I certainly have no aversion to wearing seat belts and it's about as automatic as turning the ignition key to put them on. One of the first things on my list this week is to secure some lap belts in my truck. Anyone who has already done this is a '41 '46 series is sure welcome to chime in and share their experience.
My steering wheel has obviously seen some serious trauma, and I've often wondered if it was cracked as a result of a body blow. Lap belts wouldn't have helped there but may have when the Viejo truck was t-boned on the right side someday long ago. There's some evidence on the inside of the passenger side door that suggest a good smacking.
In no way do I support driving without seat belts but I will share one of my own teenage experiences. You be the judge.
At the tender age of 16 me and a buddy of mine were returning to the East coast of Florida from Mobile, Alabama. I was driving a 1964 VW, which had a 9' Hawaii Noserider surfboard strapped to the top and about 25 pounds of fresh gulf shrimp on ice in the back seat. My buddy was in the passenger seat. We were headed south, being somewhere up near Perry, Florida at the time. I was concerned about the condition of the shrimp and turned around to lift the lid on the cooler to check their condition. At that moment I felt the car leaving the road and immediately redirected my attention to far weighter matters. By this time it was obvious that I couldn't just whip the car back on the road as we would risk a roll over. Also, I knew enough not to slam on the breaks while transiting down a grassy slope as again the result would not be what I was looking for. What I did see at the bottom of the sloping highway was a large cement culvert kind of dead ahead and a barbed wire post fence outboard of that and paralleling the highway. I decided to "thread the needle" by going between the culvert and fence and
a l m o s t made it. Unfortunately, the left front quarter smacked the inert mass of the culvert and it quickly became obvious that the litte bug with us inside was in for a wild ride.
Upon hitting the culvert the VW upended and tail in the air did one of those Olympic style flips with a couple of twist thrown in for extra points. On the first twist I was ejected out of the drivers seat and somehow passed by my buddy still sitting in the passenger seat. I continued on past and either went through the passenger window or door, I don't know which. I'm sure I bounced and tumbled on the ground but remember seeing the car do another spectacular bounce into the air with a twist for more points and then saw my friend come flying out. His uncontrolled ejection appeared just like a surfboard bailing out of a closing wave. He seemed to go straight up while spinning and then straight down to a lifeless lump on the ground. I think the car did a few more tricks in the air before coming to rest in a broken heap.
My buddy was lying face down and not moving, the car was on it's side engine still running, my surfboard was broke in half, and there were 25 pounds of jumbo gulf shrimp strewn on the side of the highway in the outskirts of a slash pine forest town named Perry. I managed to get up and go over to my friend thinking for sure that he was dead. Miraculously he was only knocked out and slowly came to wondering what the hell happened. It turned out that he only had a 4 inch cut on his knee, that took a few stitches to mend, and I, although bruised and sore, didn't have a mark on me.
The car was another story. All four wheels were either broken off or barely hanging on by brake lines and such. The doors where sprung and the top of the car had been crushed down so far that it broke the steering wheel off. What would the result have been had we been "restrained?" Who knows?
Somehow, although many cars had passed us by previously, a Florida State Trooper saw us and stopped. When he got out of his car the site he saw is one I'm sure he'll never forget... two surfer looking dudes picking up shrimp off the ground strewn with car parts, clothes, and a broken surfboard. Tipping his hat and adjusting his shades he asked "What you boys doing?" Me, not feeling too good about the situation and knowing that the day was only going to get worse when my father arrived, answered "picking up shrimp, what's it look like?" Smokey wasn't amused and wrote me a ticket for failure to have control of the vehicle.
When my father and mother arrived about 3 hours later my buddy and I were sitting in a restaurant having a steak dinner celebrating life in general. My father was not amused at our antics and proceeded to go rather ballistic. I suggested that we take a ride to the impound yard and take a look at the car before he started wailing into me. We did. He took a look and gave us both a hug as there was on way on God's earth that we should have been standing there breathing. The impound guy gave my dad $35 for the car and we did make it home with about 10 pounds of so of shrimp which my mom fried up as she could do so well.
