Originally Posted by ike84
The schroth 4 pt asm harnesses are actually dot approved and come in street legal versions. The difference, interestingly, is the buckle - racing versions have camlock or latch, street versions have a standard "clip" with the red button. So, if your friend had a camlock or latch harness on I don't think he would get away with it. If it was the dot approved ASM schroth with the little red button, I would go speak to the county attorney (it would then likely get thrown out before even going to court because no one wants a member of local law enforcement to be proven deficient in their knowledge in such a public fashion)
I think it's interesting that every child seat I've ever seen (I'm talking ages 0m - 40lbs) has a 5 point harness. Obviously no hans device with those. Infants that size have a disproportionately large head compared to their body size, and their neck muscles are horribly weak overall. Yet we don't make a big deal over that? However, I have seen (tragically) one trauma case personally of a young kid with atlanto-occipital dissociation (that's what killed Earnhardt, essentially the back portion of the skull - the occiput- breaks its attachments from the portion of the first cervical vertebrae that it normally pivots around - the atlas) who was appropriately restrained in a booster seat with an OEM 3 pt seatbelt. I have also seen an adult in a high speed mvc who was restrained an OEM 3 pt belt who suffered the same fate.
Another interesting thing that isn't talked much about but to me is equally scary is the thoracic (chest) trauma. Multiple papers have shown increased thoracic trauma in 3 pt restraints than restraint systems that include dual shoulder harnesses and avoid the central part of the chest. It's simply a matter of the force being spread out among two belts instead of one and also the belts being positioned away from the center of the chest. No matter what restraint system is used though, ultra rapid deceleration will kill you (that's what happens in a fall!). One of the most mind blowing things I've ever seen was a traumatic transection of the aortic arch in restrained driver who hit a concrete barricade head on at 80mph. To make a really graphic story short, we found that heart heart literally ripped off of her aorta (the major artery that comes out of the heart to supply blood to the entire body). No seat belt, airbag, safety harness, or roll cage will ever prevent that from happening.
Another interesting thing I came across in the ase database are papers about submarining for rear passengers. The short version is that the rear seat used to be considered "safe" because of how badly injured front seat others were, but as seatbelts have evolved over the last 20 years to include pretensioners, spring back mechanisms, etc (none of which, btw, are in our car) it turns out that the back seat is far more dangerous, even for adults, and that submarining with a 3 pt seatbelt is a very real phenomenon. Front seat passengers also can submarine with a 3 pt, which is why the underside of dashes are padded and newer airbags fill that space also.
I tried to dig further into the ase database to learn about 3 pt vs 4 pt vs 5/6/6+ pt harnesses and surprisingly there were only 4 published. The one I referenced, a sister article published 3 years later looking at farside impacts, and then 2 more that were 40+ years old. I didn't see any papers that reference 5/6/6+ point harnesses. I've tried to find other sources of primary literature that addresses this topic but to no avail.
To sum up what I have ready over the past 3 nights - seatbelts save lives, but as is always preached, it is the "system" that matters. Modern front seat passenger systems are the best for street driving, hands down, and race systems such as those found in nascar are best for ultra high speed driving. Nothing is perfect though, and everything else is a compromise of some sort. Ultimately it is up to us as the driver's to understand the risks of what we are doing and those social with our running gear. I do wish there was more primary research to validate common practice and to provide objective data, but (unfortunately) the bottom line is that consumers don't want any more belts to fiddle with and racers don't want any fewer belts to keep their ass in the seat. Except the ricers....(just kidding, sorta).
Sent from my SM-G970U1 using Tapatalk
|
Threaded Mode
