SR - SAFETY BELTS

[Carlos R. Seda]

    I'd like to add a further note for those of you with small children.
About two years ago, my wife and my little girl, then four years old, were
involved in a side-impact collision.They were in a mid-size 4-door sedan,
and a large sedan going at about 65 mph ran a red light and struck them in
the right side over the front passenger door. That door and the side of our
car at the impact point were smashed in to the mid-line of the car - the
door crushed the front passenger seat, and the rear passenger door crushed
about three feet of the rear passenger seat.

    My wife, in her seat-belt, was protected from broken bones and internal
injury except to her head. The doctors say the impact was so forceful that
her brain basically slapped against the inside of the skull with enough
force to create a tear, and she spent a week in the hospital and months
recovering.

    My daughter was in a child car seat strapped into the center of the rear
seat. The rear passenger door impacted that seat as it was smashed in, but
the seat took the brunt of the impact and my little girl sustained only a
fractured collarbone. Had she not been in a car seat, the impact would have
thrown her about with such force that she would at the least have suffered a
brain injury as my wife did, and she very likely would have suffered much
worse; she would surely have been crushed to death if she'd been in the
front passenger seat or in the rear on the side of the impact. Had her car
seat been strapped in those seats, it and she would likely still have been
crushed.

    Parents: use car seats, and keep them strapped tightly in the center of
the rear seat. Keep your small children out of the front seat.


Carlos & Lucinda
Stargate


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