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Fatal crash backs up 128 for 14 miles
By adamg on Tue, 10/07/2008 - 9:07am
Channel 4 reports on the accident northbound near Rte. 2A around 6 a.m.:
State Police say two vehicles collided and one of them rolled over several times before landing in the grass near the breakdown lane. That driver was ejected and died. The other driver was not seriously hurt.
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Comments
Just a reminder
It's extremely hard to be ejected from your vehicle if you're wearing a seatbelt. Carmody of the NTSB spoke in 2003 regarding rollover accidents:
Don't be stupid. Wear your seatbelt.
Not disagreeing, mind you
But I saw that car, and my first thought was 'whoever was in that is dead.' A seatbelt couldn't possibly have saved the occupant. The car rolled over several times and landed on the hood. The front of the passenger cabin (windshield, etc.) was flattened. That's where the passenger's head would have been.
Collapsing car
In the 2007 BMW X3, there are overhead airbags that would have kept the collapsing roof from crushing him. They are designed specifically for protection in rollovers.
Also, there's an intelligent drive system for the X3 that must have been overwhelmed by this accident by the driver's recklessness. It is built to transfer power and stabilize the steering in the event of emergency driving. That's also in Carmody's comments. People who don't wear seatbelts are over-represented in high-speed, high-risk driving accidents (the kind that lead to fatalities). The idea that someone would die whether they're seatbelted or not is irrelevant since they are more likely to have caused such a situation if they aren't seatbelted and they basically give themselves no good chance for survival by not using their seatbelt.
It's like saying that someone sitting in the sun for 16 hours straight and getting cancer doesn't matter if they were to wear sunblock or not. Maybe so, but that doesn't mean *either* activity was an intelligent risk to take and only helps cloud the logic and reality of those that would use it as an excuse to justify their stupid behavior.
Would have, could have, should have
I think you're confusing "intended to" with "would have." Just because the car had side curtain airbags doesn't mean they would have saved the occupant from asphalto-cranial intrusion. That car was almost pancaked. It hit the ground where the driver's head normally is at great speed. And even if there were airbags up there, they wouldn't have done any good. Put it this way: I thought it was a sedan when I saw it this morning.
If you want to get analogous, what you're saying is like wearing a bike helmet would have saved a guy who got shot in the head. I'm all for seat belts and bike helmets, and I always use mine, but that fellow was dead either way.
Non-provable conclusion
Since he wasn't in the car because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, the world will never know if he'd have survived or not. No, everyone who wears a seatbelt doesn't always live. Yes, he might have died anyways...but as I said, if he wore a seatbelt he'd also be less likely to have been driving in a way that led to the level of damage you saw. Being in the car even through that level of damage is still your best chance than to be flung out. There's a video on the web of a car getting crushed by an 18-wheeler and a bus at once. The wreck of a car looks like it'd been through a junk compacter, but the guy was removed from the cabin alive and survived. The cage of the car is built to give you the maximum chance at survival. You can't know that someone in that BMW would be dead any more than you would have assumed the guy squished between a bus and 18-wheeler was dead. But the stats show that not wearing your seatbelt and driving like a maniac pretty much give you no chance at staying alive once something goes wrong.
Fascinating
So I guess you think your non-provable conclusion beats my non-provable conclusion because... because you have an erroneous understanding of the airbag locations in a BMW SUV? Because you didn't see the pancaked car and I did? Because you don't understand the difference between correlation and causation and think that buckling a seat belt magically makes a person drive differently that day? Because a different car in a different type of accident got smushed a different way and the driver survived? What, exactly?
Conclusion
What non-provable conclusion am I drawing? I am pointing to the conclusions of the NTSB. They are proven. Seatbelts give you the best chance to survive and people who stupidly choose not to wear a seatbelt also choose stupidly on how to drive as well...leading to an even greater incidence of driving deaths because of their driving AND lack of seatbelt.
You are trying to tell me he'd be dead in or out of the vehicle as you saw it. My point is that your statement is unqualified by anything but your observation of the outside of the car. People have been carved out of worse and survived. Furthermore, it's less likely that it would have been as ugly of an accident if he had been wearing a seatbelt because people who wear their seatbelt are less likely to drive recklessly. Finally, it's observations like "he would have died either way" that other people then illogically take as their justification for doing further stupid things themselves. The reality is that this incident was highly avoidable and there is no valid justification for not using a seatbelt. It's just very fortunate that the other driver wasn't hurt any more than he was.
Correlation does not equal Causation
The unprovable conclusion that you're insisting is certain is that the fellow would have survived had he been wearing a seat belt. Not only that, but you suggest he wouldn't have had the accident in the first place. It's super duper that you can point to stats that say that people survive accidents better if they wear seat belts. It's true! But it's irrelevant to the case at hand. The information you linked to was a correlation of seatbelts to survival, not a correlation of cars landing on their roofs to survival.
In fact, your chance of survival in a rollover where the car lands on the roof is, approximately, crap. Rollovers are 3% of accidents and 33% of deaths. The death rate is so high for two reasons: people get ejected, and cars land on the roof. Ejection is the primary killer (though people wearing restraints also get ejected sometimes), but after ejection the secondary killer is roof crush. One key measure of the severity of a rollover crash is the degree of roof crush, and the biggest cause of roof crush is the car coming to rest on the roof.
In this case you had both ejection and roof crush. This SUV landed on the roof and was flattened so much it looked like a sedan. He left a bumper and skid marks pointing left in the high-speed lane and his car upside down and flattened on the right shoulder. He was obviously going very fast indeed, and hit the car in front of him at high speed after attempting to brake. He flipped repeatedly over three lanes. When the car came to rest, the asphalt was occupying the part of the car where the driver's head should have been. I very much doubt anybody was going to walk away from that, seatbelt or no, and research bears that out. (Maybe if the driver had a helmet...) That is my conclusion, and it’s no less provable than your conclusion that he would have.
You really should look into the difference between correlation and causation, Kaz. Then come back. I won't make fun of you too much.
This is a classic confusion. There is a correlation between people who don't wear seatbelts and people who drive recklessly. These are two reckless acts, committed by reckless people. However, that does not mean there's a causation. Putting on your seat belt does not cause you to be a safer driver.
It's absolutely true that the driver should have been wearing his seat belt. If he were the sort of person who normally wore his seat belt, he would perhaps also not be the kind of person to totally demolish his SUV on 128. However, if he had gotten in his car yesterday morning and though, 'gee, I think I'll wear my seatbelt today,' it wouldn't have magically made him any better a driver.
Wear your seatbelt. And drive safely. The seatbelt is a restraint technology, not a magic bullet or immunization against driving like an idiot.
Statistical Power Matters
There is a correlation between seatbelt use and survival, and a very much higher correlation between seatbelt use and not being ejected from a vehicle and dying.
These correlations are very strong due to the numbers of incidents over time where seatbelts have and haven't been used, and people have and haven't been killed.
The large numbers mean that there is high statistical power to detect differences in mortality in seatbelt wearing and nonwearing populations.
High statistical power, repeated studies, evidence of patterns over long periods of time, etc. all add up to a high degree of certainty that the correlation is a causal one.
So, while correlation is not causality in a single study, a small population, etc., I'd say this is one place where there is very little uncertainty that seatbelts prevent people from being ejected, and that being ejected from a vehicle in an accident usually results in extreme (if not fatal) injury.
I'd also be wary of "saw the car and think he'd be dead anyway" conclusions because modern cars are designed to collapse around themselves and look like hell on earth, yet spare the occupants. My dad has sent me impressive pictures from some of the court cases he has worked on as part of his ice/snow removal consulting business, and it really is hard to tell. (me: ewww! How many dead? Him: None!)
(note to Kaz - "proven" is never a good word to use. The trend in statistics is to speak in terms of the amount of uncertainty associated with findings, which is based on the statistical properties of the analysis methods, the amount and quality of the data, the number of studies, etc.)
Statistical power outage
You're mistaking what's being posited as a causative relationship here, Swirl. Nobody's disagreeing with the argument that seat belts can keep people inside cars in accidents. Yes, there's a causation there. We got that already.
Kaz argues repeatedly that if the guy were wearing a seat belt, he would have been less likely to get in an accident in the first place.
I'm sure you of all people can see how absurd that is. Wearing a seat belt doesn't cause you to be a better driver and have fewer crashes. It's correlated with fewer crashes, because sensible people tend to do both.
As for whether the guy would have survived in the car, I don't think he would have. There's no way of proving it either way, but that was one damn flat car. If you can dig up a percentage of the time that belted drivers survive their car landing on the roof after flipping 3-4 times, I'll be interested to see them. I'd bet it's less than 50/50.
Last comment
I'm well aware of causation and correlation. Here's the problem. I am arguing that if the guy had been wearing a seatbelt, then he would have instead driven safer. Prima facie, that's already true since wearing the seatbelt itself is safer than not. But as to how he handles his vehicle, there is significant evidence to show two primary classes of drivers: seatbelt wearers who drive smarter and non-seatbelt wearers who drive poorly. The idea that this guy without any mindset change about how he was planning on driving that day would suddenly strap in but still drive like a maniac is miniscule and hypothetical to the point of putting him in a class of drivers that hardly even exist. That's what you think I'm proposing and it's not. Not at all.
I am saying that if he had strapped in, then he'd have been in the class of drivers who strap in and drive reasonably. It's a hypothetical that goes to the core of his mental reasoning as to how to drive (strap in and drive safe), not to a superficial decision to buckle his seatbelt but still drive to the point of overwhelming his car's safety devices and killing himself anyways. Few if anyone does that. The decision to strap in correlates so well with the decision to drive within the limits of safety that they are essentially one and the same. Yes, there are those who strap in and drive stupid and those that don't strap and operate within reason. They are not large groups of people. This is why I say it's *likely* that if he had worn his seatbelt then he'd have driven better. This wasn't an accident due to road conditions, weather, or some other external factor. This was one moron driving like said moron and getting himself killed. If he didn't drive like a moron (which includes both seatbelt and driving style), then he probably wouldn't have died. We'll never know but it's a pretty strong example for why you should drive safe and wear a seatbelt (two things that go together like peas and carrots, says Forrest Gump).
Back away from the statistics
Sir, please back away from the statistics and put the keyboard down. Statistics may be dangerous if you are unfamiliar with their use; you could injure yourself.
The class of drivers "who strap in and drive stupid" are a large group of people - they're the majority of drivers in crashes.
The latest stats show that 90% of drivers on expressways like 128 use seat belts. If you imagined that most of the crashes were caused by the other 10%, you'd be mistaken.
Analysis of the FARS data set shows that the majority of people in vehicle crashes are wearing seat belts. In 2006, according to the FARS, 47,878 people in crashes were wearing belts of some sort, and only 36,319 weren't.
Yes, the fatality rate for not wearing a seat belt is higher. Yes, unsafe driving and lack of seat belt use are correlated. No, there is not a causative relationship between the two.
Yes, people exist who buckle up some times and not other times. No, the 60-year old man who died on 128 yesterday would not have magically become a safer driver if he had chosen to buckle up.