Road Safety

I haven’t always been such a staunch supporter of basic road safety, primarily due to the fact that I was ignorant to the reality of the often horrific consequences.  That said I always wore a seat belt if nothing else, just because it seemed the common sense thing to do.

I attended a road traffic collision (RTC) yesterday, where by a car had pulled out of a junction and collided with another oncoming car.  Road speeds were somewhere around 40mph and inevitably there were some injuries.  The first vehicle was a small car carrying a group of four teenage girls, all aged around 18, who were merrily on their way to pick up breakfast at Mc Donalds.  As it happens, my colleague and I were also on our way to get a full English breakfast at a local café – neither of us got our morning meals that day. 

When we got on scene two vehicles lay strewn across the carriageway both with reasonably severe front end damage.  The road was blocked and traffic was queuing in three directions as it was on a T-junction.   What saved this scene from being absolute carnage was the fact that all parties were wearing seatbelts.  We know this for two reasons: firstly, all people involved had some nice wide bruises from the seatbelts and secondly, although there were broken bones and a suspected fractured vertebra, the injuries were not life changing, that is to say that they will in all likelihood make a full recovery.  This would not have been the case if they hadn’t been belted up and we’d most likely had been dealing with a life changing if not fatal accident. 

Despite this, I am still amazed of how many people I see not wearing seatbelts when I’m driving.  It’s not just that it affects the person that isn’t wearing it.  If you are in the back seat of a car unrestrained, then you become an 80kg (or insert your current weight here) projectile flying towards the front seat passengers at whatever speed you were travelling.  Not only that, but its people like me that end up having to see the horrific scenes and scrape you up from the road surface into a body bag.  These people are totally ignorant and it really does anger me.

Another part to road safety that I feel strongly about is helmets.  When I was a kid, I never wore a helmet whilst cycling, and I cycled a lot.  It wasn’t until I saw a rider on a moped go over the bonnet of a car at what seemed a slow speed at which point his egg exploded like an egg on the pavement.  Seeing events like that really do make sure you’re protected.