You’re on a long drive to where ever it is that you’re going. You kick back and put your feet up on the dashboard and fall asleep.
How many of us have done this? Here is a horrible reminder of why you should NEVER put your feet on the dashboard:
“A deployed airbag inflates at about 320 km/h. That’s a little faster than most Formula One cars race. This is what hit Bethany’s hamstrings, driving her knees into her face. Her left eye socket and cheekbone were broken, as was her nose. Her jaw was dislocated, a tooth cut through her lower lip and she would lose her spleen. Both feet were broken and compressed, and would eventually end up nearly 2 sizes smaller than they were before the crash. Her left pupil would remain permanently dilated affecting her vision, her hearing would remain altered and her memory would be wiped and rebooted like a faulty computer program. But perhaps the most dangerous injury would be the one her mother was told at the time not to worry about: a brain bleed.”
She is lucky that she is not dead.
When I first read the article on Driving.ca, I re-read that paragraph twice. The list of things that happened from her knees slamming into her face are horrific. And the pressure on her abdomen from being folding in half (plus the pressure of the seatbelt) is, most likely, why she lost her spleen.
Here is a demonstration of what happens when an airbag deploys and you have your feet on the dashboard: