Okay, you guys are being quite rude. She got seriously injured by something that she had NO IDEA wasn't a good idea. I never heard the term submarining until recently. I thought in a crash, my seatbelt would work the same, as it was designed, to hold me in place.

Of all the odd small facts to know, how are we supposed to know this unless we are told? Not all of us are engineers. Hey, it is safer to be rear facing in a car seat, but most of us turn our kids around at 1 year and 20lbs, when it would be far safer to keep them RF until they outgrow a rear facing car seat. Did you know that is what the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending?

You can buy car seats that FF at 20lbs, but that isn't the wisest choice, but how is someone to know, unless they are told? Submarining is the same type of situation as internal decapitation. Most people have never heard about it until told. It should be more clear, as it does effect peoples safety.

It would be VERY easy to make it so a seat cannot recline while driving, or beep at you if a seat is reclined while driving, just like it beeps if your seatbelt is off. It should be one of those built in safety features.

Lots of us have reclined in seats while driving, her article just helps us realize that it isn't safe, and that is a good article worth publishing.

People get hurt doing all kinds of stupid things. Someone recently died trying to sneak into a store through a ventilation FAN (i.e., through the blades) and hit the 'on' switch while he was doing it. Ouch! However, I feel no compulsion about rudely calling that thief a moron.

Similarly, you do not need to be an "engineer" to get the problem here. You don't even need to have had one single day of school ever - there's no special "book-larnin'" involved. As you recline, the lap belt will (if you've belted it tight, which you ARE instructed to do) cinch into your stomach, which is soft and spongy. The shoulder belt will float away from your shoulder and hover uselessly in midair. Explain to me: to what scientific journals do you need to subscribe to understand the danger of that position?

Mommyof3:

Lots of us have reclined in seats while driving, her article just helps us realize that it isn't safe, and that is a good article worth publishing.

I might agree, except that she isn't just writing to warn you, she's writing to tell you that if you do something stupid, its really not your fault.

Since you admit to being similarly thinking-challenged, I should let you know that driving with your hood up is dangerous, despite the fact that the evil car companies didn't make it impossible to do so.

hyperionred:

Similarly, you do not need to be an "engineer" to get the problem here. You don't even need to have had one single day of school ever - there's no special "book-larnin'" involved. As you recline, the lap belt will (if you've belted it tight, which you ARE instructed to do) cinch into your stomach, which is soft and spongy. The shoulder belt will float away from your shoulder and hover uselessly in midair. Explain to me: to what scientific journals do you need to subscribe to understand the danger of that position?

As simple and obvious as this may be to you, many of us are not mechanically-minded enough to have realized the danger here nor have an aptitude for grasping simple physics on our own. Others of us just don't think about these things at all.

For example, many people also don't realize that the lap belt must run across the waist/pelvic region to avoid injury resulting from letting it run across the stomach. This seems even more obvious (to me) than the danger of reclining the seat, yet many still don't realize this.

When I was in early elementary school, a speaker came to tell us the importance of wearing our seatbelts. He was paralyzed from waist down from an accident he was in, where, like the woman in the article, he had been wearing his seat belt but was reclining. The emphasis in his lecture was on the importance of wearing your seat belt, and the fact that he had been wearing it while reclining was presented as a side note. This is the only way I would have known that this could happen, and it does obvious in after-thought, but I'm confident I wouldn't have specifically realized the danger if not for hearing that speech or reading this article.

Basically, I don't think the analogy between someone hitting the 'On' button on a fan while in it (with obvious results) and the mistake of reclining in car-seat with seatbelt on is an apt one.

Then perhaps the government should be blamed for awarding licenses to people who are so unmechanically minded that they do not understand that a seat belt will do them no good when reclined.

I agree that some people are being a little rude, but I have to agree that if there is a piece of equipment that is supposed to keep you strapped in, dangling in mid air in front of you, i would think she would say" hmmmm maybe I should get closer to it". would she do that on a roller coaster... just let the seat belt dangle.......LOL Just a joke

Ma'am, she wasn't expected to know about the reclining danger without being told. Because she was told. As were you. In the manual. An entire book, put together by the designers of the vehicle, devoted to explaining a number of non-obvious details of the functioning of an expensive, complicated device that kills 43,000 people a year.

I have not followed this discussion, so perhaps I am stating something already covered, but it seems to me that it does not require an engineering degree to easily comprehend that when you are in a reclined position, your lap belt will not do much to keep you properly restrained -- any use of imagination at all should clue you that you will slide right under the damned thing in the event of a frontal collision.

some people have not enough sense to go out of the house..sad, but true....

grantoe:

As simple and obvious as this may be to you, many of us are not mechanically-minded enough to have realized the danger here nor have an aptitude for grasping simple physics on our own. Others of us just don't think about these things at all.

That last sentence pretty well sums up the problem and I, for one, am sick and tired of the world being micro-managed through the courts by those too lazy to turn on their brains, and the attorneys sleazy enough to encourage and help them, just for a slimy payoff. Attention everyone: Any of you who need "physics" training for it to occur to you that a restraint might not function correctly when you radically alter your body position, please, for pity's sake, NEVER VOTE AGAIN. The thought of you people in a voting booth terrifies me. It's a STRAP, for Pete's sake - not a magician's spell or a force field.

For any of you who feel set upon by the world because you are not "mechanically-minded enough" for something so obvious to occur to you, at the very least, next time you buy a car, READ THE FREAKIN' BOOK! If you already know you shouldn't be allowed to wield sharp objects unattended, try just not being lazy and look at what is put right there in black and white for YOUR benefit. But I guess it's everyone else's fault that people just can't be bothered with all of that, so it's only fitting that all the rest of us should foot the bill for the laziness of others.

I will say this about the car manufacturers... it's ridiculous that they would resist that warning sticker if, in fact, that is what they are doing. It's not as if new automobiles aren't already bristling with little red and yellow testaments to just how stupid and lazy and litigious a society we live in today - what difference will another one make? And let's face it - if someone is really moronic enough to avoid purchasing a motor vehicle because it has a sticker that points out what should already be obvious about EVERY vehicle, is that really cause for concern? Hardly. They ought to throw a party every time that tiny little sticker single-handedly transfers the liability of yet another stupid driver to some other manufacturer.

Here's a peace offering for all of you who think I'm just an unreasonable jerk - go check out www.darwinawards.com. I think you'll find enough outrage and scandal there to keep you busy demanding warning stickers and filing lawsuits for decades.

There's a difference between pointing out what I did in what you quoted in order to demand the "world [be] micro-managed through the courts by those too lazy to turn on their brains", and to simply say that the subject of the article or the insight it had to offer wasn't too obvious to have been written or appreciated by some.

I wasn't arguing and don't think the governement (or auto industry) should be held responsible for warning people to not use their seat in unsupported ways. For that matter, I also don't think the government should be enforcing seat belt usage at all, except that you have people demanding tax-funded emergency health care when they are in accidents.

I frequently lament how infinite the field of human stupidity is myself, but wanted to clarify my intentions in making that point as well as separate myself from the rest of your rant.