When Wearing a Seat Belt was Dangerous
Sarah Milburn was just doing the right thing. She was wearing her seat belt.
But that seat belt would change her life forever.
Sarah was in the back seat of a Honda Odyssey van. She got in, grabbed the strap over her shoulder, pulled it across her waist and buckled it. In just about every other car, that would have been enough. It should have been enough.
But not here.
The Accident
When the van was hit broadside and rolled over, the strap caught Sarah by the neck. She was left quadriplegic, with limited use of her arms and hands.
When we took the case, we looked into something called human factors. That’s nothing more than studying how people interact with the machines around them. Our experts wanted to know how people would interact with – use – the seat belt in the back seat of the Honda van.
So, we went out and bought one. A van.
Testing the Honda Odyssey’s Third-Row Seat Belt
And we brought in a group of people and asked them, with no coaching, to do just what Sarah had done. Get into the van and put on the seat belt.
And the vast majority of them made the same mistake. You see, Honda had designed that seat belt such that grabbing the strap over your shoulder was not enough. A user actually had to 1) grab the strap, 2) latch it into a buckle at one side of their waist and then 3) pull everything across their body and latch it on the other side.
Hardly anyone did that the right way because the design itself was flawed.
When we explained that to a jury, they agreed.
Read more about the verdict here.
