Anatomy of a Disaster

This week, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the anatomy of a disaster: in this case, what happens during an accident. We have heard the very good and useful information about how seatbelts save lives and how airbags make accidents something to walk away from, but what really goes on in an accident?

Well, you actually have a lot of things working at the same time. First off are the forces of physics working on both cars (or one car and whatever object it hits) but also there are the driver’s reactions to take into account. Does he or she freeze? Does he or she overcompensate and make what might have been a fender bender into a 8 time flip down the road? And what happens to the driver’s body? Is it really that bad? Are we really that fragile?

First off, physics. Remember Newton’s Second Law, the one that is formalized into F = MA (The force, F, working on something is equal to that thing’s Mass, M, multiplied by its acceleration, A) So basically (and physics teacher forgive me for simplifying this and glossing over the many parameters of this law), this says that the force acting on something is equal to its mass (how much of whatever it is, is) multiplied by how fast it’s going. So a four thousand pound car, going at 60 MPH will generate a lot of force. (Sorry, I’m an English teacher, I’ll leave the math to the experts). And of course, since gravity works on all things equally, that force will be transferred to anyone, or anything, inside the car.

I know you hear these numbers and these amounts, and for  the most part it doesn’t compute, but for a second, think about most of the accidents you’ve seen, heard of, or have been in. Think of the damage to the car. Think of the fact that you, hitting the car with your hand, could barely dent it no matter how strong you are. When you keep that in mind, and see a car’s body literally mangled into an unrecognizable shape by the impact of an accident, you can get a glimpse of just how much force is being applied to the car, and how badly it would be if that force was applied to you as a human being.

Us humans are very fragile things. We can fall over and snap our wrists by just putting them out to stop our falls We can not pay attention to where we are walking, step on some uneven pavement or a tree root, and twist our ankle so bad we rupture all of tendons that attach to it. We can lose our balance, fall,  and literally crack our skull open as our head hits the ground. Yes, this is all morbid stuff, but as I said, we are very fragile creatures. Yes, we have conquered space (at least the space around our little planet), yes we have conquered the sea (at least the sea we have cared to explore) but with all of those conquests have come many deaths, and many examples of just how fragile we are, and how much protection from the outside world we truly need. We are not as tough as we’d like to believe, and nothing bears that out more than a vehicle accident. I mentioned before that gravity is an equal opportunity force. So if an impact force is applied to the outside of a car, it will also be applied to the inside. And if you recall how hard it is for the force of your muscles to dent a car, and see just how easily an accident destroys a car, you can see how, If there is something alive in there, something fragile and prone to breaking like we are, that object will basically be a pinball due to being thrown by the first force, hitting the inside of the car, being thrown the other direction, hitting another part of the car, and so on. Or, as what often happens, there is simply one impact, and the person is literally thrown from the car through the windshield or a side window. Think of the force we just talked about that a 4000 lb. car going 60 MPH would make on anything it impacted. Now think of that force being imparted to a person. It would be like The Incredible Hulk punching a squirrel. I don’t envy the squirrel there!

Not only do you have those impacts going on, but take a second to think inside your body. We think of our organs as stationary things that serve us by either helping us breathe, take in nutrients, remove waste, and think. But none of those organs are stationary. They are all held in our body by either liquid or other means. If you apply a force to them they will move, and they can rupture. There has been a lot of talk in sports circles recently about concussions. And what is a concussion but a movement of the brain inside the skull? It happens in contact sports, and it happens in car crashes. If a force is applied to your head, it  will also be applied to your skull, and your brain can pinball around inside your skull just like you can inside of a car. Not only that, but your organs can be displaced as well if the accident is large enough. As you might have guess, a massive concussion and displaced organs are not usually liveable situations.

So we know that gravity will impart any force on the outside of the car to the inside of the car. This is why seatbelts are so, so, important. If you have your seatbelt on, the belt holds you in place. You can’t pinball inside the car. You can’t be thrown out of the car. You stay safely inside the steel cage that is your automobile. When you add in airbags to stop your head from impacting the steering wheel, windshield, or side window, you have even more protection. This is why I can’t stress enough that you must ALWAYS wear your seatbelt, even if you are just driving an eighth of a mile down the road. You can never tell what is coming around the corner, and having that belt on can make all the difference.

Of course, even seatbelts and airbags can be dangerous. If a seatbelt is on someone’s stomach, instead of lap, there could be some stomach damage due to where the force of the belt was applied to the body. If the seat of the person was adjusted too close to the airbag, there could be nitrogen burns on the skin due to the substance being used in airbags. So there might be no escaping injury. But a bruise in the shape of a seatbelt on your torso is going to be something that goes away. Death doesn’t. So I’ll say it again, wear your seatbelt.

Lastly, I mentioned the actions of a driver in an accident. Have you ever wondered, as I have, why when you see reports of drunk drivers, you will hear of all sorts of carnage to the cars and the people the drunk driver either hit or cause to lose control because of their actions, but you rarely hear of the drunk driver being killed?  Why is this? Actually it’s really simple. Drunk driving is really tired driving when you get down to it. Most drunk drivers are pretty close to asleep when they get in these accidents. How stressed are you when you are asleep? How often do you grip your pillow with white knuckles or clinch your muscles together in terror because of an approaching impact? I’m hoping never (if you said anything else, you need another bed, or another bedroom!). Drunk drivers survive as often as they do because they are so relaxed. They get the same impact that other drivers do, but they don’t tense up, so their bodies go with the force. Think of a porcelain doll, and a teddy bear. If you put them both in the dryer, which would come out intact? That’s right, the teddy bear, and that is because the teddy bear isn’t rigid. He will simply conform and roll with whatever forces are pressed on him. Whereas the porcelain doll cannot roll and conform because its body cannot move, so it breaks, while the teddy bear just changes shape to match the turns of the dryer. It is the same with drunk drivers. They don’t stress out or even actually react at all when they get into the accident because they are already asleep for the most part, so it’s just like that teddy bear in the dryer, they mold to the forces acting on them because their body isn’t worried about anything. But those people the drunk driver hits will be panicking, trying to steer clear and tensing their muscles to try and avoid the drunk driver. This tension will cause their bodies to handle the accident in a much worse fashion.

Now, having said that, the sober drivers I described above have not done anything wrong. It is a natural fight or flight reaction. You may as well bark at someone for how they breathe if you are going to try and say that they should relax or calm down. It is pretty much an autonomic reaction, like your breathing or digestion. Unless you are a Buddhist monk, you will stress at an accident, and it is no one’s fault.

Ok, there is a bit of an examination of the nuts and bolts of a disaster that happens all too common: the automobile accident. Hopefully, this gave you a bit of an insight into what happens in an accident, and gave you more appreciation for seat belts and airbags, both of which can save your life if you let them. Until next time….