Feet on Dash Airbag Injuries

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Feet On The Dash Accident

If you’ve ever ridden in a car with a person who insists on putting their feet on the dashboard, you’re probably familiar with the excuse:

“I’ll just put my feet down real quick if we’re ever in an accident.”

Famous. Last. Words.

Unfortunately, that is flawed thinking. Here are two reasons why:

1. Speed
   The speed of human thought doesn’t even come close to the speed of an exploding airbag.
   
   
2. There’s a better-than-average chance the guy who caused the accident won’t have to pay your medical bills
   Vehicles with airbags have multiple warnings (similar to the one at right) to never put your feet on the dashboard. If someone does and they get seriously injured, in the eyes of the law, it’s on them because they caused or, at the very least, contributed significantly to the severity of their own injuries. Contributory and comparative negligence laws vary by state and you can bet the other guy’s insurance company will rely heavily on them to minimize the damages they must pay, or in some states, prevent them from paying any damages at all.

How Fast And How Bad?

Really fast and really bad.

Studies show that a thought, like “quick, get my feet off the dashboard!”, can be generated and acted on in about 150 ms (milliseconds).

A properly functioning automotive airbag typically inflates in 15 to 50 ms. That’s between 3 and 10 times faster than the human mind is capable of even generating a thought, let alone acting on it.

In other words, long before a person’s brain has ever even sent the impulse to start moving their feet, the airbag has already exploded, already expanded up to 18 inches thick, and already sent the person’s feet, legs, and knees rocketing upward through the windshield and backward into their unprotected face at a velocity of up to 200 MPH.

An especially cringe-worthy reality is that an airbag inflating under the legs, instead of on top of them as it’s intended to do, often prevents the seatbelt from functioning properly. When this happens during high-speed front-end collisions, the entire torso is propelled butt-first underneath the seatbelt at the impact speed of between 60 and 170 MPH.

The body gets forcefully jammed and then wedged butt-first into the smashed front-end, under the dashboard in a legs-on-chest, knees-in-face, feet-in-the-backseat presentation until rescue workers arrive and extract them from the wreckage. Ouch.

How Fast Is 200 MPH?

That’s a great question because most people will live their whole lives and never once think about what would happen if they got hit with something that was traveling that fast.

• Imagine a major league baseball player “swingin’ for the fences” with a bat at full-force (70 MPH) aimed at a stationary object, like a head-sized pumpkin, for example. Can you visualize it? Now triple the speed. What do you think happens to the pumpkin?
  
  
• Not a baseball fan? Okay, then imagine a NASCAR race car screaming around the track as fast as it can go. Now visualize what happens when Mr. Race Car meets Mr. Pumpkinhead. That’s right; it disintegrates.

That is 200 MPH. That’s how fast an airbag is moving when it hits someone’s feet on the dashboard during a car crash.

Damage: How Serious Can A Feet On Dash Airbag Injury Be?

As far as damage is concerned, well, it’s absolute and utter destruction. Every single time.

According to Dr John Crozier, possible injuries with such events include “things like a ruptured bowel, a torn aorta and the spinal column itself can be torn apart.” The trauma surgeon also added that “Injuries like that will paralyse [and] they may well kill.”

NRMA

The damage is always catastrophic and frequently includes injuries such as:

Like we said; we hate this kind of accident.

At TriMark Legal Funding, we provide non-recourse pre-settlement funding and post-settlement funding to seriously injured plaintiffs throughout the United States, often in 24 hours or less.