Congratulations, you are an excellent driver.
You still keep your hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel just like Brian the Drivers Ed Guy told you to all those years ago. Even when you're not driving you're an excellent driver - you get a cab or an Uber whenever you've had a couple because taking your chances behind the wheel is never worth it.
Above all else you keep your distractions to a minimum because no text is worth dying. You may be undefeated behind the wheel thus far in your life, but you haven't played anybody until you've played Physics. Physics is undefeated too.
It will literally ruin you, but it takes only one second to significantly hamper Physics' merciless game plan for every person inside of every vehicle. SPOILER: *clicking sound*
The only survivor of the tragic car accident that killed Nebraska punter Sam Foltz and former Michigan State punter Mike Sadler was wearing his seatbelt. Their car slid off a wet road, shot down a 40-foot embankment and slammed into a tree.
FAILING TO FASTEN YOUR SEATBELT is AN SIMPLE WAY TO TURN YOURSELF INTO a helmet sticker, a black ribbon or a moment of silence.
Let's do some quick math: Their car weighed about 4,000 lbs. Let's assume, conservatively, they were traveling at 40 mph, which undefeated-you just thought hey that's not that fast. That comes out to 213,947 foot-pounds of kinetic energy.
Blah blah blah science what is a foot-pound? That's the amount of energy required to move one pound of mass one foot. So keeping the math simple, if you weigh 214 pounds in the scenario above and come to an abrupt and complete stop, you can plan on your body being launched about one thousand feet, depending on the wind.
You won't make it nearly that far in part because your car is equipped with a windshield. There's also that tree in the way and more unforgiving stuff behind it. That's going just 40 mph, which undefeated-you recently did in a 25 because the SCHOOL ZONE sign wasn't flashing. We all have our moments. Physics does not care about that, your future plans or second chances.
Foltz and Sadler may have been wearing seatbelts; we don't know, but this is probably the most important sentence here for skeptics so I'll bold it - seatbelts aren't about invincibility, they're about significantly reducing the likelihood of you dying in a crash. Either way, LSU kicker Colby Delahoussaye was wearing his.
Delahoussaye was wearing his seatbelt, and he was knocked unconscious in the crash, leaving a wound on his head that needed a few stitches, his father said. Because of the jolt of the crash, the seatbelt left a lot of bruising around Delahoussaye's chest and hips. X-rays performed Sunday morning at Waukesha Memorial Hospital revealed no internal injuries.
This is miraculous. Physics still won but Fate suffered the L here because Delahoussaye took literally one second to fasten his seatbelt.
It's not insensitive or too soon to talk about this because you will be getting into a car later today, and tomorrow and every day after that and millions of Americans drive without their seatbelts fastened all the time. The tragic deaths of Foltz and Sadler didn't spark this column; I (finally) started writing this story a few weeks ago after Wittenberg WR Miles Laboy was killed on I-75 when he was ejected from car full of his teammates who survived.
I wanted to write it in 2014 when Auburn TE Philip Lutzenkirchen was killed along with the driver after they were both ejected from their car. I first thought of writing it almost a decade ago when Wauseon native and Michigan player Elliott Mealer survived an accident that paralyzed his brother Brock and killed his father and girlfriend in a Christmas Eve accident in which nobody in his car was wearing a seatbelt.
Blake, Brock and Elliott Mealer.
Over the years I've found myself in a lot of cars with many athletes and am continually stunned at how many of them don't like wrinkling their shirts or feeling confined by a paper-thin two-inch polyester strap. Maybe it's a function of being bigger and stronger than everyone else giving them a false sense of security. They face physics on the field, but they've never faced Physics like this.
Physics does not care how athletic you are. Challenging it is one of the easiest ways to become a helmet sticker, a black ribbon or a moment of silence. Do not do this to yourself or the people who care about you. Seatbelts alone saved over 12,000 lives in America in 2014.
If Dominic Lee, Jimmy Will, Markel Byrd, Danny Johnson, Altee Tenpenny, Polo Manukainiu, Sam Cali, Kraig Jefferson, Rodney Ray Evans, NFL Hall of Famer Derrick Thomas or any of the 10,000+ unrestrained people who die in car accidents every year could go back and take one second to reduce the likelihood of their deaths in an accident by 45%, they absolutely would. But they can't.
You can. And you should - because even if you're undefeated and an excellent driver, Physics always wins.
