🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4mlebk$1ih@cascade.cs.ubc.ca>,
Jason Harrison <harrison@cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

>My goodness, look at all of the people worried about an impact in a
>vehicle WITHOUT seat belts or other restraint systems.

This is a classic case of lack of analysis.  Let's consider what
a restraint system does. It prevents a seated person from flying
forward though the windshield. What causes a seated person to fly
forward? A (very) sudden stop, of course.

Now what causes these sudden stops? Generally, it's an impact with
an object that produces a fast decelaration.  Note that this means
the object cannot move signifacntly, otherwise instead of a fast
decellaration of the vehicle, we get a fast acceleration of the
object.

Given the difference in mass, if a bus crashes into a car (or vice
versa), it's not hard to see which vehicle is going to move a
relatively large amount and which is going to move a relatively
small amount. We can reason that in these sorts of accidents
unrestrained passengers on the bus are not likely to suffer injuries
as serious as unrestrained passengers in a smaller vehicle would.

The accidents that can produce comparably serious injuries in
unrestrained passengers are those where a bus crashes into or is
hit by an object of similar or greater mass (a building or a cement
truck, for example). In both cases, we presumably have fewer
accidents, becuase we have professional drivers driving all of the
vehicles involved.

So probably the lower accident rate makes putting the convenience
of not having passenger restraints on buses over the increased
number of injuries a worthwhile societal trade-off.

Of course, there may be other explanations. I welcome someone who
wants to explain this, giving references please.

cjs
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