"seatbelts" Topic

Are there any rules that take into account who is wearing seatbelts ?

Yes, there's even a set that differentiates between no belt, lap belt, lap and shoulder belt, and 5-point harness, but danger if I can remember what it's called.

No need to be so flippant,
In a recent car bomb attack the only survivor wore a seatbelt, everyone else in the car died.

While seatbelts make an enormous difference in who survives in a car crash, I'd be very surprised if they made a bit of difference in keeping people alive in the event of a car bomb. Outside of MRAPs, that is.

Well , the seatbelt wearer survived. So it must make some difference.

Well when it comes down to it, a car bomb is just a problem involving forces applied to the human body. Too many Gs are not good for you, since you are just a meat sac. So depends on where the bomb is and where the force was applied to the vehicle and the passengers.

I would consider where the survivor was sitting relative to the IED as more relevant. Seatbelts prevent movement in the vehicle when occupants can be subjected to further trauma when they impact the roof, seats, windshield or are ejected.

David

Since the car was probably in, you know, motion when it was hit by the blast, the resulting crash might, just might have had something to do with fatalities in the car.

While lots of parked cars get destroyed by car bombs, they're not usually filled with people. On the other hand, I imagine that very few parked cars are hit by IEDs set up to hit vehicles moving along a road or highway.

"While seatbelts make an enormous difference in who survives in a car crash, I'd be very surprised if they made a bit of difference in keeping people alive in the event of a car bomb. Outside of MRAPs, that is."

Injuries and deaths in Humvees have been a terrible problem because of troops without harnesses. Of course, the guy sticking out the roof manning the gun is sadly screwed in a roll-over.

It's obvious that seatbelts save lives, but how do you quantify that in a ruleset? As others have posted, other factors are much more important in a war zone.

If you get to that level of granularity, you also need to start factoring in the guy's physical health, where he's sitting, whether he's relaxed or tense at the time of the explosion, make and model of the vehicle, force, type, and direction of the blast, and a dozen other factors.

" but how do you quantify that in a ruleset?"

you don't need to
damage is random
low damage means the factors involved were favorable to the target
high damage the factors weren't

do you really need that much granularity that the player needs to decide whether or not to wear a seat belt?

were they wearing glasses?
might or might not help

were they wearing polyester or cotton?
were the windows rolled down?
were they facing a passenger in the back seat instead of out the windshield at the instant of the blast?
etc

Current policy is that only the driver is allowed to wear a seatbelt. So is it reasonable to give a driver a survival modifier?

Only if he had a light breakfast. Otherwise you need to create a reaction table to account for slower hand eye coordination, but make sure the figures are wysiwyg because if they're in a scenario set before mid day they may get a stackable "not wearing polarised sunglasses" penalty. Best way to represent polarised sun glasses os to just leave them black in 15mm, larger scales itcomes down to the whole oakleys vs rayban thing.

McWong makes an excellent point. The Ultramodern board spans 10 years, years during which styles of sunglasses have changed dramatically, from Bolle to Botega Veneta, from round to catseye, from neon to animal print. I'm looking forward to the relevant Osprey title.

My uncle was saved by not wearing a seat belt. The car rolled and he was thrown across the front seat. Had he been wearing a belt he would have been crushed by the roof. While statistically you may be safer wearing one, it is not definitive.

All very good points. I've had a car roll experiance and NOT wearing a seatbelt saved my life.I ended up in the seatwell, the seatbelt would have snapped me.
Good point about the quality of sunglasses, perhaps someone will start a topic about that.
This topic is about seatbelts!

Seatbelts are required for wear by both USMC and Army (SOCOM may be different but relevant physics are not) in Afghanistan, because stats have shown decisively that they BOTH save lives and reduce severity of other injuries in explosions.

Each Marine is issued with a strapcutter (same tool is used by Police) to if required cut seatbelts to enable someone to quickly get out of a vehicle or pull a (likely wounded) man out of a disabled vehicle. Army uses them to but I think only combat arms units get them issued.

I actually have an "escape knife" that I keep clipped to the sun visor in my car. It's a pretty big lockblade knife (~3.5" blade), with a built-in seatbelt cutter and a hard point to break conventional window glass.

But I kept several blades on me when I was standing various watches, the most when I was handling lines.

I keep something very similar on me at all times, Lion. I wouldn't be surprised if it were the same blade.

Why have you got Lion's blade?

Same supplier, probably.

I'm quite fond of good steel.

That's what she said.