Photo By Staff Sgt. Amber Grimm | Shattered remnants of a windshield hang inside what’s left of a Mercury Mystique on...... read more read more
Those coming in Peterson’s main gate will have notice the battered and broken husk of a grey-blue Mercury Mystique sitting in the medium between incoming and outgoing lanes. Its story was very nearly a tragic one, four teenagers returning home from a camping trip the driver lost control on a slight turn of a gravel road. The vehicle fishtailed off the edge of the road and tumbled approximately 40 feet down, landing on its nose then flipping upside down at the bottom of a ravine.
Luckily the young driver was a strong believer in seat belts and ensured everyone was wearing one prior to hitting the road. All four of them ended up dangling upside down in the crippled car, shaken and bruised but very much alive.
Their story hammers home the signs accompanying the car expressing the adage ‘Safety belts save lives.’
According to a study done by the Colorado Department of Transportation ‘an unbuckled passenger or driver increases the risk of serious injury or death to other occupants by 40 percent, furthermore the chances of dying in a crash go up by 25 percent when another person in the car is not wearing their seat belt.’
What most fail to consider is that an unsecured person continues moving during a crash, inside the vehicle they become similar to a projectile capable of hurting or killing any other occupants.
An unsecured driver runs the risk of being thrown into the passenger seat during an attempt to avoid a collision causing the very thing they had hoped to avoid.
CDOT’s straightforward message is – Whether behind the wheel or in the back seat, every occupant in a vehicle is vulnerable to the physical forces of a crash. So even if you buckle up every time, don’t be afraid to ask others to do the same.
| Date Taken: | 06.02.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 06.23.2016 15:39 |
| Story ID: | 202281 |
| Location: | PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, CO, US |
| Web Views: | 14 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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