Seat belts

Emory.
Harsh enviornment aside the screen porch is a stationary object! The coach
at 6mph encountering a solid object WILL excert more force on the the
anchors. If the screen porch falls in a wind and your under it you will most
likely survive.THAT was my point!
It,however,is a mote point since there is little if no crush zone designed
into our coachs.
God for bid,if any of us are in a front side or full frontal crash, we WILL
have tears in our eyes, you can take the to the bank and it will draw
interest,Again do what you feel comfortable with.

Jim Penrod Jus hangi out an bein cool in Lake Placid F.L.A.
 
I have been following the chats on adding three point belts to our GMCs.
I will soon be adding this setup to ours. Like Darren I selected belts
from a GMC van. The main reason for my choice is the lap belt and
shoulder belt are two seperate belts. Since I will not know if the third
mounting point will hold the belt until it is needed I can still rely on
the lap belts since they will be mounted in the factory location.
The belts in my S-10 truck are made such that if the shoulder mount lets
go it would put slack in the lap belt and it would be kiss the
windshield time.
JUST MY THOUGHT
The other Jim 76GB
 
> Those could
> be serious, but we're still MUCH safer than the average plywood and
kindling
> sticks RV out there. Fasten your seatbelts, they could save your life.
> My .02. YMMV.
>
> Rick Staples
> '75 Eleganza
> Louisville, CO

This is a good opening for me to preach a little. I've been working part
time as a police officer; I just can't stay away from it. Every few years I
have to get a toe back in the water.

Anyhow, Friday before last I worked the scene of an accident on a
Farm-to-Market road wherein a very cute little girl who has cooked my
hamburger many times at the little stop-n-rob was thrown from her Rodeo
after rolling it 6 times down a steep hill. No telling how it started; the
marks indicated that she went off the right shoulder of the roadway, then
over corrected and began rolling. The little truck was wadded up like a
piece of waste paper; landed on its wheels. Both aluminum wheels on the
driver's side were sheared off of the spokes. But the driver's seat area was
virtually undamaged. Had she been wearing her belt, her worst problem would
be that she lost her truck. As it is, she is incredibly fortunate to be
alive. Her left arm was broken and her left femur was shattered lengthwise;
required emergency surgery to insert a pin. She was still in ICU when I last
checked on her. She is about 24 and weighs 94 pounds; no doubt her youth and
size helped her a lot.

She was on her way from her house to work, a trip of less than a mile.

There was a very effective psa campaign in Texas a few years ago encouraging
people to wear their belts. In it, a grim-faced State Trooper told us "I've
never unbuckled a dead man" You know, it may sound corny, but neither have
I. Not the first time.

Please, please, please wear you seatbelt everywhere you go.

Travis in Lubbock, Texas
 
Travis, THANK YOU! My two boys (28 & 30) are STILL feeling immortal and
don't always wear those belts. They will get a printed copy of your very
important and chilling post.
Our family learned the value of seat belts a LONG time before they were
required equipment: Back in 1953, my father, the previous owner of this
GMC, travelled by road a lot for the GE Apparatus Service Division. For
reasons none of us could understand at the time, he busied himself one
Saturday morning installing some things called "seat belts" in his '52
Mercury road car. Less than a month later, coming home from a loonnnngg day
servicing a steel rolling mill drive system, he fell asleep at the wheel,
and the car ROLLED -- about its longitudinal axis! -- 100 years into a
central Ohio corn field. What was left of the car came to rest upside down
against the trunk of an oak tree. When the Highway Patrol -- expecting to
recover another dead body -- got to him, they found him, unconscious HANGING
FROM HIS SEAT BELT. The cop, who was not familiar with the belt holding my
dad to his seat, cut through it with his pocket knife and dropped the old
man on his head. Except for being sore as hell all over for a week, the
bump he sustained in THAT fall was his ONLY injury. He remembered nothing
of the accident. He THINKS he slept through it or was perhaps knocked out
as the car began to roll.
>From that day, EVERY car I ever owned had seatbelts installed in them --
even if, in the early days, I had to put them in myself.
BUCKLE UP, Y'ALL!
Dick 75 PB in Atlanta.

- ----- Original Message -----
From: Travis Martin
To:
Sent: Monday, January 10, 2000 10:45 PM
Subject: Re: GMC: Seat Belts

> > Those could
> > be serious, but we're still MUCH safer than the average plywood and
> kindling
> > sticks RV out there. Fasten your seatbelts, they could save your life.
> > My .02. YMMV.
> >
> > Rick Staples
> > '75 Eleganza
> > Louisville, CO
>
>
>
> This is a good opening for me to preach a little. I've been working part
> time as a police officer; I just can't stay away from it. Every few years
I
> have to get a toe back in the water.
>
> Anyhow, Friday before last I worked the scene of an accident on a
> Farm-to-Market road wherein a very cute little girl who has cooked my
> hamburger many times at the little stop-n-rob was thrown from her Rodeo
> after rolling it 6 times down a steep hill. No telling how it started; the
> marks indicated that she went off the right shoulder of the roadway, then
> over corrected and began rolling. The little truck was wadded up like a
> piece of waste paper; landed on its wheels. Both aluminum wheels on the
> driver's side were sheared off of the spokes. But the driver's seat area
was
> virtually undamaged. Had she been wearing her belt, her worst problem
would
> be that she lost her truck. As it is, she is incredibly fortunate to be
> alive. Her left arm was broken and her left femur was shattered
lengthwise;
> required emergency surgery to insert a pin. She was still in ICU when I
last
> checked on her. She is about 24 and weighs 94 pounds; no doubt her youth
and
> size helped her a lot.
>
> She was on her way from her house to work, a trip of less than a mile.
>
> There was a very effective psa campaign in Texas a few years ago
encouraging
> people to wear their belts. In it, a grim-faced State Trooper told us
"I've
> never unbuckled a dead man" You know, it may sound corny, but neither have
> I. Not the first time.
>
> Please, please, please wear you seatbelt everywhere you go.
>
> Travis in Lubbock, Texas
>
>
>
 
>
>> God for bid,if any of us are in a front side or full frontal crash, we WILL
>> have tears in our eyes, you can take the to the bank and it will draw
>> interest

Fasten your seatbelts, they could save your life.
> My .02. YMMV.
>
>Rick Staples
>'75 Eleganza
>Louisville, CO
>

I add my .02 to this, having used seatbelts since 1960 before they were
required AND really used them when I rolled my car in 1962, all three of us
onboard walked away without a scratch. AND having served on a Large vol.
fire dept for many years, one of the largest in the Commonwealth of Ky.
I can,t recall ever having undo a seatbelt from a crash . EXCEPT when his
foot was trapped by the crushed dashboard. other than the foot, no injuries.
the seatbelt kept his face and body out of the windsheld.
But we have lifted many a vehicle off a body and looked for many thrown
out. It chills me when I see a family driving with kids loose in the car.
We use seatbelts in our GMC and cars. and while on the dept, they were
required in the apparatus. ( fire truck) except on the tailboard, and even
that is no longer allowed, all crew must be in seats, belted in an enclosed
area.
Wear those seatbelts......

John & Brenda Szalay
73 GMC Blue Painted Desert :)

BTW: since the new paint job, we may have to change the name of our lady to
"The Werner Rig" We finally noticed that the paint scheme we choose
looks very close to the tractor paint scheme on Werner truck lines.
What really brought it to our attention, was 2 truck drivers talking on the
CB, one called to the other and said "Hey look at the paint on the Blue RV
It must belong to a retired Werner driver." :)

Which brings up another question, when truck drivers retire, do they go
out on the road in an RV (after all those years on the road} ?

 
All this discussion about the corrosion of various metals weakening the
structural integrity of shoulder belt mountings has been really
interesting, But I think a valid point is being missed.

Assuming the structure of the GMC motorhome in the area just behind the
passenger windows would support the 6000 lb. pull specified in the standard
(doubtful), any degradation of this capacity as result of corrosion between
varying metals used in the third belt's mounting would still provide a
great deal more protection than the lap belt alone.

This is not the place for "all or nothing" logic. I'm planning to have
shoulder belts installed using the best practical means, even if we'll only
be protected in 80 or 90 percent of possible frontal crashes. Since
absolute safety is unattainable, our goal is reasonable improvement.

My choice, not necessarily yours.

Dave (& Dege), '76 Royale, Santa Barbara, CA
 
My original message certainly generated some interesting discussion, and
I appreciate all the comments. Now I have another question - would any
of you folks brave enough to tackle the three point belt happen to have
a original driver's side tan lap belt left over?
Dave Thompson
76 Eleganza II
Gloster, LA
 
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