@5129frederick wrote:About eight years ago I was involved in a serious accident where a tractor towing a 40' trailer came straight out of a side road at a 45 angle onto a single lane carriageway and slammed brakes when he saw me. The long and the short of it was five seconds later I was on travel news and even made it into the newspapers, my fifteen minutes of fame unsought (roll eyes). Even at a 35 m.p.h. impact speed (down from 50 m.p.h.) seat belt or not, you know you're gonna get hurt. I was driving a Ford Sierra at the time, where I was trapped in the car for forty minutes. Police told me later had I been driving a smaller car I'd never have made it, and they were right! This point was brought home to me when I had to go to a car breakers yard looking for a spare part. There I saw car after car after virtually disintigrated by frontal impact damage - it made my stomach churn. Modern cars are just too small
there's virtually no room in the boot for suitcases or anything else for when you go on holiday. Apart from the BMW and Range Rover, where are the solid cars like the Austin Ambassador - I had two. The Vauxhall Cavalier, the Carlton (lovely car) the Volvo - my present car, or even the larger model Skoda Octavia. Vehicles that will not break up on impact. Yon't need speed - 60 m.p.h. is fast enough for anybody unless you're in a mad rush. Today's car might have air bags left, right and centre, but generally they are built too light with engines designed to take most of them to speeds of excess of 100 m.p.h. Where's the Austin Cambridge with static as opposed to inertia seat belts? I've never gone over 65 m.p.h. in my car - that's why it sailed through it's MoT three years in a row.
Yes, it's basic physics that Newton knew about.
My experience, just over eight years ago, was when I, in my Subaru Forester, was hit head-on by a youngster coming round a bend on my side of the road, in a classic boy-racer vehicle, a yellow Peugeot 205. I was doing 40 mph (the limit on that road) before braking; he was probably going faster so the combined-speed impact was considerable.
I got away with a broken sternum (from the seat-belt); he had two broken legs, two broken arms and a fractured skull.
The firefighters had to cut his car to pieces to get him out; with mine, they opened the driver's door and lifted me out. The 'passenger cell' was intact and my legs weren't damaged. You could read the seat-belt maker's name in my bruises but without it I would have been dead.
When I got out of hospital and felt like driving again, you won't be surprised to hear that I replaced my written-off Subaru Forester with another Subaru Forester.
