Originally Posted By: Trav
So you are claiming the reduction in traffic fatalities is based on seat belts use? By how much?
What about improvement in vehicle safety like crumple zones, energy absorbing materials, passive restraint systems? How much of those numbers can be attributed to those developments?
Lets see the numbers. Hint. There are none.
Sure they may keep you in the seat in a van and i can see their use in motor sports but notice the design of the belt is not the same as in a family coach.
Why no shoulder belts on aircraft for passengers or the flight crew who use a multi point harness? How about School buses where most don't even have lap belts?
Quote:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/20...and-bus-safety/
In Indianapolis, a bus carrying 50 students, ages 5 to 16, to the Lighthouse Charter School ran into a concrete bridge abutment. The 60-year-old driver of the bus was killed, as was 5-year old student Donasty Smith. Two other students were critically injured.
All I see is you're repeating the arguments about being "thrown clear". In the real world getting ejected from a vehicle means doing so unprotected. People get rolled over by the own vehicles, run over by other vehicles, or suffer massive trauma as a result of slamming at high speed onto pavement. There are anecdotes about getting ejected from a vehicle that burst into flames, but there are also lots of anecdotes about occupants who became unconscious when they would likely have remained conscious (with the ability to unbelt and get out of there) had they been belted, and the vehicle burst into flames.
Regardless of the design, it's almost universally better to remain inside a car than to be tossed outside, through a window, and onto whatever (likely hard) surface is outside.
This has been studied for a long time. The following is an old paper:
Quote:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2619855
In virtually all circumstances, the chance of survival in a crash is much greater if the occupant is not ejected from the vehicle. Several estimates of the increased risk of death as a result of ejection (ranging from 2.5 to 25) have been made, but none were specific to the crash mode and most did not control for crash severity. The current study examined the relative risk of fatality due to ejection, by crash type and crash mode, using the Fatal Accident Reporting System data from the years 1982 through 1986. Crash type was defined as either single vehicle or multivehicle and crash mode included rollover, nonrollover, and/or direction of impact. Crash severity was controlled for using a paired comparison method of analysis. Both crash type and crash mode were found to have substantial effects on the relative risk of death due to ejection. In addition, risk differences across seating position exist. Depending on crash mode or type, the risks ranged from about 1.5 to 8. Single-vehicle rollover crashes have the highest increased risk of death due to ejection: about eightfold for the driver and sevenfold for the right front passenger.
Quote:
http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/enforce/PrimaryEnforcement/pages/AppA.htm
Ejection from the vehicle is one of the most injurious events that can happen to a person in a crash. In fatal crashes in 2004, 74 percent of passenger vehicle occupants who were totally ejected from the vehicle were killed. Safety belts are effective in preventing total ejections: only
1 percent of the occupants reported to have been using restraints were totally ejected, compared with 29 percent of the unrestrained occupants.
More than one-half of the passenger vehicle occupants killed in traffic crashes in 2004 were unrestrained.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/airbags/RuralCrashes/pages/CriticalNeed.htm
Ejection from the vehicle is one of the most injurious events that can happen to a person in a crash. In fatal crashes in 2004, 74 percent of passenger vehicle occupants who were totally ejected from the vehicle were killed. In the same year, 72 percent of the people killed (5,959) who were partially or totally ejected from a passenger vehicle, were riding in a rural area. Of this number, 92 percent were not wearing seat belts or not properly restrained in a child safety seat. Seat belts are effective in preventing ejections: overall, 44 percent of unrestrained passenger vehicle occupants killed are ejected, partially or totally, from the vehicle, as compared to only 5 percent of restrained occupants.
All you really need to do is look at the raw numbers. The majority of people dying as a result of vehicle collisions these days are unbelted, but the majority of drivers/passengers on the road are belted. This does account for crumple zones, airbags (which work better when belted), and energy absorbing materials. The safety features are designed around the occupants being restrained. It's not an absolute protection, but it's pretty clear that the chances of surviving an accident go way up with seat belts.