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I remember some extended discussion in
magazine articles many years ago about instrument panel switches and lighting
posts.
It seems that in accidents, peoples’
heads were impacting the panel and the toggle switches and lighting posts and
such were making holes in the skull and making the injury much worse.
They recommended switching everything to rocker switches and eyebrow lights.
I guess that means that sometimes people’s
heads do impact the panel. Hartmut didn’t deny that. He was
discussing the probability of a survivable frontal impact. And he’s
right that those accidents don’t happen all that often.
But in an aircraft accident, it’s
only an accident if you hit something hard enough to damage the plane. If
you just roll out, it’s only an “incident.” Some
airports and off-airport emergency fields have lots of roll-out space.
Others don’t. Fence posts, trees, parked aircraft, ditches, mailboxes
and signposts pulling you into the ditches, cars, unseen power lines and lots
of other things can cause an instrument panel / head impact. These things
turn an “incident” into an “accident,” maybe a fatal
one that wouldn’t have been with shoulder harnesses.
Airplanes aren’t completely
analogous to cars. But, as a non-injured survivor of a car crash, I still
have a vivid memory of the steering wheel’s proximity to my face when the
shoulder harness caught me. That, combined with an advanced first aid
course’s explicit discussion of head injuries and digging or cutting an
airway when there was no should harness made me a believer.
If you fly in
Y’all be careful out there.
http://edburkhead.com
ed -at-
edburkhead???.com (change -at-
to @ and remove "???")
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