Seatbelts in Humvees
From
Iraq Now comes an interesting point (the author is a USA member of the coalition forces currently in Iraq)
bq. Ok: I’m calling “Bullshit.”
bq.
Here’s an article about how 20,000 servicemen and women have been killed in accidents since 1980, while only 1,000 have been killed in combat.
bq. Unfortunately, the article does not break out the number of soldiers killed in military vehicles; the 20,000 includes all the idiots in Germany who wrap their rented Mercedes Benzes around lightpoles on the autobahn after zu viele Bieren auf Der Stadt.
bq. But believe me—the Pentagon has safety Nazis on the payroll who keep statistics to the nth degree. They can break this stuff out for you if you press them.
bq. Nevertheless, 20,000 deaths in 23 years, and 575 deaths in just the last year alone, is a staggering number.
bq. Here’s how to prevent some of them from happening in the future:
The author goes on:
bq. ... And it noted that Smith was not wearing his seat belt and that neither he nor Delk had their helmets on as ordered, though it acknowledged that wearing one would not have prevented Smith's death.
bq. And therein lies my B.S. call.
bq. Here’s a little experiment for some enterprising reporter: Go to the nearest Humvee and sit down in any of the seats. Put the seatbelt on.
bq. Seatbelt works. Good seatbelt.
bq. Now put on a flak vest and loadbearing vest. Throw in a protective mask for good measure. If you can get it to buckle, see if you can move and scan your sector. See if you can aim your weapon to the sides of the vehicle.
bq. In short, see if the seatbelt passes the reality test.
bq. It doesn’t.
bq. The way the article reads, the accident report seems to be blaming the troops for not wearing the seatbelts. Now, maybe a seatbelt would have saved Smith’s life, and maybe not. But the blame for the seatbelt does not belong on Smith. Nor does it belong on the NCO in charge of the vehicle at the time.
bq. The fact is that the stock seatbelts on the humvee are fine for garrison, but in the field, they’re useless for anything except providing political cover for the leadership that sent him out there with it.
bq. “Oh, we’re not responsible. The soldier wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. In violation of policy, and all that, see?”
bq. The reality is this: It’s either wear the flak jacket, or wear the seatbelt.
It's articles like this really point out the difference between reading 'facts' on a sheet of paper and actually being there.
Posted by DaveH at January 8, 2004 12:14 PM