Dusty D was working on obits again today in the Archives. This one is for Mr. & Mrs. David F. Johnson.In many old obit photos of car crashes, the level of damage to the car is alarming. In this photo of what appears to have been a four-door sedan, the entire front half of the car is utterly destroyed.
The only consoling thought is that likely the couple did not suffer.
This story dates from 1970, when seat belt usage was rare. Here's an interesting paragraph on the subject from the Harvard School of Public Health:
"The big jump in U.S. seat belt use came between 1984 and 1992, when usage rates went from 14% to 62%. In 1984 the U.S. Secretary of Transportation ruled that passive restraints (e.g. air bags) would not be required in motor vehicles if more than 2/3 of the nation's population resided in states with mandatory seat belt laws (meeting five specific criteria). The auto industry, which had long fought passive restraint requirements for their vehicles, immediately began a massive lobbying campaign to enact state seat belt laws, forming a new organization, Traffic Safety Now, to spearhead the effort. While no state had a seat belt law in 1983, by the time Traffic Safety Now closed its doors in 1992, 42 states had enacted seat belt laws. In a ironic twist for the auto companies, but of great benefit for safety, it was ruled that many of the state laws did not satisfy the criteria in the regulation, and the U.S. ended up with both state seat belt laws AND automobile air bags."
Luckily belts, air bags, and built-in crumple zones are now standard and used, so that there are fewer accidents as awful as this one.
