That headline really says something, who was spared was it worth the fight? I do not remember that we ever had a car with out seat belts. My father was a gentleman racer, and as early as I can remember in the 50's, every car we had magically appeared with seat belts. A few had crude roll bars and by the 60's a 4 point roll cage and shoulder harnesses had crept in to the equation. We were fortunate we never had an accident to test out all of the state of the art safety equipment.

Can you imagine the year that the headlines read, No One Died In Traffic Accidents This Past Year. That will never happen, for various reason. I have always been pro safety, I guess it was in my DNA or my father knew when his son would get his license, he would have dreams of driving like Fangio or Jim Clark except on the streets. He did everything possible to train me to avoid putting myself in situations where I could not recover from a mistake, and if the worst happened, to be able to increase the odds of surviving.

So why did so many fight building safety into the cars? The Air Force knew from its testing how important it is to restrain the body so as to cut down on the possibility of hitting a fixed object in the cockpit. The enlighten racers of the late 40's and 50's all used surplus aircraft seat and shoulder harnesses to keep from being spit out of the car. I will not get into the politics of the approval this is not the place for it. 

A month ago as I was helping my best friend, who took a day off from his job to get the trailer packed to go the next day to a car show. Rick drives for Fed Ex, a professional big rig driver with over 2 million miles without an accident. There is a curve right behind ricks barn the middle of a two lane S turn. He took the Ford F350 diesel to fuel it up. I was at the top of the driveway when I heard some one locking up their brakes as they went into the the first part of the S He was carrying to much speed and the car went into a slide. For a moment he went out of my sight behind the barn I could still hear the skid when he came back into sight. He fought it with the steering and the car went into an opposite slide. I saw coming out of the trees from the opposite direction something big and white with the fronts wheels locked up as the driver must have seen the out of control Ford Ranger truck. For a moment it looked like the ranger was going to do some damage to the the saplings on the side of the road. At the last moment the Ranger driver yanked on the wheel to the right and headed head on into the now stopped F350. I was already running down the hill to the accident that was going to happen. A couple of golfers that were teeing off but 50 feet from the impact got there first. My friend Rick was still behind the wheel of his truck and had his eyes open. The driver of the Ranger somehow hopped out and was running around like a chicken with no head. His passenger was not quite so lucky as the front of the Ranger did not survive the impact too well. The grill of the Ranger was now almost to its firewall The truck had bounced back from the impact some 25 feet. The passenger, we just found out this week, is still hospitalized, she received two broken legs, two dislocated hips, concussion, whiplash and various other bruises. Rick was rattled and bruised his head hit the roof by the sun visor, the seat belt did not lock up and his chest hit the steering wheel,  he also had whiplash. His truck is a, 97 built before airbags. He was lucky his injuries were very minor and he was released from the hospital a few hours later. He was spared by physics and the right of weight. I estimated the impact speed at about 45mph another 5 miles per hour and their would have been fatalities in the Ranger.

So why did I go through all this? Basically to remind everyone that the drop in the fatality rate has been legislated through the passage of laws that have made all vehicles safer. We now have cars that have 7 or 8 airbags, seat belts that automatically pull you into the safety of the seat, many of the new cars can even call for help and provide your location, saving precious live saving minutes for the first responders. Some day we may even take the most dangerous thing to the safety of others out of the driving loop, us.