Tag Archives: orphanseat

Cara Klemm, 31, Killed in WI Crash; Three Sons 6, 4, and 1 Survive

Who

Cara Klemm, 31 of Brillion, Wisconsin, was killed in a collision while driving what appears to have been a  red 2009-2014 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen.

The collision occurred with an unnamed male driver from Gillett who was driving a dump truck on Thursday, April 6th, 2017 at around 10 AM. The collision occurred at the intersection of Highway32/ 57 and Country Road Z / Hill Road in Holland in Brown County, Wisconsin. Cara died at the scene. The dump truck driver survived and was treated at the scene for minor injuries. Cara’s 3 children, Wyatt, 6; Wesley, 4;  and Wesley, 1 also survived with mild injuries. Aside from her children, Cara is survived by her husband, the father of the three boys.

How

Per reports from ABC 2 WBAY, Cara was eastbound on County Z and did not stop at a stop sign. The Jetta was hit in the front by a southbound dump truck described by the Brown County Sheriff’s office as “fully loaded”; the crash appears to have occurred at the intersection.

Per Lt. John Bain from the Sheriff’s Office, neither alcohol nor drugs appeared to be factors in the crash. Cara died at the scene while her sons, who were in car seats, were mildly injured. The dump truck driver was treated at the scene. An image of the vehicle in storage after the crash is available here while video of the vehicle is available here. Investigators later stated she had no chance of survival due to the primary impact occurring just forward of the driver’s seat. However, they noted that the three car seats in the back seat were virtually untouched. Captain Dan Sanberg, one of the first responders from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office described the seats as age appropriate and credited them with helping hte children survive with minor injuries. Per Kimberly Hess from the Center for Childhood Safety’s description, the 1-year old was rear-facing.

After the crash, Cara’s husband, Teddy Klemm, credited his wife’s proper use of car seats for saving their sons’ lives. He then went on to plead with other parents to properly restrain their children in car seats whenever they traveled. He noted how he was always lazy and would simply let her strap them in, but how she would always make sure seats were anchored with tightly strapped harnesses. Teddy noted that Wyatt had two black eyes likely from hitting the front vehicle seat with his face, but did not have additional injuries. Wesley, who was sitting behind his mother in a high-back booster, apparently received a slight cut above his eye. Wiley received a few scratches on the top of his head, but was otherwise perfectly fine.

“It was kind of hard to hear from him that he was checking her over and pushing on her and opening her eyes and all that stuff to say, come on, mom wake up, and she didn’t,” says Teddy.

…

“Be more comprehensive, because I’m telling you, I would never in a million years expected this to ever happen, and it can, and it did,” he says.

…

“You share your life together and you think you’re going to grow old together to watch your kids grow up and be good wholesome adults someday by all of your labors, and something like this comes along and just throws it all upside down,” said Teddy Klemm.

Why

The Outback is one of the safest vehicles on the road. But like every other vehicle, it isn't designed to protect occupants from side impacts above ~30 mph.
The Jetta SportWagen is one of the safest vehicles on the road. But like every other vehicle, it isn’t designed to protect occupants from side impacts above ~30 mph.

This is yet another senseless tragedy on our bloodbath of a road network. Reviewing the facts as presented, it seems clear that Cara was responsible for the collision. We don’t know how she was distracted (e.g., a phone, fatigue, daydreaming, talking to her children), but we can analyze the crash and the larger context of the tragedy.

The Jetta SportWagen

The ’09-’14 Jetta SportWagen is one of the safest cars on the road, and one of the best vehicles you could ask to be in before an imminent side impact. It received a “good” score overall and in all subcategories in the IIHS side impact test as well as a 5 star NHTSA side score. The side impact intrusion resistance as measured by the IIHS clocked in at 15.5 cm, which is one of the best side impact scores you can get in a station wagon even in 2017. It was a good vehicle.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly what I wrote when describing a similar crash from this past summer involving a young mother, a station wagon, rural roads, and a side impact while she drove with her 3 children. However, in that crash, which also involved one of the safest vehicles of the road, the mother (who was pregnant) and her 3 sons died. So what made the difference?

As in that case, the Jetta SportWagen was designed to handle 143.7KJ of kinetic energy in a side impact collision safely. In my experience calculating forces, individuals tend to survive up to 200% of designed force tolerances in their vehicles. Above that, however, survival odds drop significantly; I’d estimate the survival rate at 300% of expected forces drops to somewhere around 33%. Around how many KJ of energy did the dump truck transfer?

I’ve written about dump truck crashes before (e.g., here and here). The results are very frequently fatal, simply due to the massive amounts of kinetic energy carried by even empty dump trucks. A fully loaded truck can weigh 60,000 pounds or more. Using that as a baseline estimate and given the likely speeds of the collision (given the road design, I’d estimate 55 mph), the collision likely impacted at least 8.23 MJ (8,226 KJ) of energy into the dump truck / SportWagen. That would ordinarily be a fatal amount of energy for the SportWagen (or any passenger vehicle) to handle, especially when keeping in mind that the standard side impact test simulates 143KJ of energy (a 3300-lb sled impacting a vehicle at 31 mph). So if the SportWagen faced 5752%, or 57x the force it was designed to make survivable, how did anyone in it survive?

While it would be easy to give credit to the car seats, we do need to be realistic. Orphan seats they were; immortal seats they are not. Children do still die in rear-facing car seats; it’s just far less common due to how incredibly protective they are since they work with physics instead of against it. In this case, an examination of the photos and videos of the post-crash SportWagen provide the likely answers. It appears the car was impacted directly ahead of the driver door; this likely spun the vehicle severely and pushed it far away. It likely didn’t roll it, as evidenced by the virtually pristine right side of the vehicle (visible in the video above).

However, the forces of the dump truck were likely absorbed by the engine bay and the motion of the vehicle, with the most dangerous impact occurring away from the back seat area where the boys were stationed. Cara likely perished due to her proximity to the epicenter, while the boys survived due to being well restrained far from the impact, relatively speaking. It’s not the best explanation, but it’s the best I can come up with after reviewing this and similar cases in the past. Had the point of impact occurred directly at the driver’s door or any farther toward the rear of the vehicle, all three boys would likely have perished, as was the case in the tragedy I referenced above involving Lindsey and her boys.

Vision Zero

As usual, though, as tempting as it is to look at this as one more case study of personal responsibility, we mustn’t start and stop by shaking our heads at the fact that Cara Klemm didn’t stop at the stop sign at the intersection. Why she didn’t stop doesn’t matter very much if our goal is to eliminate all car deaths, as we’ll never reach a point where every driver is paying attention 100% of the time. I certainly don’t, and I don’t believe there is another living being who does. I’ve just been lucky not to have not being paying attention when my life depended on it.  A better approach is to look toward best practices–i.e., Vision Zero principles–so see how such a collision could have been either avoided or mitigated. And best practices here indicate, as they did in the Schmidt case, that a road such as that which enabled this collision should never have existed.

Once again, VZ principles forbid speed limits above 50 kph (31mph) at intersections where the potential for side impacts exist. Now, given the fact that the vehicle that hit the SportWagen weighed up to 20x more than a typical passenger vehicle, it’s entirely possible the SportWagen would not have been able to protect Cara anyway. In fact, a 60,000 lb truck would still have delivered 2.45MJ at 30 mph, a life-ending amount of force. However, given the fact that Cara’s sons survived the crash which involved forces 3x higher, it’s entirely possible that Cara might have survived had the forces been 3x lower. Remember, it wasn’t a direct hit to the occupant cabin of the SportWagen–had that been the case, everyone in the vehicle would have died. And as much of an advocate as I am for proper car seat use, I don’t believe even rear-facing all 3 children would have kept them alive from a direct hit by a dump truck at speed. But the lower the speeds of all vehicles involved in a given collision, the wider the window of survivability opens.

In this case, it didn’t open enough for Cara. But the fact that her sons survived meant that something in this crash was survivable, and had the intersection’s speeds been governed by best practices, it’s possible she might have lived.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can  shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Join us in the forums!

What are the Best Car Seats for Preschoolers (And Why Should They Rear-Face)?

Preschoolers can forward-face during piggy-back rides, but should always rear-face during car rides.
Preschoolers can forward-face during piggy-back rides, but should always rear-face during car rides.

Since starting this blog, I’ve had the pleasure of writing a number of articles on the benefits of extended rear-facing and the even greater pleasure of answering more than a thousand emails related to the best car seats or cars for children and families of a range of ages and sizes. Lately, two of the most frequent questions I’ve been fielding from parents involve a.) what the best car seats are for preschoolers and b.) whether or not preschoolers should still be rear-facing. If you’re in a hurry, the answer to the first question is convertible car seats like the Graco Extend2Fit, the Clek Fllo, and Diono Rainier, and the answer to the second question is yes, yes, yes. If you’ve got some time to learn more, let’s go into both of these answers with a bit more detail. And no, preschoolers shouldn’t be in booster seats.

What are the best car seats for preschoolers, or 3-, 4-, and 5-year olds?

extend2fit - 1    

The Graco Extend2Fit – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Clek Fllo – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Diono Rainier – Review Here, Buy Here.
The Clek Foonf – Review Here, Buy Here.

The best car seats for preschoolers (which typically include three, four, and five-year olds, are seats that allow them to sit rear-facing. In the US, rear-facing at these ages is very rare; studies have shown that only 1 out of 4 parents are still rear-facing by age 2, and the figures for rear-facing at 3, 4, and 5 are far, far lower. However, rear-facing is unequivocally safer at these ages for a variety of reasons. We’ll look at those in a moment. However, under the assumption that children who are 3, 4, or 5 should be rear-facing, the top seats on the market are the Graco Extend2Fit, Clek Fllo, Diono Rainier, and Clek Foonf, which all allow rear-facing until 50 pounds.

Of these seats, the Extend2Fit is my favorite all-around seat because it allows rear-facing until 50 pounds and up to 49″ in height, which means virtually all children who use it will be able to rear-face until they’re out of preschool. The Fllo and Foonf are my favorites for making 3 across car seat installations work due to their extraordinary narrow width of 17″; between the two seats, there isn’t much of a difference in functionality, and the Fllo is cheaper, so that’s almost always my primary recommendation between the two.

If your priority is to keep your child in the same seat for as long as possible, then you’ll want to look at the Rainier and the Pacifica (if you can find one, as it’s since been discontinued), as both allow extended harnessing, or extended time forward-facing once you’ve exceeded either the 50 pound rear-facing weight limits or the rear-facing height limits. Both car seats also include a booster mode that can potentially give your child additional years within the same seat. However, don’t get stuck looking too closely at the details between the aforementioned seats; any of them is an excellent choice for a preschooler. If you completely can’t decide, just get the Fllo if you don’t have much room in your back seat or the Extend2Fit if you do.

Should preschoolers forward-face or rear-face?

Preschoolers should always be rear-facing. With the range of seats currently on the market that allow children to rear-face until 50 pounds and well past 40″ in height, it’s no longer a question of not being able to find or afford seats that allow kids to travel much more safely by car than at any other time in recent history. Remember that even though rear-facing at 3, 4, and 5 is rare in the United States, it’s the default approach in the two countries that feature the lowest rates of child traffic deaths in the world: Sweden and Norway.

I recently wrote up a guide to Swedish car seat practices for Americans, and in it noted that despite the lack of any national laws requiring extended rear-facing, the idea of doing so had been so heavily infused into the culture that it was normal and natural to see parents rear-facing their children until 4 or 5 by default.

Parents don’t feel like outliers when rear-facing until 4-5 because everyone else is doing it; it isn’t known as “extended rear-facing” there, and parents don’t have to justify to fellow parents or spouses why they haven’t turned their car seats around. It’s just what you do.

With that kind of cultural acceptance of extended rear-facing in place, it’s no surprise that parents don’t feel a pressure to forward-face. While it’s difficult to bring that acceptance of extended rear-facing to the United States and Canada, there’s no question that the tide is changing as awareness grows across both countries about the benefits of keeping kids rear-facing. And regardless of what’s going on around you, as a parent, you are the ultimate authority on best practices for your child, and when you know that there’s no need to forward-face a preschooler once you have a seat that fits him or her, it’s just a question of making the choice to keep him or her as safe as possible for as long as possible.

Why should preschoolers always rear-face?

Finally, preschoolers should always rear-face because it’s safer for them to do so. The precise degree of safety is always up for debate and will vary from one study to another, but one of the most frequently cited figures is a fivefold difference in the risk of serious injury (e.g., brain damage) or death for a forward-facing child vs. a rear-facing child.  I’ve gone into detail about what exactly makes rear-facing safer than forward-facing in a number of articles, including one on the concept of the orphan seat and how it applies to children rear-facing in severe collisions. The excerpt below discusses how children’s proportions are different from those of adults, putting children at much greater risks of head and neck injury from trauma that would not necessarily lead to severe injury or death in adults.

Proportionally speaking, a child’s head is quite relatively compared to the rest of his or her body, and as a result, in a collision, the child’s neck must deal with that proportionally greater strain. To put it even more simply, if a 160-pound woman had the proportions of a baby, her head would weigh 40 pounds and her neck would be a lot more likely to break in much milder collisions than those normal adults could walk away from.

The science is clear; the facts have remained unchanged for decades. The Swedes started extended rear-facing more than 30 years ago, at least back to the 1980s, and we still haven’t caught up to them in terms of a cultural permeation of the importance of rear-facing. The American Association of Pediatrics recommendations are still far, far behind best practices by only recommending rear-facing until 2 or until seats are outgrown; this isn’t good enough.

The recommendation needs to state clearly that rear-facing is the best choice for children until at least 4 years of age, while continuing to emphasize rear-facing afterward until the height and weight limits of the seats are reached. To recommend anything else is to continue to neglect our responsibilities to promote best practices throughout society to the benefit of our youngest fellow human beings.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can  shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Join us in the forums!

The Orphan Seat: 3 Huge Rear-Facing Advantages for Kids

graco contender rear-facing“It’s a horrible term,” she said, “but E.M.T.’s call the rear-facing seat ‘the orphan seat’ because in a bad car accident, that child is often the only one who survives.” – Pediatrician at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York.

I most recently wrote about the phenomenon of the orphan seat here, in the story of a Utah toddler, Lily, who survived a crash that killed her mother and left her hanging upside down in her car seat while the car she was trapped in lay half-submerged in a river. While her mother sadly passed away, Lily lived.

I’ve written about the orphan seat several more times in the past, and will continue to write about the phenomenon because I feel the need to continue to advocate for the use of the right car seats in the right ways at the right times, the importance of safe driving, and the value of choosing safe vehicles at any budget.

Of course, no parent wants to think of passing away in a severe car crash, but I can’t think of any parent who’d rather have their child pass away with them than have the chance to continue living, whether with the other parent, with grandparents or godparents, or with extended family. However, if we’re not rear-facing as long as we can, especially between birth and the preschool years, we’re placing our children at a severe disadvantage compared to what we know about what it takes to survive car collisions.

Current laws in the US only require children to rear-face until 1, except for in New Jersey, which leads the US with a minimum forward-facing requirement of 2 years. However, even New Jersey doesn’t go nearly far enough. In Sweden, as I’ve noted elsewhere, the standard is 4 years, and it’s considered as normal as rear-facing until 1 is here. As a result, they lose nearly no young children to car collisions each year. Let’s look at 3 excellent, science-based reasons to practice extended rear-facing.

3 big, science-based reasons to rear-face your kids past 1, 2, and 3

1. Children’s proportions are different from adult proportions.

child-adult-proportionsLook at the image on the left from the kind folks at Rear Facing in the UK. Most parents and people who work with very young children are aware of how disproportionately large infant heads are. However, most aren’t aware of how much of a change people go through from infancy to adulthood. A 9-month old’s head alone is 25% of his or her weight. The head of an adult, in contrast, is only 6% of his or her weight.

What this means is that proportionally speaking, a child’s head is quite relatively compared to the rest of his or her body, and as a result, in a collision, the child’s neck must deal with that proportionally greater strain. To put it even more simply, if a 160-pound woman had the proportions of a baby, her head would weigh 40 pounds and her neck would be a lot more likely to break in much milder collisions than those normal adults could walk away from.

Rear-facing distributes the tremendous forces of a crash through a child’s head, neck, and back, via the car seat behind the child’s head, neck, and back. Forward-facing concentrates those forces into the neck.

2. One quarter of an inch is all it takes to paralyze a child.

Along the same lines, the spinal cord of a child is encased within a spine and skeleton that continue to grow and that aren’t made of hard bones yet. There’s lots of cartilage (the same material our noses and ears are made of) peppered throughout. As a result, in a crash where a child is forward-facing, all that energy that flings his or her disproportionately large head forward gets concentrated into the neck area, which can stretch (due to inertia, or why we’re thrown forward into our seat belts when braking suddenly). It can stretch significantly. If it stretches the spine more than 1/4th of an inch, it snaps. That’s all it takes to paralyze or kill a child.

When rear-facing, that traumatic stretching is much, much, much, much, much (5x, actually) less likely to occur.

3. Their rib cages bend instead of snap.

A third science-based reason to keep rear-facing has to do with the thoracic cavity, or the chest. Because kids have lots of cartilage instead of solid bone, their rib cages also behave differently than ours–than those of adults. The function of the rib cage is to protect the heart and lungs, as well as a few additional organs. The heart and lungs are the biggest ones, however. This is why our ribs are designed to crack, as painful as it may be, as a way of absorbing what could otherwise be a life-ending amount of energy coming toward our chests. However, children’s rib cages have much more cartilage than ours do (we still have some to help our ribs move when we breathe), which means that when pressed against a harness in a forward-facing collision, the ribs are much more likely to press into our soft internal organs, which can easily lead to severe internal trauma and death.

When rear-facing, of course, that harness-to-rib force is much less likely to occur since the chest is moving away from the harness and toward the back of the seat in a collision. In other words, it’s much safer.

No parent wants to leave this world while their children are young, and especially in such a tragic way as through a car crash. But I also don’t know of any parents who’d rather their children left this world before they did because they weren’t safely restrained. Right now, the dominant US approach to car seat safety is wrong, whether in terms of the laws on the books or in people’s perspectives and beliefs. If you’re reading this blog, you know it’s important to go beyond the minimum to keep your children and family safe, and it’s my hope that the more of us there are, the quicker we can spread the word about the importance of extended rear-facing, safe driving, and a sustainable approach to road safety that leaves everyone safer.

Mike, you’ve convinced me to rear-face past 1, 2, and even 3. Now help me do it! What are good seats for extended rear-facing until 4 or 5 (or until Kindergarten!)?

Things have never been better in terms of ERF potential here in the United States. I’ve reviewed dozens of seats that will let your kids rear-face until 40, 45, or 50 pounds here, but here are my absolute favorites at the moment:

extend2fit - 1Under $200, I think the best convertibles on the market right now are the Graco Extend2Fit, Safety 1st Grow and Go EX Air, and Safety 1st Advance EX 65+ Air+. The three seats are very similar, with the main differences including widths and whether they include additional booster modes or not. All of these seats are designed to be used from the day your child leaves the hospital until the day s/he weighs 50 pounds. They have among the highest height limits on the market, which means that just about any child will be able to use them until at least turning 6. Lighter children may get additional time out of them past 7!

rai1Under $300, my favorite convertibles on the market right now are the Diono Rainier and the (now discontinued) Diono Pacifica. Again, both seats are almost identical; the main difference lies in the head wings present in the Rainier, which are designed to offer additional side impact protection. Both seats will allow you to rear-face from birth until 50 pounds and both have the capacity to keep the average toddler rear-facing until 5. They can then be turned forward-facing and work for another few years as forward-facing harnessed seats.

If money’s no object, I think the best convertibles on the market right now are the Clek Fllo and Clek Foonf. Yet again, both seats are very similar, but in this case, I think the cheaper seat (the Fllo) is a better deal than the Foonf. Combine either seat with the Clek Infant Insert and you can start out rear-facing from birth and keep it up until 50 pounds. As with the Rainier / Pacifica, both seats are also sure bets to keep your toddlers rear-facing until 5. The height limits in the Fllo and the Foonf are slightly higher than those in the Rainier / Pacifica, making them a slightly better choice for taller children.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can  shop here for Canadian purchases. Have a question or want to discuss best practices? Join us in the forums!

Lynn Groesbeck, 25, Killed, Toddler Daughter Survives Crash

unsplash-ottosson-motherWho: 

Lynn Jennifer Groesbeck, 25, of Springville, Utah, was killed at around 10:30 PM on Friday, March 6th, 2014 in the Spanish Fork River in Spanish Fork, Utah, when she drove her 2007-2012 red Dodge Caliber into a cement barrier on a bridge and plunged into the river by the Arrowhead Trail Road and Main Street junction, close to the Provo area. The only survivor was her 18-month old daughter, Lily, who was rescued in critical condition but released from the hospital several days later. Lynn is survived by her fiance and Lily’s father, 34-year-old Deven Trafny, who was not in the vehicle at the time of the collision. Three police officers and four fighters who participated in the rescue were treated for hypothermia and released. A support page for the family is available here.

How:

Per police and witness reports, a fisherman in the river spotted the red Dodge Caliber on Saturday at around 12:24 PM. It was floating upside down in the water. He called the non-emergency line first to report the vehicle and then notified police in a second call when discovering a woman’s hand in the vehicle.

Police, upon reaching the scene with firefighters, discovered Lily upside down and strapped into her car seat inches above the rushing water.Her mother was deceased in the driver’s seat.

Rescuers state they heard an adult female voice calling for help (stating “Help me…we’re in here.”), but cannot identify where it came from, as Lynn is believed to have died hours earlier during the collision.

Lynn had been in the nearby town of Salem on Friday visiting her parents that evening and had apparently collided with a concrete barrier on the southern end of the bridge while driving home to Springville with her daughter. It is currently not known why she contacted the barrier or why the vehicle veered off the roadway.

She left the town of Salem between approximately 10  and 10:30 PM, and the family was not aware that she did not arrive. A neighbor close to the bridge reported having heard a loud noise around the time of the collision (10:30 PM). The resident explored the area but did not see the vehicle. Lt. Cory Slaymaker from the Spanish Fork Police Department stated that it would have been impossible to see the car from the roadway due to its location.

Rescuers turned the vehicle over, as it had been upside down, in order to remove Lily from her car seat. According to first responders, her eyes were fluttering, but she was unconscious and otherwise unmoving. Lily was recovered from the vehicle through a human assembly line to get her back to shore, where first responders began performing CPR. She was transported to Mountain View Hospital by ambulance before being flown to Primary Children’s Hospital, where she was in critical condition. She had not eaten or drank in 14 hours. She was released from the hospital some days later.

Police later reported that a small bag of marijuana, a bottle of Tramadol (a narcotic-like chronic pain reliever), and an unused and unopened syringe were found in Groesbeck’s purse. However, it is unknown if these factored in the collision. There were no signs of mechanical failure in the vehicle and there were no skid marks on the road.

Investigators believe she might have clipped the concrete barrier before leaving the roadway. Drowsiness and distraction are currently being investigated as possible contributors to the crash.

Why:

It’s been a long time since I’ve written about the orphan seat, but unfortunately, the fact that this tragedy has been reported in so many news circles does make it an opportunity for advocacy about the continued importance of properly restraining our children, driving safely, and driving safe vehicles.

Let’s start at the beginning, with the collision itself and circumstances leading up to it. We know Lynn was driving home at night from visiting her parents, and it’s likely she was familiar with the area. Night driving carries risks of low-visibility, as well the more pressing risk of fatigue. With the information we have, my greatest suspicions regarding the cause of the collision with the concrete barrier are that she either began to fall asleep or that she was momentarily distracted by something. If I had to choose one of the two, I’d guess she fell asleep, especially given the lack of skid marks leading up to the collision, suggesting she did not perform any emergency braking maneuvers immediately before the crash. Whatever the initial cause of impaired driving, upon striking the barrier, she lost control of the vehicle and left the roadway, which is one of the greatest risk factors for single vehicle collision fatalities, and unfortunately drove into the river to the right of the bridge.

A risk factor present at this point that also deserves mention involves the tapered construction of the bridge barrier. While the barrier was ostensibly created to reduce the likelihoods of vehicles entering the water, the ramp-style design could easily have contributed toward launching the vehicle off the side of the road and down the hill into the river once the wheels of the vehicle made contact with the barrier. This design was not a safe one and may have played a significant role in her leaving the roadway.

We know that she was driving a Dodge Caliber, but I don’t know precisely which year. Why does the year matter? Because Electronic Stability Control, a feature shown to reduce the risks of fatal single vehicle collisions by up to 50%, was an optional feature in every year of the Caliber’s existence except for 2012, the final model year. ESC might have prevented her from completely leaving the road, or at least might have enabled her to maintain enough control to slow her descent into the river to a degree that would have enabled her to survive the collision, presuming she died of injuries due to the collision itself. However, a safety feature even more basic than ESC is ABS, or anti-lock brakes. Dodge didn’t find those important enough to make a standard feature on the Caliber either, at least until 2011. This means she might have had even less control of the vehicle than drivers of vehicles made more than a decade earlier. These are the kinds of elements that matter when choosing a safe car.

Whatever the reason, she left the road and did so in a severe enough fashion to rollover the vehicle by the time she entered the river. To Dodge’s credit, the Caliber came with side-impact airbags in every year of manufacture (and activated side airbags are visible in the images above), but it did not come with rollover-sensing airbags, which suggests the vehicle may have become airborne at some point or otherwise experienced a severe side impact while rolling into its final upturned position. Rollover-sensing airbags would have tripped the moment the vehicle started rolling over, while regular side impact airbags would not have activated until the vehicle experienced a significant side force. In other words, it’s possible that Lynn might have suffered a concussion and lost consciousness or died during the rollover itself before the vehicle came to rest in the river. Either would have rendered her incapable of rescuing herself or her daughter.

If she did not die from a side impact injury, she might alternatively have died from injuries related to the roof caving in by the A-panel, which is particularly visible in the 3rd picture of the Caliber above. The Caliber has an “acceptable” IIHS roof score, which states the roof was capable of supporting around 3.5x the vehicle’s weight before caving in by 5 inches when tested. A “good” score would have supported 4x the vehicle’s weight, and might have made the difference between the observed level of roof crush and providing a survivable amount of space in the front area of the occupant cabin.

An examination of the vehicle in the pictures above also indicates the impact that led to the rollover occurred on the passenger side, due to the extensive body damage on the right side of the vehicle and the relatively undamaged body panels on the left side of the vehicle. The lack of left-side damage also suggests the vehicle only rolled over once. However, the damage was enough to significantly crush the roofline in the front left and right sides of the vehicle.

At any rate, the roof in the rear portion of the Caliber held enough to maintain the seats of the upside-down vehicle (and Lily in her car seat) above the water line.

This brings up another point: despite the observations of the fisherman, the vehicle could not have been floating, as nearly no vehicles float for a significant amount of time when immersed in water. In an immersion, you have between a few seconds and a few minutes, on average, to exit a vehicle. You don’t have 14 hours. The vehicle was almost certainly resting against a shallow part of the riverbed that happened to be shallow enough to allow part of the vehicle to maintain above the water line.

Moving on, why did Lynn die? I have no idea. But the circumstances of the collision suggest she either died or became unconscious upon impact or died shortly after due to shock, hypothermia, or drowning. None of the reports I’ve come across indicate whether or not she was wearing a seat belt, so there’s little point in speculating further here until more information is available.

What about the drugs? Well, Lynn was apparently in a serious accident years back that could easily have left her with chronic pain that she might have been managing with Tramadol (and perhaps the marijuana). I believe private marijuana use is illegal in Utah, but again, there’s no proof that she was actually under its influence at the time. She was also in a medical assistant program, which could potentially explain the unopened syringe. I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for the toxicology reports. But given the care with which she restrained her child, I would not expect her to have been under the influence of any drugs at the time of the collision.

Regarding Lily, we can get a clearer picture of why she survived by analyzing the vehicle and the cicumstances of the collision. Images of the vehicle indicate her car seat was in the center rear seat, which is the safest position for a car seat in a collision, as it’s impossible for that position to receive a direct hit and it’s the furthest from a side impact, on average.

Being properly restrained in a car seat, including being restrained with the proper levels of harness tightness and a secure seat installation meant that she didn’t succumb to the severe forces of the impact or rollover, fly out of her seat or out of the vehicle entirely during the collision, and that she was able to remain in her seat, which, in conjunction with the relatively strong roof of the vehicle and fortunate position on the shallow riverbed, meant she was kept above the water and able to breathe and not succumb to hypothermia, even though she eventually lost consciousness.

How do we explain the female voice the first responders swear they heard that encouraged them to find Lily?

I’ll leave that up to you, as it’s beyond my expertise.

In conclusion, this is a tragic story that speaks to the need to drive safely, to choose safe vehicles, and to choose and use car seats for your youngest travelers. There is no doubt that Lily would not be alive had her mother not taken the steps she did to ensure she was safe and sound before driving away from her parents. I have no idea which car seat she used, and frankly, it doesn’t matter that much. It could have been a high-end seat like a Clek Fllo or a basic seat like a Graco Size4Me 65; both would have done an excellent job keeping her safe. And that’s the ultimate goal.

Rest in peace, Lynn. And thank you for taking care of your daughter as best as you could before you set off that night.

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Rachel Delisle, 30, and 3 in Jacksonville, NC, Killed in Crash

unsplash-lu-flowersWho:

Rachel Elizabeth Delisle, 30, was killed at around 5PM on Saturday, 2/15/14, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, at the Highways 258 and 53 intersections, where Burgaw and Richlands Highway meet, when her 2001-2007 Toyota Sequoia was t-boned by a 2006-era Hyundai Sonata driven by Saquan Nelson, 24, with Darius Williams, 16, and Jonathan Cooper, 25, as vehicle passengers. All four adults were killed. The only survivor was Gabriel Delisle, the 6-month-old son of Rachel. Rachel was married to Lt. Jason Deslile, and they had three children together, all boys.

How:

Per police reports, the Sonata was traveling at close to 100 mph in a zone with a 45 mph speed limit. Per witnesses, the vehicle had been weaving through traffic before it entered NC 53 in the wrong lanes. The driver ran a red light and impacted the passenger side of the Sequoia. Both vehicles flew to the other end of the intersection, and the Sonata was split in half by a pole. There was only one survivor: the 6-month-old securely strapped into his car seat, which police credited with saving his life. He received a few bruises and cuts but was otherwise fine.

Why:

This is another sad case resulting from speeding, which is implicated in 1 out of every 3 auto deaths in the US. It is also a fatality that resulted from a failure to yield at a red light. It is unclear why Nelson was speeding.

The 2001-era Sequoia weighs ~5100 lbs and does not have any kind of side score from the NHTSA or IIHS. It comes with head and torso side airbags in the front seats. The 2006 Sonata weighs ~3535 lbs and comes with a “good” frontal score.

Given the likely speeds of the collision (100 mph, or 55 mph above the 45 mph PSL), the collision likely imparted at least 1.6MJ of energy into the Sequoia / Sonata. The standard side impact test simulates 143KJ of energy (a 3300-lb sled impacting a vehicle at 31 mph). In other words, the Sequoia faced 1119% of the force it would have experienced in the types of crashes cars are side rated for. Besides that, it didn’t have a side rating, which means it was not designed to adequately protect occupants from the standard simulation. It is sadly understandable that the mother succumbed to these forces. Similarly, the men in the Sonata experienced 625% of the force their vehicle was designed to safely sustain (256KJ), which made their deaths inevitable. In the end, this was a completely needless collision that claimed four lives needlessly.

The part of this story that speaks to me most, however, is the survival of her son. Despite the unimaginably high forces imparted upon the vehicle and the severe degree of structural intrusion visible in the photos above, the child lived. Why?

I’ve written before extensively about the importance of choosing the right car seat and properly restraining children, and this is a textbook example of the advantage properly-restrained children have, even in severe collisions. Gabriel was restrained in a rear-facing car seat, which was both the law for children his age and best practices for children up to at least 4. Properly restrained children can survive crashes that would otherwise be unsurvivable.

This is another sad example of how the rear-facing and properly installed car seat can turn into the orphan seat in a severe collision. Fortunately, Gabriel will still have a father and two siblings to grow up with. It’s a tragedy, however, that his siblings are left without a mother, and his father without his best friend.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.