It’s comforting to have lived history and know that SRS means Shoulder Rumble Strips, and that “Air Cushion Restraint System” is really the air-bags, which protect us in a car crash, which was introduced by General Motors in 1973.
IF you “goggle” ACRS between 1990 and 2000, the government “estimates” that 6,377 lives were saved, and countless injuries prevented, with only 175 documented fatalities attributed to airbag failures.
Also it was in 1990 that the first automotive fatality attributed to an airbag was reported.
My nephew has worked for an ACRS manufacturer since 1985, and there are records (not accessible by Goggle), which report air-bag-deaths since 1975 due to various reasons. ACRS manufacturers are to be praised, since they use this information to redesign their product to remove these unintended causes of deaths.
Pragmatically, the automotive industry suppressed this information for 15 years since the ratio of lives saved to lives lost due to ACRS failures was significant; 97 percent saved by ACRS, with only 3 percent killed by ACRS failures.
Every new beneficial device or product requires 5 to 10 years to discover the things that go wrong – to discover what you did not know about the “new thing.”
Highway 61 in Cook County is one of the safest rural highways in Minnesota, as shown by the Crash Reports published by the Department of Public Safety (DPS)
Since 2004 Cook County has had 12 deaths caused by either snowmobiles or car drivers under the influence of drugs or alcohol; unfortunately the DPS data does not identify which road had the accident; so it’s most probable that Highway 61 has very few crashes which were preventable by rumble strips!
SRS are now installed on MN 61, and filled with rainwater; the SRS are lower not higher than the road. Winter will replace water with ice causing accidents and certainly injuries and even death! And, MnDOT intends to raise the speed limit to 60 mph next month.
Highway 61 has many curves between Hovland and Grand Marais. So my friends and neighbors please drive slower this winter; the combination of SRS and 60 mph and the Canadian drivers could involve you in your first accident ever. And this combination is a bad new thing.
Chuck Flickinger
Hovland
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