773-365-0040
Looking at a seat belt, it’s hard to imagine that such a simple device can save your life, but it can. Today, approximately 84% of all Americans use their seat belts, and the one-out-of-eight Americans who don’t wear seat belts account for nearly two-thirds of all fatal vehicular accidents.
We don’t want to get too technical, but the science behind the seat belt is based on Newton’s First Law of Motion. This law of physics says that unless an outside force acts on an object, the object will continue to move at its present speed and direction.
So, what does Newton’s law have to do with you, your vehicle and seat belts? Well, simply stated, automobiles consist of several objects. There is the auto itself, you and anyone else inside, as well as any loose objects in the vehicle. If your car suddenly crashes into some hard object, it comes to a sudden stop, but according to Newton’s law, unless you’re restrained in some way, you’ll continue moving at the previous speed of your car until you crash into something like the steering column, dashboard or windshield. This leads to, at the very least, a serious injury and quite possibly death.
But if you’re restrained by a seat belt, you’re attached to your car and that belt acts an outside force stopping your forward motion. Now when your car crashes and suddenly stops, you stop, too, instead of continuing forward at the car’s prior speed and crashing into the steering column or dash board.
The three-pointed seat belt commonly used in our vehicles today was devised by Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin in the late 1950s, and by the time he died in 2002, his invention had saved a million lives worldwide.
So to remain relatively safe while driving, stay alert, obey the speed limit and remain attached to your vehicle with that deceptively small engineering marvel, the seat belt.
All that said, however, accidents occur daily, and if you’ve been injured in a traffic accident we urge you to contact a Chicago car accident lawyer at the Shea Law Group. We know how difficult and drawn out these cases can be, and we’ll send a car accident lawyer in our firm to your home or hospital to get your case started. Don’t delay. Call us today at 1-877-365-0040 and let our car accident lawyers go to work for you.
