A new study looks at how effective seatbelts and airbags can be in protecting the obese and the excessively thin from injury or death, compared to persons of normal weight.
A new study looks at how effective seatbelts and airbags can be in protecting the obese and the excessively thin from injury or death, compared to persons of normal weight.
Researchers at the University of Michigan looked at records of accidents between 1998 and 2008 in which at least one person was killed. They looked at a total of 297,000 accidents, and in about 151,000 of these, it was the driver who was killed in the accident. In the remaining accidents, the driver of the car survived the crash. Using information about the height and weight of the drivers, the researchers were able to get Body Mass Index (BMI) data, and were able to compare fatality rates on the basis of the BMI.<
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The results were interesting. The study found that obese men who were wearing a seat belt at the time of an accident were at least 14% less likely to be killed than a person of normal weight. Researchers are attributing this to additional padding and layers of fat protecting the person from traumatic injuries. However, when obese drivers were not wearing a seat belt, they were 5% more likely to be killed in an accident than a person of normal weight. Researchers have an explanation for this too. It is likely that the excess weight of the person pushes him into the airbag, increasing the risk of injury.
Obese female drivers with a body mass index of between 35 and 50 were 10% more likely to be killed in an accident while wearing a seatbelt, than women of normal weight. Underweight women who were wearing a seat belt at the time of an accident were 8% more likely to die than persons of normal weight. However, when researchers compared these women to those not wearing seat belts at the time of an accident, they were not able to find any reliable trends.
To Las Vegas personal injury lawyers, this much is clear from the study: current designs for seatbelts and airbags do not take into consideration the fact that there are varying sizes of motorists, and that protecting these persons may pose additional challenges. Researchers are calling for more research to be done into this field.
