Rollover simulator aiming to drive home importance of seatbelt usage

By Tina Comeau

THE VANGUARD

NovaNewsNow.com

If they won’t heed the law, the warnings and the statistics, the RCMP are hoping people in the tri-counties will buckle up after a visual demonstration of what happens during a vehicle rollover when people aren’t wearing seatbelts.

A rollover simulator is being set up at various locations in the tri-counties. The simulator demonstrates what happens to unbelted occupants of a vehicle in a rollover. Simulating a rollover at 48 kilometres an hour, observers will see how quickly people are ejected from a vehicle in a rollover.

Despite the province’s seatbelt law, Constable Mark Connell of the Yarmouth town detachment says people still find excuses not to wear seatbelts. Statistics show the problem is worse in rural areas.

“The numbers are bad in rural Canada and rural Nova Scotia is like the rest of Canada,” he says. “Statistically we know that drivers in rural parts of Canada and in small communities are going back and forth to fishing communities, or if they’re just going home down the road, or around the corner to the store, they tend not to wear their seatbelts.”

Seatbelt usage improves on 100-series and Trans Canada highways.

“So that’s why we’ve stepped up the enforcement,” Const. Connell says, noting many of the fatalities and serious injuries in collisions in this province have been a result of people not wearing seatbelts.

“While seatbelts may not stop crashes, it’ll stop serious injury or fatalities,” he added, noting vehicles are engineered safety zones. “The technology is phenomenal, but if you don’t use it, what’s the point of having it?”

The rollover simulator will be on the grounds of the Yarmouth airport during this weekend’s Sou’Wester International Bike Rally. It will be set up Friday, July 25 from 5-8 p.m. and Saturday, July 26 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

It will be on display at the mall in Shelburne from 10 a.m. to noon on Thursday, July 31 and at the Lockeport firehall that same day from 1:30-3:30 p.m. The simulator will be at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Digby 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 5.

Constructed by Larry Lawson of Lawson Enterprises, the Ford Explorer cab rollover simulator is mounted on a custom built tandem trailer (7,000 pounds capacity) and is powered by 110-volt hydraulic drive units complete with surge brake.

While it simulates a rollover, it doesn’t simulate the violence of a real collision that includes broken glass, vehicle fluids and the impact of a collision on the human body.