First-hand accounts of seatbelts saving lives

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An article from Schreiver Air Force Base's Web site gives two accounts of airmen surviving terrible motor vehicle accidents recently because they were wearing seatbelts.

An Army NCO assigned to North American Aerospace Defense Command headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., was involved in a multiple-vehicle pile-up Nov. 12 on Interstate 70 in Denver, according to an article that ran on Peterson AFB's public Web site, www.peterson.af.mil, Dec. 11.

"I remember a (car) speeding past me and thinking, 'I've never seen a car go that fast on a highway,'" said Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Ryan, an intelligence analyst at NORAD. "When I came up over a hill, the car had lost control and hit a guardrail."

The second story involved an NCO who encountered a snowstorm and icy conditions.

"My truck slid on some ice," Sergeant Rinehart said. "It ended up rolling twice down an embankment and over the barbed-wire fence."

The truck came to rest upright in the middle of an access road adjoining the highway. The roof and passenger side of the vehicle had buckled and folded under the stress.
Sergeant Rinehart climbed out with a bruised shoulder, two black eyes and cuts that required 17 stitches, but he said it could have been much worse.