You're DEAD...less than a second is all it takes!

By Joseph Walther

“The State of Delaware should have no right to make me wear seatbelts if I don’t want to.” This is what nineteen-year-old, Eric Graas, told me. “The same goes for helmets, you know… on motorcycles,” chimed in seventeen-year-old Michael Nuntz. Three others, ranging in age from fifteen to seventeen, voiced their displeasure in having their basic “constitutional rights” violated.

I’m not going to make this article a tirade on constitutional rights. I’ve read the document a number of times. Try as I might, I can’t seem to find anything there that addresses our right to kill ourselves. The Supreme Court tends to agree.

No matter, though. I did not intend to get into a “rights” pissing contest with these youngsters. They had already made up their minds and they were in no mood to hear facts to the contrary.

I asked Eric if he had taken any physics courses while he was in high school. He told me he had, but he didn’t learn much because his teacher was an “idiot.” Michael, on the other hand, told me that he was getting ready for physics going into his senior year. The others looked too young. In fact, I had the distinct feeling that the shoes I was wearing were older than they were.

We can count seconds quite accurately by using a normally paced vocal cadence. Simply say, “one-one thousand.” This is remarkably close to a “second.” If you want to approximate, say… 3-seconds, just say, in a normal vocal cadence, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand. People have been doing this for centuries as a quick and reasonably accurate time count.

Now, how much of “one-one thousand” could you get out in seven-tenths of a second? One-tenth of a second? Trying to approximate this breakdown is not so easy. Yet, you’d have to it in order to get an accurate picture of what happens during a collision.

Let’s say that Eric is driving an automobile at a mere snail’s pace of 55-MPH, instead of the normal 65 or 75-MPH that seems standard on our nation’s interstates. His car has no airbags and he’s not wearing seatbelts. He takes a sip of his soda and attempts to place it back into the cup holder. He misses the mark a little and the cup and soda tip over and spill. He diverts his attention to the spill—just a fraction of a second.

In that fraction of second, he catches himself swerving a bit. As he looks back toward the windshield, he hits one of those concrete construction barriers head-on... still doing about 55-MPH.

Eric will probably be dead very shortly. It won’t even take a whole second, only about 3/4^th of a second. It’ll all happen so fast that Eric won’t know what happened. The last thing he’d have heard was the deafening sound of IMPACT. Here’s the scenario.

In no more than a tenth of a second, the bumper and grill on Eric’s car will disintegrate. During the next tenth of a second, the hood will collapse, accordion-like, as it strikes the windshield. The rear wheels will continue to spin at 55-MPH, but they won’t be on the ground. The rear end of the car will have lifted up due to the sudden stop.

Simultaneously, the car’s fenders will have wrapped themselves around that concrete barrier. The car’s frame has stopped, but the rest of it, including Eric, is still going 55-MPH. Like any of us, Eric will instinctively brace his legs against the impact. But, they’ll simply snap, most likely at the knee joints… both of them.

The next tenth of second ushers in another collision, one of several more that will occur inside the car. The steering wheel will break off, leaving the steering column perfectly free to penetrate Eric’s chest as the two rush toward one and other at 55-MPH.

As tenth of a second number four passes into history, the car has slowed to a mere 30 or 35-MPH. However, Eric and his chest are still speeding toward that steering column and what’s left of the windshield… at 55-MPH.

Not for very much longer, though! As the fifth tenth of a second ticks off, Eric’s chest and the steering column meet. His breastbone shatters as the steering column impales him, puncturing his lungs, filling them with blood.

When the rescue crews arrive, they’re probably going to find Eric’s shoes, absent his feet, right around the ascending floor boards, by what used to be the brake pedal. His feet will have been ripped from his shoes and the brake pedal will have broken off.

Six tenths of a second has passed. The car’s frame has buckled and because those spinning rear wheels have returned to the ground, Eric’s head has smashed into the windshield.

As always, time marches on, though. The next tenth of a second, the seventh, leaves the future and becomes the present. At its dawning, Eric’s car breaks up even more. Doors have flown off; welded seat joints have broken; and flying seat parts are rushing towards the windshield and the back of Eric’s head. Impact in…TOO LATE!

It won’t hurt him, though, because he’s already dead. Time has ceased to exist for Eric. No more pain. No more worrying about lawmakers taking away his “rights.” No more pleasure, either. No more… no more… Eric is no more. His entire life’s day-planner has been erased. He’s now an inanimate component in a funeral director’s process. And, it took less than eight tenths of a second, from start to finish!

All that’s left now is for the police to do tell Eric’s parents that he’s dead. I shudder when I think of what this will do to them. The rescue crews and body retrievers will finish their jobs. A medical examiner will do an autopsy, of course.

Eric’s friends and the rest of his family will now have to make room in their personal digital assistants (PDAs) for a possible viewing, but a burial, for sure.

Many people will probably cry. State and other elected officials will spend the usual allowance of time devoted to the never-ending quest to prevent “such future tragedies.” The usual array of spot-specific memorials (flowers, teddy bears, notes, etc.), all left at the spot where Eric would have died, show up right on schedule.

Eric’s “idiot” physics teacher undoubtedly covered Newton’s laws of motion. I list them below for your review. They’re not theories anymore. They’re facts, whether you are a youngster speeding down a hill on a skateboard or a ninety-sometime-year-old codger ripping though a mall in a wheel chair.

1. An object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by a net force.
2. Force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.
3. To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
   

There is a saying, “Too soon old, too late smart.” This applies to the entire human race. It also explains, to a significant detail, why young people do stupid things. Doing stupid things is part of a young person’s nature. Unfortunately, it accounts for the fact that, all too often, many of them never get to experience the “too soon old” era.

All of the physics lectures in the world, delivered by ALL of the world’s top “idiot” physics teachers and professors are no match for this phenomenon. Youthful impulsiveness always combines with another youthful syndrome, immortality, to form a force of nature that is more powerful than anything the world of physics can muster.

Eric and other young people, just like him, are smart enough to know that this does not happen to most of their peers. What they fail to realize is that it happens to more of them than it does to any other age group. So, it’s more likely to happen to one of them than it is to one of us older types.

Still, though, we can’t give up. How many of the elements that occurred during those fateful seven tenths of a second, would not have occurred with the proper use of airbags and seat belts? Parents, do whatever it takes to force the issue.

Have a great week. I’ll try to be a bit more upbeat next week.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.