Accidents Archive

Distracted Driver Alert: Keep your Hands off My Ford Touch

June 13th, 2011. By Hunter West

The distracted driver is becoming just as serious a problem as drunk driving used to be before society woke up, looked in the rear view mirror and saw themselves as the pariahs they had become. People still drive drunk—or tired, which is almost as bad—but the penalties for a DUI have increased and there is no longer any tolerance for it.

Distracted driving is the new battleground. The other day near where I live an 18-year-old plowed head-on into a transport truck with his small car. He didn’t stand a chance; the tragedy is that he had been texting while driving. His phone records indicate he had sent a text to a friend just seconds before his promising life came to a tragic end, in an instant.

So why, are manufacturers putting more distracting technology in their vehicles? Because the other guy is, and they want to out-tech to compete? Are drivers asking for this stuff?

Has everybody gone nuts?

Consumer Reports magazine is a bastion of common sense. No ties to lobbyists or manufacturers, funded privately through subscriptions with no bias, with independent testing facilities and protocols second to none. When Consumer Reports likes, or dislikes something, there is significant weight to that recommendation or rejection.

So it is telling that Consumer Reports no longer recommends the Ford Edge Sport.

Why? Because the 2011 model has too much damned technology on board, available to the driver in the cockpit. Specifically, the issue is the MyFord Touch system.

Witness a recent summation of the system by a reviewer in The New York Times:

“Ford has added an 8-inch LCD touch screen in the center of the dash that now coordinates not only entertainment functions, like the radio, satellite radio and MP3 playback, but also phone calls, the navigation system and the climate control, as well as settings for, among many others, the traction and cruise controls.”

In other words, way too much stuff to fiddle with. Consumer Reports has come down hard on it, and cited the system as one of the reasons why the vehicle had low test scores.

There is no question that the technology is amazing. It’s just out of place. And the addition of a touch screen to the dashboard of the 2011 Ford Edge had engineers at Ford balking, arguing that it could be considered a source of driver distraction.

But Ford went ahead with it anyway, assuming presumably that such technology would make boffo TV ads. And it does. The system sounds mighty impressive.

But it’s misplaced in a car, accessible to the driver.

Here’s reviewer John R. Quain again, writing May 27^th in The New York Times:

“While [the screen] has some benefits, like a crystal-clear view from the rear-facing camera, it lacks tactile feedback. So when you reach down to tap on a music selection you must take your eyes off the road or you’ll touch the incorrect tiny button…”

He also noted that the screen is about four or five inches too low, forcing the driver to look down and to the right when accessing the screen.

Which means, the driver is taking his eyes off the road—just for an instant.

That’s how long the 18 year-old took his eyes off the road to hit ‘send’ on his smartphone, a microsecond before his car slammed head-on into the transport truck.

Ford may have a techno-marvel on its hands. However, I have to disagree that the cockpit is the proper place for it. And if a family member of mine were ever to be hurt or maimed by a distracted 2011 Ford Edge driver due to the complexity and availability of the MyFord Touch system, I would make damn sure that the manufacturer that built the silly system into the car in the first place, was one of the primary defendants of my car accident lawsuit.

Tags: Car Technology, Dashboard Computer, Distracted Driver, LED Dashboard, My Ford Touch, MyFord Touch
Posted in Accidents, Automotive | No Comments »

Swimming Accident Safety Checklist: Print & Share

June 10th, 2011. By AbiK

Each year, thousands are injured or die from swimming accidents: drowning, diving accidents resulting in brain injury, spinal injury, paralysis or death, and pool drain-related disembowelment or entrapment. As we begin the fun-in-the-sun season, we encourage you to print out our “3 D’s of Swim Safety Checklist” and go over it with your children. Unfortunately, many swim accidents occur when a swimmer thinks he’s familiar with a swimming area and becomes overconfident and lax about safety. A few brief moments to check in with and abide by safety rules can save a life. Enjoy the warm weather and please, swim safe this summer.

For easy download, printing and sharing this checklist is available on Scribd.com.

Tags: Brain Injury, Diving Accident, Drowning, Paralysis, Pool Drain Accident, Pool Safety, Spinal Injury, Summer Safety, Swim Accident, Swim Safety, Swimming Accident, Water Safety
Posted in Accidents, Emerging Issues | 4 Comments »

Jimmy Stewart Plane Crash Movie too Close to Reality 60 Years Later

April 28th, 2011. By Hunter West

The grounding of a Southwest Airlines 737 earlier this month due to a five-foot tear in the upper fuselage while the plane was in the air reminded me of a favorite old movie starring James Stewart. 

‘No Highway in the Sky,’ a British disaster film made in 1951, follows the heroics and eccentricities of a professor and an expert in aviation who is commissioned to investigate the crash of a commercial airliner. Factoring in the age of the plane and the number of hours flown—not to mention the natural propensity of metal to weaken when under constant stress and subject to vibration—Stewart’s character theorizes that the plane crashed because the tail fell off due to metal fatigue. 

He proceeds to rig a life-sized experiment in his lab, subjecting the tail section of an actual aircraft to vibrations and various in-flight sources of stress in an effort to replicate the actual crash, and to test his theory. 

His colleagues think he is daft. But the movie—based on a novel—did contain some elements of truth. 

That was borne out in the comments of a former North Carolina State University prof and expert in materials science, who says cracks in the bodies of commercial airliners are normal, and can be expected. 

“It can happen with everyday things,” Charles Manning said in comments published April 4^th on WRAL.com. “Take a paper clip and bend it back and forth. It’s going to break,” Manning said.

 Of course, there are the engine vibrations—harkening back to that old Jimmy Stewart movie. But more precisely, Manning told WRAL that the act of pressurizing the cabin, allowing passengers and crew to breathe, stretches the metal skin in, and out with each pressurization. Over time, the metal wears down and cracks. 

Fatigue cracks are small, he said—barely perceptible with a microscope when they first occur. It’s when they become more severe and can be seen by the naked eye, that they can potentially become a problem and are then subject to regular inspections. 

Manning knows his stuff. For the past 30 years, he has headed Accident Reconstruction Analysis Inc., an engineering consulting firm that performs failure analysis and accident reconstruction. Before that, he was a materials science professor at North Carolina State, and he also headed NASA’s Langley Advanced Materials Research Program. He reminds travelers that planes are inspected regularly, and not to worry… 

Not to worry? 

Tell that to the frightened passengers on board the Southwest airliner when the five-foot gash blew open, suddenly de-pressurizing the plane. Yes, the aircraft landed safely and there was no loss of life or injury beyond sheer terror. However, the sudden de-pressurization of a cabin can serve as a vacuum, sucking anything out with the rapidly escaping air pressure—like papers, handbags…and if the breach happens to occur adjacent to a child who isn’t strapped in… 

Well, you know the rest. 

In the movie, Jimmy Stewart’s character forgot to provide for temperature in his calculations. The tail DID fall off in his lab, but a bit beyond when he said it would. Sadly, during the interim, he had caused damage to a similar plane on an attempt to prevent it from taking off (he was worried about the tail), and the daft professor was banished and dismissed as a crackpot. 

Until, that is, the tail in his lab experienced fatal metal fatigue, cracked, separated and crashed to the floor. 

Until, that is, the actual plane he tried to keep on the ground was repaired and sent up for a test flight without passengers. When it landed, the tail fell off… 

It was just a movie, right? 

Fact: Three years after the film’s release, there were two fatal crashes involving the world’s first passenger jet, the de Havilland Comet. Investigators determined that metal fatigue was the most likely cause of both accidents, although other sources point to a design flaw. No the tails didn’t fall off, but the fuselage gave way. 

That was in 1954. 

Then there was the infamous 1988 incident where cracks led to a massive breach in the roof and fuselage of an Aloha Airlines flight. Flight attendant C.B. Lansing was sucked out due to the rapid depressurization, and she fell to her death. 

Manning assures that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) keeps the airlines on a tight maintenance schedule, including the testing by manufacturers of aircraft in an effort to gauge when, and where metal is likely to experience fatigue. 

Did they miss something with the Southwest flight? 

“I think planes are maintained as well as you can, and if the FAA sees that people are not doing it, they get after them,” Manning said. 

That’s reassuring… 

Hey, how about this idea. Figure out the point when metal starts to experience fatigue—and replace the bloody plane. 

Oh, but that would be just too expensive, wouldn’t it? Planes cost millions of dollars. Fleets cost billions. We wouldn’t have an airline industry—it would not be economically viable. 

Thus to have an airline industry, it appears that planes are required to stay in service as long as they are well maintained. 

Complete with cracks. 

Yes, I acknowledge those who maintain flying is still safer than driving—especially with so many people abusing their smart phones and GPS devices—or looking at their computerized dashboards–while driving. 

That’s why I’m taking the train… 

Posted in Accidents, Airlines | 1 Comment »

Segway Company Owner Dead, by Segway

September 27th, 2010. By AbiK

Ok, this one is rife with irony. The type I don’t like writing about. It seems that Jimi Heselden, the man who only recently bought the Segway scooter company—you know, those odd-looking stand-on motorized scooters that look a bit like a pogo stick on wheels—has died. And here’s the eerily ironic part: as a result of driving his Segway scooter over a cliff and into a river.

Now, the cliff was not the great White Cliffs of Dover (approx. 350 ft. high), but a smaller “cliff” that’s located near Jimi Heselden’s estate at West Yorkshire in Boston Spa—for those of you who are wondering where that is, it’s about a three-and-a-half hour ride north of London in the English countryside. And it’s reported at dailymail.co.uk that the drop was about thirty feet from a rocky path–the picture shown there looks more sloping and wooded in nature than a sheer drop. I bring up the nature of the nature (ie, the cliff) not to diminish the severity of the fall, but to draw attention to the fact that a Segway may not be the best vehicle for handling rougher terrain–and clearly there are risks involved in riding a Segway.

The Segway scooter is driven standing up; the driver leans to control the direction it’s going in. And a gyroscope mechanism keeps the scooter upright. The video above gives a sense of not only the contraption itself, but how it must feel to drive one (I haven’t; I also have no desire to).

So according to reports thus far, it hasn’t yet been determined whether Heselden’s death-by-Segway was actually due to a defective Segway, or due to driver error.

Either way, what is known, is that Jimi Heselden was quite a philanthropist who will be missed by many. According to the dailymail, Heselden had given £23 million (over $36 million) to a charity foundation—the Leeds Community Foundation—he set up in 2008. “The organisation helps disadvantaged youngsters, vulnerable elderly people and health improvement projects in the south and east of the city.”

Tags: Jimi Heselden, Segway, Segway death
Posted in Accidents, Defective Products, Emerging Issues | No Comments »

Where were all the ‘Safety Nets’ at Amusement Park?

August 4th, 2010. By LucyC

 

Never a fan of amusement park rides—including the Ferris Wheel—I read about this story with a stomach churning sense of foreboding. On July 31, 12-year old Teagan Marti fell more than 100 feet in Extreme World Amusement Park’s Terminal Velocity ‘ride’ and landed on concrete because the safety net was not in place.

Remarkably, she survived. She is in the hospital in Wisconsin, the state where the amusement park is located, in critical but stable condition. She has 10 fractures in her back and one in her skull. Her father, who is a radiologist, performed CPR on her at the scene to bring her back to life.

Dr. Alex Marti, was the first to see his daughter after her fall. During an appearance on CBS’ The Early Show on August 2, he said  “She was dead….She was basically unconscious, not moving and laying flat on her back with blood coming out of her ears and nose. Just a horrible, horrible scene. At the moment she fell and I heard that loud thud, I just assumed she was dead.”

This is everyone’s worst amusement park nightmare—the unimaginable. Why? Because you place your trust in the amusement park staff, experts, ride designers, maintenance people and God—whichever god you like—that everything has been done properly, and your safety is not at issue. Because to actually imagine what happened to Teagan is hard to do. At some point your brain kicks in and says “no—this is ridiculous—it will never happen.” As Teagan’s father put it, after having watched several people do the ‘ride’ before his daughter, “To me, it’s just impossible to imagine that something like that could happen.”

But it did. So now the debate begins—who’s at fault? At a minimum this constitutes negligence resulting in personal injury—it could have been wrongful death. Do waivers hold in these types of circumstances? An interesting point in this situation is that Teagan is 12, yet the legal age to take this ‘ride’ is 14. According to a report on CBS News, Teagan’s parents signed a consent so she could do the Terminal Velocity ride, which incidentally is intended to send you hurtling through space at 52 miles per hour— having been dropped from a barrel 100 feet above the ground–see the video above.

The fellow who let Teagan go—the man at the top of the ride—is not at work at the moment “for mental health reasons.” I would think so. But the park has also been closed as an investigation takes place.

The attorney representing Teagan apparently believes it is this man’s fault because he didn’t check to see if the safety net was in place before he let the young girl go. But I can’t help wondering why there wasn’t a back-up safety net? What would that cost to install? Next to nothing, compared with the alternatives, I’m willing to bet.  And what about procedures? Were there any in place that this man had to follow before letting Teagan go? If there weren’t, how can he be solely responsible? Teagan’s attorney told CBS that there was no failsafe method, no back-up. And he makes the point that the fact that a rider could be released prematurely demonstrates a design defect. If this had been a defective product like a car that had caused an accident, people would not hesitate in placing the blame on the manufacturers and designers, and rightfully so. Therefore, while the man who let Teagan go may have played a decisive role in this horrible accident, I don’t see how he can be held entirely to blame.

I’m also left wondering who oversees amusement park safety? CBS news reports the “US Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that more than 270 million people visit American amusement parks each year. About 7,000 are treated in emergency rooms for injuries from ride accidents. An average of four people die.”

Consequently the experts advise you not to assume all rides are safe. Ride safety expert Ken Martin told CBS News, “Watch the ride, ask questions, make sure the ride operator is paying attention. Make sure other rides are behaving themselves.” That’s exactly what Teagan’s father did.

So, if you can’t assume all rides are safe—in what instance is it safe to go on one?

Tags: Amusement Ride, Extreme World, Teagan Marti, Terminal Velocity, Wisconsin
Posted in Accidents, Emerging Issues, Personal Injury | 3 Comments »