MChapel

iTrader: (1)

No, Mecca I'm sorry...that you seem to have so much faith in your ability to avoid a collision with your whole two years of driving experience.

Your "accident" could have easily been avoided if you had thought to try something other than using your brakes to stop.

A) Put the transmission in Neutral. And if it sounds like your engine is upset;
B) Shut off the engine. Sure, you'll lose your power steering, but you should still be able to steer around any obstacles if you have more upper-body strength than one of the Olsen twins.

While I support your right to kill/maim/paralyze yourself, I also think that I have the right not to be killed, maimed or paralyzed by you after you've been knocked unconscious because you weren't wearing your seatbelt. I also have the right not to have my insurance rates go up because you're in a wheelchair and need to be spoon-fed by a full-time nurse because you weren't wearing your seatbelt.

You say you're a big guy and don't drive fast enough to get thrown out the window or whatnot. If you drive faster than 20mph, you drive fast enough to be knocked unconscious by the door pillar in your car.

Don't think so? Try this: run as hard as you can face-first into a telephone pole. Unless you're on the US Olympic track team, you won't even be going 15mph.

When you get out of the hospital, let us know your thoughts on seatbelts again.

rmb

You seem like a bright kid so let's just say that in my 20 years of driving and 10 years of rescue work that seatbelts will save your a$$. Most of the fatalities I've scraped off of the ground, trees, windshields, were on local streets with speed limits around 30mph and unbelted people. It's very very easy to die hitting a solid object at more than 35 or so mph.... Figure another SUV swerving into your lane coming the other way at 40mph and you're doing 30(a mild example). That's effectively hitting a concrete wall at 70mph. Certain death with no seatbelt. You would have no chance to avoid it. Every week I see someone walk away from a wreck who was belted when we would have sworn everyone was dead inside... Not so with unbelted occupants.

The dead ones are often the lucky ones. I've seen far too many horribly maimed people with TBI's(traumatic-brain-injuries) that are still alive but with permanent bizzare memory-loss, paralysis, you name it...

2 years of driving is nothing. And even with 50, your supernatural ability can't do anything about the guy coming the other way driving a 7000 pound Ford 350 dualie who just got divorced, is really ****ed, and is really drunk.

I could e-mail you lots of pictures of unbelted meat but I'm sure you get the idea...

But I still support your right to do it. Just as long as you realize the facts....

-RMB

meccanoble

iTrader: (22)

well u must not know much about cars then because if u floor the car while its in neutral you'll soon enough hit redline and being u don't know the situation of the car, you DON'T know that my ignition was stripped and i was forced to turn on and off the car with a screw driver, not an easy task which involes 2 seconds of work...so then it's between engine and body work and although my body and life is more important than a car, I had faith in my ability to slow down enough to avoid a deadly accident and i feel stupid taking that chance but very proud of myself for making a total disaster turn into a 500 dollar damage.....better than buying a new engine....

and funny thing is that even IF i put it in neutral, there was positively now way of me avoiding an accident unless i FULLY stopped before the light, so swirving and what not was definitely out of the question

but i do understand that seat belts are here to protect thanks to RMB and MY ONLY worry is that bad *** dude that had a horrible day and will not stop for anyone....SOME things you can't avoid...

but i am proud at myself and my ability....everything was against me at that point, blocked on both sides with the only resort of slowing down or praying i make it out alive...started at 40 mph and a good 40 yards away was able to slow down to about 10 mph with the gas still going and all....definitely could have been worst and i came out ok...i seriously doubt i'll be wearing seatbelts to go to the corner store or down to my friends house but i may start wearing it when going back on rt 22 or major streets...

Scruit

I was proud of my ability to avoid accidents.

Until I was hit head-on by a drunk driver who went left-of-center at 80mph. I had less than one second to react. No amount of ability will help you there.

My greatest injury was a seatbelt burn on my neck. I slid partially under the seatbelt (Submarining, they call it) but the belt stopped me from hitting the dashboard. I walked away from that one.

I *know* that if I had been unbelted I would have been killed. Nobody hits an 80mph oncoming car with no belt and walks away unless they're driving a semi. My speed? 20mph.

All you need to do is watch one of the fly-on-the-wall ER documentaries and look at the "unrestrained occupant" cases they scrape off the road with a shovel.

perfectmax

iTrader: (1)

I know we can only look to the future, but couldn't you have just punched in the clutch and turned the engine off?

Also, i feel your pain. I just had a bouch of stuff done to my car and then i hit a huge pothole, blew out a KYB AGX shock and bent 2 rims. Damn!

Eric99SE

This made me chuckle:

"if i was atleast warned or saw a sign earlier that this car had problems, then i would have avoided this accident as well"

and

"you DON'T know that my ignition was stripped and i was forced to turn on and off the car with a screw driver, not an easy task which involes 2 seconds of work"

Sounds like the car had problems...

(and yes I know the two are unrelated, but it would have really helped if you could have killed the engine quickly)

MChapel

iTrader: (1)

FIrst off, thanks to rmb for getting the message across better than I could.

OK, Mecca, I love ya like a brother (I offered to show you the "sights" up here in the Toronto area when it looked like you were gonna buy your 5speed up here) so take this in that spirit - like your older brother trying to set things straight.

...you said "well u must not know much about cars then because if u floor the car while its in neutral you'll soon enough hit redline" - Well, nowhere in your original post did you mention that you had your throttle wide open, so how would the engine hit redline? And even if it did hit redline, Maximas have a rev limiter, so no grave damage could be done before you shut down the engine 2or3 seconds later with your stripped ignition modification - which is something else you didn't mention in your original post.

With the car in neutral, you would have stopped FULLY in less than 30yards from 40mph (unless there's something seriously wrong with your brakes, too) and you would've stopped before the intersection, rather than in the middle of it.

Do you have any idea how lucky you are that;
1) You stopped when you did? - 5 feet further and that SUV's front bumper would've been aimed at your torso - half a second sooner and you would've t-boned the SUV at 10mph and become fairly well acquainted with your airbag, steering wheel, windshield and the folks at the local ER.
2) That SUV wasn't a bus or a 30-ton semi? - A 30-ton semi hitting you at 5mph would have the same effect as a full-sized SUV hitting you at 75mph - not to mention the fact that his front tire would've crushed the entire front end of you car and maybe you, too.

What I'm trying to get you to see is that it wasn't your skill or ability that saved your a** - it was LUCK.

BTW, I've had a drivers licence and maintained vehicles for 30 years and have driven more than a million miles all over North America in everything from a POS 1969VW Beetle to a Freightliner semi. (and NO at-fault accidents and NEVER owned a vehicle with an automatic tranny) Perhaps it's your knowledge of cars, driving and accident avoidance that might be lacking.

meccanoble

iTrader: (22)

sh*t, forgot about the semi's lol and i didn't stop, it was my impact with the bronco that stopped me...i slowed down but just couldn't stop....as far as redlinin is concerned, yea the car was at WOT and it would have taken a little longer than 3 seconds to turn off car...i meant it takes 2 to 3 secs to turn off car with key....i had to find screw driver then find the proper hole and then turn which i say would have taken a good 10-20 seconds if i was lucky...

but i see what i avoided and it was luck....dam it could have been so much worst...i seen myself crossing and all i could do was honk and honk hoping they all heard me and let me through but that was not the case....

talisman311

Mecca, really sorry to hear about your recent run-in of what seems like a voodoo curse from hell. Can't say I've experienced everything you've been through (thank god),but I did have a 1200 dollar system stolen from me a month after I got it and having insurance only cover the glass/head unit. Looks like you have things going good so far with getting the repairs and you can always make the money back seeing as how you're still young..good luck (i sure as hell hope for your sake anyway)

btw, you guys are damn depressing...i just bought my '99 I30 and i am now afraid to drive that thing. I did laugh my *** off for 5 minutes straight reading MChapel's headbutting a light pole post though.

John

DaddyMac

what year RX-7 ?
glad the belt worked

rmb

It was a beautiful black 1985 1st Gen 5spd. I bought it used with 65k on it for $3500 in 1993. It was my college graduation present. As a starving college student I then put three solid weeks of work into it. New radiator, tires, shocks, brakes, killswitch, etc...

It was a really, really hot day in June. I was coming back from Willimantic, CT towards my apartment in Storrs, CT. Less than a 15 mile drive. Two lane back country road, rte 32. The state DOT had just "oiled" parts of the road and spread that loose gravel crap over everything in certain patches. It had just rained for about 5 minutes. One of those quick passing summer rain storms... Speed limit was 40. I was doing about 55 I think. There were two cars in front of me and I wasn't in a rush anyway. Steam was rising from the road as the rain evaporated. The new oil n' gravel section ended right before this hill. As I reached the hill I shifted into 5th. I remember that when I let the clutch out and got back on the gas that the engine revd pretty high. Almost like the clutch was slipping big time. It wasn't, the tires were spinning. In fifth gear going up a hill at 55mph in a car with about 100hp...... Not good. Then the rear wagged a bit to the right. Uh-oh. I countersteered automatically just like you would on ice. No response. The rear kept swinging to the right. In retrospect I probably jumped off the gas too fast. In a second or two I was sliding 45 degrees pointed into the oncoming lane and spinning even further. About 90 degrees now. It was totally silent. No screaming tires, no scrubbing noise, nothing. As soon as I realized I wasn't going to regain control I stood on the brakes to try and at least slide off the road as soon as possible without hitting someone cresting the hill in the oncoming lane. I took down two small trees and impacted a low stone wall at around 45mph with the passenger side of the car. The car flipped 360 degrees over once completely sideways and landed back on what remained of the suspension. The rear was hung up on part of another stone wall and I remember blood from my face pouring straight down my nose and splattering on what remained of the windshield. We were nearly vertical pointed down. The nose of the car had plowed at least a foot into the ground. The stereo was still playing. The ***** had come off in the impact though. A strong smell of gasoline. My door was gone. My friend who was in the passenger seat was also still alive and had broken his window with his head seemed ok...

We clicked our seatbelts and immediately fell forward. We crawled out my door opening and got away from the remains. Gas was pouring out of the tank and hissing on the hot exhaust.... My door was about 30 feet down the slope. The rear axle remained more or less at the point of impact up the hill. The drivers side rear tire/wheel had broken off and rolled back down rte 32. Pieces of the car were flung everywhere from the flipping. The police took some time to believe it was only one car.

We both had minor cuts and bruises. The worst ones were from the seatbelts which had literally cut into my right side and broken a rib. The seat belt buckle had cut my right hip up pretty badly through jeans! I also remember my face smashing into the center console armrest. I'm not that flexible... I was on Advil for a long, long time..

It seems the oiling from earlier that day had been tracked onto the non-graveled parts of the road and that brief rain just pulled all the oil to the surface without washing it away. It was like being on wet ice. We were one of many accidents that day. I didn't even get a ticket.

Needless to say that without a seatbelt we wouldn't have had a prayer. No way. Hamburger time.

So just my own personal choice to always buckle up. As does anyone who rides with me.

-RMB

DaddyMac

Atleast you made it out, that's what matters, you can always replace things but not yourself.

I haven't had a chance to get me a 1st gen in good shape, but that car could end up being a classic, especially the GSL-SE model.
I have a 2nd gen, I sold a TII. My FD is my baby, silver R2