Have you seen this video of a car impacting a schoolgirl?
https://www.facebook.com/sureboh.sg/videos/1794374417249422/
According to some quick Googling, if you are hit by a car going at 50 km/h, you will most certainly be killed. A direct impact at that speed is 99% fatal.
This girl is very lucky to only have been brushed by the side of the car. But even then, imagine several tons of energy giving you a good shove. If she had hit and dragged by another vehicle, thrown under a heavy vehicle, hit her skull on the kerb or impacted another object…it would have been an untimely end.
The following is a video of direct impact on a wall at 50 km/h, bear in mind the bonnet of the car dissipates the energy from the wall.
We have been told that impact by a small 1000kg car, moving at 40 km/h and stopping at 1 meter of an object, such as a tree, would create a force of almost 22 tons on the car.
Although the forces would be reduced when hitting a person, you still have several tons of weight being thrown on to the pedestrian. For comparison, a direct hit from a trained Muay Thai round house kick carries up to 400kg of force – and it is enough to cause seasoned fighters to knock out.
(This is Buakaw and his kicks are worth much, much more than 400kg. He sends heavily built opponents flying with this kick.)
These are just illustrations and not to be considered as actual and scientific. There are too many factors to consider to calculate actual damage. However, it is sufficient to paint an picture of how dangerous the roads are.
Very often, we think that the motorist would watch out for hazards: be it pedestrians, cyclists, e-Whatever devices or fellow motorists. But this is a dangerous assumption. Drivers are also human and at any time they could be:
- Tired
- Distracted in the mind, thinking about something
- Talking to passengers
- Day dreaming. Because if you’ve been driving for even several minutes, it does get boring.
And no matter what the authorities say, drivers always appear to be travelling at 120 km/h on the expressway and 70 km/h on normal roads. And Singaporean drivers are extremely impatient.
Don’t put your safety into the hands of other road users.
I don’t wish to rub salt into the wound, but if you look at the video there is a chance that she may not be compensated adequately. In the law of torts, there is such a thing as the doctrine of “contributory negligence”.
A victim’s entitlement “could and should be reduced if the danger posed by the accident, against which he failed to take reasonable precaution, was within the reasonable contemplation of the victim.”, says a judge in a local case.
One more thing about this video, let’s watch this from a different angle. The following video has a front perspective of the accident:
Can you spot the mistake?
Advice from Direct Asia tells us that we should not move injured persons while waiting for help. This is borne out of medical practicality. There could be fractured bones, punctured organs etc that you do not know of nor know how to treat. It is best to let medical professionals guide you on what to do.
There is Chinese wisdom that says “crossing the roads is akin to entering the tiger’s mouth”, that’s how dangerous it is.
Other than the stuff they teach you at the Road Safety park, here are some other important points to bear in mind:
- Never cross the roads hurridly
- Don’t allow yourself to be distracted
- Don’t cross behind buses
- Be aware there is such a thing called “blind spots”, a phenomenon where motorists can’t see you
- Don’t cross behind reversing vehicles
And my own advice to family and friends: just imagine every motorist is a drunk driver and you’ll know what to do.
