Yeah, likewise. I’m not all that experienced (I’ve never owned a car, though I’ve had regular access to one on and off for the past near 15 years and have driven semiregularly for a few years, and have gone on several long-haul driving holidays), but I doubt I will ever reach that kind of “I don’t need to pay much attention” level of comfort driving. Now, I’m rather neurotic in general, but when my driver training taught me to always stay fully alert to my surroundings, I take that quite literally. As you imply, either I or anyone around me could cause major harm in the blink of an eye otherwise. Which of course also makes driving rather exhausting - but I’d rather be exhausted than dead or have killed someone. Thankfully where I live at the moment I can rely on a bike, buses and trains for anything day-to-day, and the few days a year I rent a car for whatever reason I can deal with the exertion.
In racing schools, the phrase “lost control of the car” is verboten. It’s such a common phrase that “so-and-so lost control and crashed into a barrier” or whatever in media and culture.
You do not lose control of a car. You give up control of a car. They drill that into your head. It is a choice made at some point prior to the crash, after which the situation become unrecoverable.
This is a feature of modern cars that always shocks people- how much they get mangled in accidents. The deformation is what saved her life though, and it’s by design. Modern cars have what’s called “space to live” right in the center (and it’s a way smaller space than people imagine it would be- just a few cubic feet). The entire car is designed to collapse up to that point because it’s the best way to absorb and redirect the energy involved. It makes people think accidents are worse than they were in many cases (not to minimize this one, which was clearly very bad) because the cars look so balled-up afterward. Older cars that didn’t crumple by design mangled the people inside instead, even if the car remained more whole, because that energy has to go somewhere.
Crumple zones & airbags have done much to lower death & injury rates in crashes, but, like you said, they still look horrific.
I don’t know how much truth there is to the allegation that drunk drivers tend to survive crashes because they are relaxed.
Yeah, those videos are pretty grim to watch. Poor crash test dummies…
Its not like we can ask the sober deceased whether they were relaxed prior to death.
Probably untrue, I’d guess. The foundation of race car safety is to immobilize the driver because what kills/maims you is differential forces applied to your body. For example, we wear a “HANS” (head and neck restraint system) which ties your helmet to your shoulder belts which are tied to the cage. The purpose of this is so that any forces experienced by the cage are the same as the ones experienced by your neck. That means when the cage stops, so does your head and neck (at the same rate), which is otherwise what causes paralysis or death in a crash. Similarly, the five point harness itself is so tight you can hardly breathe, but that’s crucial because it locks your body to the cage to, once again, prevent differential forces. Drunk drivers would have the opposite of all that if they are “relaxed”, I would think. Just a guess though.
In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have carried his matchbook and oily rag collections on the same trip
I think this notion of relaxed = more likely to survive is used in the sense of what happens post-event. A fully conscious and unimpaired individual could be more aware of the awfulness of what transpired and panic, whereas a relaxed person would be more likely to just chill out and wait for rescue. Anecdotal evidence of small children being pulled alive from collapsed buildings days later.
But its a myth of course. Survivor bias, coupled with news fixating on the few survivors while not giving the deceased the same amount of attention. Oklahoma Cuty bombing proved children are no more likely to survive a catastrophe than adults. And everyone reacts differently to stress, even the same stress applied at different times.
I think it might apply more to things like falling down stairs where I could absolutely see that trying to arrest your fall would make it worse than going limp and letting it happen. The same isn’t true in a car crash of course.
IMHO it’s a bit like target shooting (either rifle or bow). What you’re doing can be done safely if you’re very careful and conscientious about it. If you’re not, it can be absolutely devastating.
Problem is that not everyone is as careful/responsible as you’d prefer…
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