Hidden Dangers In Your Car



Hidden Dangers In Your Car

When everyday objects turn deadly—By Hal Karp, Reader’s Digest March 2003

Ron Romaner and his wife, Jaynie Schultz, both 42, pile their four kids, ages eight, six, four and two, into their Chevrolet Suburban for a road trip, confident it will be a safe one. Romaner’s a good driver, and his car has the latest safety features.

But the Dallas resident does not consider what’s on the back-seat floor or in the cargo area. While everyone is buckled in, they’re surrounded by duffel bags, books, a cooler, water bottles and a Game Boy, just to name a few items that might go along for the ride. Romaner doesn’t give them a thought.

And why would he? Tens of millions of autos on the road today, just like his, have crash tested well and feature air bags and antilock brakes, giving the driver a sense of safety on the blacktop. Yet speed limits have risen and SUVs have turned their vehicles into second living rooms where hidden dangers abound, from a PDA on the dashboard to those weekend-project ceramic tiles in the back. It’s a recipe for disaster because in a crash, any of these objects could turn into a deadly projectile.

The automotive industry has known about this for years. In 1986 General Motors engineers were warning that passengers and drivers could sustain serious injuries from unsecured cargo.

One evening in Las Vegas three years ago, Jacob Tobias buckled his 16-month-old daughter, Kennedy, into her safety seat in their Saturn sedan. They were going home after visiting Tobias’s father. Fifteen minutes from their destination, Tobias lost control of the car and spun off the road.

The severe crash killed Tobias. Police found his daughter alive, still strapped in her car seat. But a standard-size metal toolbox on the floor of the back seat had been hurled about in the rollover. It fractured her skull.

Today, Kennedy’s right arm and hand are nearly useless. Her legs require braces. “We never thought about what we stuck in the back of the car,” says Pamela Tobias, Kennedy’s mom.

“Most folks don’t think twice about unrestrained cargo, “says Sea Kane of Strategic Safety, LLC, an Arlington, Va., research firm specializing in auto safety. “Yet in our review of hundreds of crashes each year, it’s an unrecognized problem that routinely poses a serious danger.”

It isn’t just inanimate objects that pose a threat. Unrestrained riders can be just as dangerous. Studies in Sweden, Britain and Japan show unbelted rear-seat passengers increase the risk of injury and death to others in the car. “An unrestrained person in the back becomes a deadly force,” explains Masao Ichikawa, a researcher at the University of Tokyo.

Last year Ichikawa’s team studied nearly 74,000 two-car collisions. Researchers determined that risk of death for belted front-seat occupants rose 400 percent when someone in the back was not wearing a seat belt. The conclusion: over 740 deaths and severe injuries could have been prevented if back-seat passengers had simply buckled up.

To arrive at statistics for U.S. highways, H. Clay Gabler, former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) engineer, studied accident data for Reader’s Digest. He looked at 36,000 frontal collisions in which the driver wore a seat belt and a passenger directly behind him did not. He also examined 244,000 frontal crashes with a belted passenger behind a belted driver.

Of drivers with unbelted back-seat passengers, one in 68 was killed compared with only one in 330 drivers with a restrained back-seat passenger. “If the person behind you unclicks their belt, you’re as much as four times more likely to die in a frontal crash,” says Gabler, now teaching at Rowan University in New Jersey.

According to the NHTSA, in 2001 over 36,000 drivers and passengers lost their lives; another 2.9 million were injured. Experts say that many injuries and deaths aren’t the result of the collision, but of unrestrained cargo, pets or passengers.

Jerry Donaldson, senior research director at Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, in Washington, D.C., says loose cargo and unbelted riders are safety issues that drivers overlook. “We’re losing more lives and suffering more injuries than we realize.”

In an ongoing study of nearly 179,000 children involved in crashes, State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia determined that of the 12,513 children injured by something inside the vehicle, over 3,000 collided with loose objects, other passengers or both. Charles Hurley, of the National Safety Council, estimates it’s even worse for adults.

“Effectiveness and use of children’s car seats surpasses adult seat belts,” Hurley says. “The odds of being less protected in the first place put adults at even greater risk. And the list of stuff they carry around in their cars is endless.”

Former Washington State Trooper Robert Hendrickson recalls a crash he investigated involving a logger in a Honda Civic hatchback: “When the driver ran into a stopped 18-wheeler, an ax in the back flew forward and struck him in the head, killing him.”

EXTREME FORCE. Brent Miller, a police officer in Visalia, Calif., was driving with his wife and son in July 2000 in their Dodge Durango when they were hit head-on by a pickup. Miller and his wife were severely injured. His one-year-old son suffered a skull fracture—from a cell phone.

The list of projectiles goes on: golf clubs, umbrellas, strollers, even pets. “They can all cause serious injury,” says Robert Stearns, an accident reconstructionist in Eugene, Oregon. “In a head-on crash where you’re going 35m.p.h., a one-pound can of beans in the back seat continues at that speed until it strikes someone or something with 100 pounds of force. That’s more than enough to fracture your skull.”

The rising popularity of SUVs, minivans and station wagons—all lacking standard cargo trunks—may be part of the problem. For millions of drivers, everything goes into one open compartment—a one-box design.

In July 1996, a mother in Sulphur Springs, Texas, loaded her 1994 Dodge minivan with her two young children in the second seat. On the floor in the back were nearly 300 pounds of boxed books. When the mother lost control of the vehicle, the minivan dove nose-first into a dry creek bed. The books rocketed into the steel legs of the second-row seat with thousands of pounds of force, obliterating the seat legs. One child was flung headfirst into the rear of the front seat, killing her.

“People are largely unaware of what can happen in collisions,” says Allan Williams, chief scientist at the insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “The forces are extreme. after the collision outside, there are always collisions inside. Both can wreck havoc.”

BUCKLED UP? On the evening of August 22, 1998, four friends leaving a reception near Lakeview Terrace, Calif., piled into a Hyundai Excel and headed home. In front was driver Aaron Miron, 50, and Maria Martinez, 51, who was wearing a seat belt. The two rear passengers were unrestrained.

When Miron lost control of his sedan, it spun off the road into a ditch. as though shot from a cannon, the rear riders both blasted into Martinez’s upper body before going through the windshield. All three died at the scene.

A coroner’s report revealed that Martinez’s spine was fractured by the collision with the back-seat passengers. “It’s likely that she would’ve survived that crash if the couple in the back had been wearing seat belts,” says California Highway Patrol Officer Dale Stephens, the investigator of the crash.

A passenger hit by another occupant can suffer severe head trauma, a broken neck or spine. If the front rider is pushed harder into his seat belt, he could end up with deep bruising of his internal organs. A rear passenger could ramp into the back of the front seat, collapsing it and crushing or asphyxiating someone in the front.

“A front-seat passenger becomes a crude air bag for a person in back,” says the National Safety Council’s Hurley.

Why do people ignore seat belts? One factor, say safety experts, is the inadequacy of laws and enforcement. While 49 states have seat-belt laws (New Hampshire does not), only 18 allow police to stop drivers for a seat-belt violation, and most penalties come in the form of a $25 fine. Only 15 states require rear-seat riders to buckle up.

“State laws often fail to prescribe the best practice for safety,” says Phil Haseltine, president of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety (ACTS), a nonprofit in Arlington, Virginia. “The attitude is ‘If it were unsafe, it would be against the law.’ They’re wrong.”

GOOD ADVICE. In the spring of 2001, 33-year-old Erin McCarthy attended a police-sponsored car-seat check to make sure her 16-month-old son, Jack, would be properly secured in her 1999 Ford Explorer.

After adjusting the seat, San Diego Police Officer Mark McCullough noted the array of baby gear in the SUV’s cargo area and urged McCarthy to purchase a cargo divider—a cage that separates the passenger and cargo areas. McCullough explained that objects in back might fly forward in a crash and injure Jack, and that police were seeing more such injuries. McCarthy did not wait; she bought a divider—and in the nick of time.

On the evening of June 10, mother and son were driving home when a pickup truck raced across three lanes, clipping the back of McCarthy’s SUV.

Spun across the freeway, the Explorer hit the center concrete divider. McCarthy feared looking into the back seat to see if Jack was okay, but when she did, a wave of relief washed over her. The infant wasn’t even bruised.

Meanwhile, Jack’s stroller, a booster seat, a first-aid kit, cans of food and auto supplies—all in the cargo area—remained in place. “There’s no doubt that the divider saved my son’s life,” McCarthy says. “Before I went to that car-seat check, I’d never read a single thing about the dangers of projectiles,” she added. “And I read everything about safety I can get my hands on. Why is that no one talks about this?”

HAZARDS IN A BOX: The average American household hops in the car to take over 2,300 rides each year. The result: living rooms on wheels. It’s convenient, but possibly deadly. Be smart. Consider these potential dangers—and travel safe.

FRONT SEAT: Cell phones, laptops and compact discs on the passenger seat, coffee cups and PDAs on the dashboard, all common, all hazardous.

SOLUTIONS: Utilize all secured storage spaces, such as your glove box or front armrest and center console compartments. Keep your dash clear.

CARGO AREA and SUV, station wagon or minivan lets you haul a lot, but do it safely. If you use your vehicle’s cargo net, remember: Such devices are generally meant to secure items during normal driving, not collisions.

SOLUTIONS: Get a cargo barrier that’s been crash tested and will bolt into the frame of your auto. When stowing items on the floor, never pile them above the to the top of the back seat. Use safety features such as grocery-bag hooks, compartments and tie-down anchors. Secure objects with heavy rope, cords or cargo straps.

REAR SEAT: Keeping kids entertained can be a necessity. An unsecured TV can leave you childless. Other potential dangers: groceries (cans, bottles), hardback books, handheld games. Most lethal: not wearing a seat belt.

SOLUTIONS: Everyone buckles up with the appropriate restraint. Utilize compartments such as seat-back and door pockets. For kids, choose soft books and toys. Make sure all other cargo is secured in the back.

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