Two RVs hit head on - Hwy 49 in California

this....above..

Wearing seat belts is so important.

Last fall leaving Florida for Tennessee, we were driving north on the 75 when I saw a vehicle kicking up dust on the southbound side. A Chevy Trailblazer was losing control and veered sharply towards the center guard rail.

Just before he hit it, the sharp angle and speed that he was going caused the woman in the backseat to fly through the passenger back door window. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She landed on the pavement, all of the other family members jumped out including two small kids, one less the 1 yr. old.

People ran over to help the lady on the pavement. She never moved while I was there. We had pulled off on our side to see what we could do to help. The engine on the Chevy started smoking and catching fire. I ran back to the motorhome to get our fire extinguisher (the one behind the passenger seat).

I ran over to the burning vehicle and started spraying the engine compartment where the hood was buckled. It was like putting drops of water on an inferno.... those small extinguishers are for very small fires and was empty in no time.

I looked on the internet for the local news in that area and never saw anything on the accident.

PLEASE WEAR YOUR SEAT BELTS!

Safe travels,
MM.

Some people want to be "thrown clear".

Effy wrote:
Seeing these accidents and understanding the lack of crashworthiness reinforces some of the motives for selling ours.

Sounds like everybody survived this accident. What would a car have looked like had it hit either one of these motorhomes head on, especially that big heavy DP? Yes, I understand the dangers of motorhomes, but the vast majority of the other vehicles out there are a lot smaller and a lot closer to the ground than you are. So the odds are in your favor just because of that factor. But if you're going to be in an accident where you are hitting a semi-truck or a large motorhome head on, would you rather me in a similar large vehicle or in a car?

I was a first responder for over twenty years. Belted-in people occasionally die anyway in crashes but they are far outweighed by the number of unbelted people who die who most likely would have survived with minor or no injuries if they had been belted into their seat. I can't even count the number of people I saw over the years who died or were severely injured (permanently paralysed, brain damage, etc) from being ejected, some of whom were then crushed or otherwise run over by their own vehicle. The seat they had been thrown out of? Intact.

The last fatal I responded to before my retirement was caused by an unbelted, distracted driver on the freeway who came up at full freeway speed on unexpected stopped traffic. She overacted by swerving violently to the left, which threw her out of the driver's seat toward the passenger side enough that she no longer had control of the vehicle. Her then-driverless vehicle (with her still inside) travelled at freeway speed through the grassy median dip, became airborne, and struck several oncoming vehicles. She was ejected and killed, and two belted-in drivers going the opposite direction were killed by her airborne vehicle basically landing in their laps (it struck the first vehicle and cartwheeled into the second). Several other vehicles were struck by debris and some occupants in those vehicles suffered non-life threatening injuries. I was only a mile away, and when I got there less than five minutes later both sides of the freeway were at a stop and there were people running in various directions, with smoke and debris spread over a large area. The scene looked very much like a plane crash, all the result of a distracted, unbelted driver. The two drivers who were killed by no choice or action of their own left widows and several fatherless children between them.

Effy wrote:
Seeing these accidents and understanding the lack of crashworthiness reinforces some of the motives for selling ours.

No one needs a reason for selling their RV but a quick search of the internet turned up more people dying in wheelchair accidents than RV accidents. Just saying, there is no safe form of transportation.

rgatijnet1 wrote:

Effy wrote:
Seeing these accidents and understanding the lack of crashworthiness reinforces some of the motives for selling ours.

No one needs a reason for selling their RV but a quick search of the internet turned up more people dying in wheelchair accidents than RV accidents. Just saying, there is no safe form of transportation.

I don't own a wheelchair - yet.

And armchair analysis like this is really misleading. There are far more people in wheelchairs and those people obviously already have health concerns - hence the wheelchair. So of course there would be more wheelchair accidents. It's apples and oranges.

Anytime analysis is meaningful it involves correlation. So the only way to compare crash worthiness of an RV is to compare it to the same number and type of crash as other passenger vehicles. In that instance, without even looking at data (if it exists) I can tell you confidently that RV's will be worse every time. I don't even think there are crash test standards for RV's at all.

The Pace Arrow with only the driver in it crossed over to the other motorhomes' lane, hitting it head on. Reason is not known. Driver of Pace Arrow lives right there in Grass Valley.

grant135b wrote:
I was a first responder for over twenty years. Belted-in people occasionally die anyway in crashes but they are far outweighed by the number of unbelted people who die who most likely would have survived with minor or no injuries if they had been belted into their seat. I can't even count the number of people I saw over the years who died or were severely injured (permanently paralysed, brain damage, etc) from being ejected, some of whom were then crushed or otherwise run over by their own vehicle. The seat they had been thrown out of? Intact.......

X2

Glad to see there was no fire. With that amount of damage, there could easily have been. That would have made things exponentially worse in short order.

Chum lee

I suppose if crash worthiness is an issue you would do well to buy a class "C". At least the chassis is crash tested and rated and built by a vehicle manufacturer to meet some safety standards.

I know folks often make the statement that their motorhome has a steel framed driver area. I doubt light weight 2" square tubing is much stronger than 2x3 wood framing. It's certianly not as strong as an engineered passenger space in a class "C" with hard point mounted seatbelts and airbags.

I've seen class "A" seat belts attached with lag bolts in 2x4's.

I wonder when something will be done about all the cell phone/texting distracted drivers on the road these days? How many have to die before our legislators say "enough" to the cell phone lobby? It would only take a simple software patch to at least disable texting when a modern GPS enabled cell phone is going more than x MPH. But that might hurt phone sales for Apple and others.