Family Weekly Auto Show
YOU OWE
YOUR FAMILY
SAFETY
SEAT BELTS
Racing drivers and safety
experts use them; they could save
10,000 lives a year
and countless injuries
yet we resist them!
By J. C. FURNAS
"v ,. rag-
A fra-4anc writer who Hat pciallxd In automotive
safety lor a number of yean, J. C. Furnas Is perhaps
beit known for hit realistic article, "And Sudden
Death," which wai originally published IS year ago
and has since been reprinted in millions of copies. In
1936, collaborating with the late Ernest M. Smith, he
also wrote a booh, "Sudden Death and How to Avoid
It." Furnas' personal crusade for automobile seat belts
has the wholehearted endorsement of leading safety
organiiations as well as the auto Industry itself.
A young relative of mine is a lucky girl. Just 17
at the time, she was driving the family car
along the Maine Turnpike some years ago with a
girl friend. The car behind smashed into them at
tremendous speed. It was the other driver's fault,
but traffic crashes are as likely to kill the innocent
as the guilty.
State troopers viewing the demolished cars were
amazed that the two girls had been able to walk
away from the wreck shaken up, true, but with
only trifling injuries. . .
Another of those once-in-a-blue-moon acci
dents? Not at all no freak about it What made
the difference between a few bruises and death or
disfiguration were safety belts the girls had se
curely buckled around them.
The belts were there because the driver's uncle-in-law
meaning me had installed seat belts in
his car six years before, had fallen in love with the
security-plus-comfort they offer, and has crusaded
for universal use of them ever since. The girls
are alive today because the driver's father, my
brother-in-law, heard me how could he help it?
was converted, put belts in his cars, and some
how beat into his offspring the absolute necessity
of using them. -
In other cases, it has been employers who have
acted as stern teachers, providing belts in company
cars and insisting employees use them. Consider
the salesman for a California salt company whose
company car met the Southern Pacific's "Daylight"
streamliner at an unprotected grade crossing in
San Lorenzo, Calif. The auto was knocked 100 feet
and totally demolished one of those twisted
wrecks that made the front pages. The salesman
merely unbuckled his safety belt and stepped out
with only minor bruises here and there.
In nearby Oakland, Calif., still lives thanks to
safety seat belts another user of company cars
who was flipped upside down after colliding with
a truck. The police recorded the car as a "total
wreck," but the driver merely found himself dan
gling upside down in his belt, a little breathless.
Consider what it implies when automobile racing
rules, trying to reduce the hazards of the sport,
bar drivers whose cars do not use properly made
and properly installed safety belts.
The annals of racing are full of striking results
such as the car in a French sports-car race that
went out of control, left the course, and turned
end-over-end four times. The driver unbuckled,
got out unassisted, and ran half a mile to tell his
wife he was all right
If all cars in the United States had had proper
safety belts properly used since World War II, our
cemeteries would contain some 100,000 fewer men,
women, and children needlessly killed in highway
accidents. In addition, a million or so would have
been saved from excruciating and often perma
nently disabling injury: " (Continued)
U Family HtoJcly. Octotwr It. i960
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