New "safe" cars are good... but...

[Vendor Defendor]

I was talking to one of my instructors today at school, and we were talking about cutting people out of cars, and he was talking about these days its getter harder and harder to extract someone out of a car.

He said Volvo's are the worst.

Then we got onto the topic of air bags. They may be a great life saving device, but they can be very dangerous to EMS workers. He said that they have a capacitor in the line somewhere, so even if you take the key out of the ignition, the air bags are still active 15-20 minutes afterwards, and that local fire agencies have had instances where they are cutting some one out and the air bag goes off injuring EMS personnel. Then he said it is getting worse with these cars with the 'curtians'. He was saying that, when they try to cut the A-pillar, you are cutting though the storage tank of all that compressed nitrogen (I believe thats what he said they used in the airbags), so you get a big blast of nitrogen or what not in your face.

Good to save lives, but I think they need to put like a bleed or something in the cars so we can take actions to protect ourselves (EMS personnel) from getting injured

 

[Drew L]

bleed system.....good idea

However...........untill that happens NEVER and I mean NEVER put yourself between a potential airbag location i.e. curtain on the door, steering wheel air bag and those pesky knee airbags on a Suzuki Samuri. It requires different patient extrication tatics but we do it frequently. Like anything else, practice, practice, practice which unfortunately you won't get at the academy. I'm not knocking academies but they are not called "Minimum Standards" for nothing. The career you are about to enter requires one to be in school in one way or another their whole career. You don't have to but it's for our own safety. Drew