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Road Safety Displays Can Sometimes Go Wrong 

 

the saddening reality of a safety demonstration that caused injuries

 

September 30, 2004

 

By Eddie Wren, Executive Director of Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., and editor of the DSA website.

 

 

The day before....  This photograph, by Eddie Wren, shows the moment of impact in a 30mph simulated crash and was taken on September 29, 2004, at the Erie County Traffic Safety Seminar in Hamburg, Western New York. As the article below explains, the following day witnessed an equipment failure that left two organizers and four spectators injured during a similar demonstration. John Sullivan, Director of Erie County STOP-DWI and worst injured of the casualties, is seen here fourth from the right, in the pale blue shirt, close to the location where he was hit by flying debris the following day.

Photograph copyright © 2004, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc.

 

 

The traffic safety seminar for 1500 local high school students in Erie County, New York State, was undeniably a well-planned and significant event. Why else would on-duty officers from almost twenty local police departments and other law enforcement agencies be actively helping to organize the week and run the various displays? Yet despite very extensive and careful planning, things went wrong today and people got hurt.

 

Let's get this in perspective, though. The primary aim of this article is to warmly congratulate the originator and principal organizer of this otherwise excellent event, yet also commiserate with him at the same time, for John Sullivan, Director of Erie County STOP-DWI, was the most seriously injured of the casualties.

 

The seminar was arranged for five consecutive days, the first of which was "set up" day when equipment was put into place and all plans were checked. On each of the following four days, around 400 teenage students were to attend and would firstly hear presentations on drunk driving, safer driving tips, and the dynamics of crashes relative to seat belts and airbags.

 

This was followed by a "hands on" demonstration simulating drunk driving, the chance to ride one of two seat belt "convincers" and the opportunity to talk with staff from several different safety agencies.

 

After lunch, the students heard the personal story of a member of the local Victim Impact Panel, in this case one of two ladies, each of whom had lost a child to a drunk driver.

 

And finally, each day's batch of teenagers was taken outside the main hall to witness a simulated, thirty-miles-per-hour crash, involving two cars that were no longer usable on public roads, and one of which was pulled by wire cable until it crashed into the side of the other vehicle. This is an undeniably dramatic display that has been used to good effect at similar events and which does a great deal to impress upon young people the potentially dire consequences of getting it wrong while driving. 

 

Today, however -- the penultimate day of this week-long event -- things went severely wrong. In the moments surrounding the impact of the two vehicles, parts of a pulley system through which the tow cable passed apparently came loose and one large, allegedly triangular piece of metal was flung at very high speed, like a low flying Frisbee, over a significant distance until it hit some of the spectators. John took the brunt of the impact, and as a dreadfully inappropriate pay-back for his hard work to make people safer he received what is undoubtedly a serious leg injury.

This is part of what the demonstration was all about.  After letting young drivers witness the violence of a crash at a mere 30 mph, they also got to see the extent of the damage.  Despite the relatively low speed, the degree to which the bizarrely painted white car has penetrated the maroon car that it rammed is dramatic (and a good advertisement for "side-" and "curtain" airbags).

Photograph, by Eddie Wren.  Copyright © 2004, Drive and Stay Alive

 

Our second reason for posting this article, therefore, is to remind highway safety proponents around the world to think very hard indeed about how best to use orchestrated crashes as part of a safety display. There can be no denying that the Erie County seminar had been the subject of much careful and educated planning but it would appear that today boiled down to the infamous "Murphy's Law" -- whatever can go wrong, someday will go wrong!

 

So today, the fire crew that was standing by to cut one of the newly-crashed cars open, in order to "rescue" a ballasted dummy that represented a real-life victim, suddenly found that it had a genuine incident and several genuine victims to deal with.

 

The other adult casualty was Dan Herberger, one of John's STOP-DWI team, and another co-organizer of the event. Four students were also hit by the flying debris but fortunately it transpired that none of them were seriously hurt.

 

Hard luck, John and Dan.  Neither you nor anyone else deserved to get injured.  And you certainly didn't deserve things to go wrong like they did.  You, and everyone else that was hurt by the incident in any way whatsoever, have our very best wishes for a speedy recovery.

 

It is to be hoped that Erie County -- along with all other relevant places -- carries on staging events such as this, even if safety regulations need to be re-examined in the meanwhile. The benefits of such seminars for young drivers vastly outweigh the dismay caused by freak incidents such as this.