Quote:
Originally Posted by Gary L
And no doubt you deal with the same results of people with no attitude with their driving. which means that it's not exclusive to speeding. but mostly down to the car itself. which means we should ban the car altogether.
but then someone will throw percentages into the equation. a factor where so many accidents is little in comparism to how many cars there are on the road.
which would mean that the driving at high speed accidents is probably an even smaller factor in comparism to driving at normal speed.
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Speed is a major contributor to the seriousness of injuries sustained in accidents.
Modern vehicles are designed with many safetly features. These include: Progressive crumple zones which are designed to absorb the impact.
And a safety shell surrounding the passenger compartment.
SRS systems including mutiple airbags (some are dual activation), not just in the steering wheel and dashboard, but in many other places like seats, foot wells, and side impact curtain air bags. Some cars have up to 13 air bags. Not forgetting seat belt pretensioners, steering wheels that move away from the driver, and head rests that move forward to protect from whiplash. However, all of the above are designed to protect us at normal road speeds, and not at 100mph+ speeds.
If it wasn't for all the above, then it would be quite common that 30mph accidents would be fatal. When a vehicle comes to a sudden stop, our bodies try to continue moving forward. But our bodies are held in place by seat belts etc. So our internal organd try to continue moving forward. Without any crumple zones to slow the impact down, our internal organs would try to continue moving forward at the speed the car was moving at. This can lead to massive internal injuries, including wat is more common than most people realise, the heart becoming severed from the main artery (which leads to almost instant death).
In an impact at speeds of 100mph+, the crumple zones can't slow the impact down enough. So in a very high number of accidents at 100mph+, the result is fatal.
Not forgetting that the reaction distance is huge, so it becomes very difficult to avoid the accident in the first place (no matter how good a driver you think you are). Also accident are far more likely if one vehicle is travelling far quicker than the others.