it was a disastrous flop. People do not want to think about having accidents and manufacturers do not want to force them to think on these terms.

What is the answer? Professor Gissane suggests legislation to force manufacturers to introduce safety features. This way they would all have to do it at once, so all would be at an equal advantage or disadvantage. There is one final overriding point to be made. Motorists always defend themselves as a group, and are quick to try to blame other people and other agencies for their own shortcomings. Certainly a great amount can be done to cut down on injuries in road accidents —but the basic cause of the accidents themselves is, and always has been, bad driving.