The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-07-25


 splinter of wood from the top driv- en four inches into her brain as a result of sons taking a greasy curve a little too fast. No blood no horribly twisted bones--just a grayhaired corpse still clutching her pocketbook in her lap as she had clutched it when she felt the car leave the road.
 Parents Die
 On that same curve a month la- ter, a light touring car crashed a tree. In the middle of the front seat they found h nine-months-old baby surrounded by broken glass and yet absolutely unhurt. A fine practical joke on death but spoiled by the baby's, parents, still sitting on each side of him -instant- ly killed by shattering their skulls on the dashboard.
 If you customarily pass without clear vision a long way ahead, make sure that every member of the party carries Identification pa pers-it's difficult to identify 8 body with its whole face bashed in or torn off. The driver is death s favorite target. If the steering wheel holds together 1t ruptures his liver or spleen so he bleeds to death internally. Or, if the steer ing wheel breaks off, the matter is settled instantly by the steering columns plunging through his ab- domen.
 By no means do all head-on col lisions occur on curves. The mod ern death-trap is likely to be g straight stretch with three lanes of traffic-like-the notorious Aston Flats on the Albany Post Road where there have been as many as 27 fatalities in one summer month This sudden vision of broad straight road tempts many an or dinarily sensible driver into pas. sing the man ahead. Simultane. ously 8 driver coming the other way swings out at high speed. Al the last moment each tries to gel into line again, but the gaps are closed. As the cars in line are forced into the ditch to capsize or crash fences the passers meet, all most head on, in a swirling, grind ing smash that sends them carom- ing obliquely into the others.
 Seven Killed
 A trooper described such an ac- cident-five cars in one mess, seven killed on the spot, two dead on the way to the hospital, two more dead in the long run. He remembered it far more vividly than he wanted to-the quick way the doctor turned away from a dead man to check up on a woman with a brok- en back; the three bodies out ot one car so soaked with oil from the crank-case that they looked like wet brown cigars and not human al all: a man, walking around and babbling to himself, oblivious o1 the dead and dying, even oblivious of the dagger-like silver of stee that stuck out of his streaming wrist; a pretty girl with her fore head laid open, trying hopelessly to crawl out of a ditch in spite o. her smashed hip. A firstclass mas sacre of that sort is only a question of scale and numbers--seven corp ses are no deader than one. Eacf shattered man, woman or child who went to make up the 36,000 corpses chalked up last year had to die . personal death.
 A car careening and rolling down a bank, battering and smashing its occupants every inch of the way can wrap itself so thoroughly around a tree that front and rear bumpers interlocl, requiring an acetylene torch to cut them apart In a recent case of that sort they found the old lady, who had been sitting in back, lying across the lar of her daughter, who was in front each soaked in her own and the others blood indistinguishably each so shattered and broken tha, there was no point whatever in ar autopsy to determine whether i was broken neck or ruptured hear' that caused death.
 Battered Humans
 Overturning cars specialize 1T certain injuries. Cracked pelvis for instance, guaranteeing agoniz ing months in bed, motionless. per haps crippled for life broker spine resulting from sheer side wise twist--the minor details O smashed knees and splinteret shoulder blades caused bNcrashini into the side of the car as she goel over with the swirl of an insan, roller coaster-and the lethal con sequences of broken ribs, whici puncture hearts and lungs witt their raw ends. The consequen internal hemorrhage is no less dan gerous because 1t is the pleural in stead of the abdominal cavity tha' is filling with blood.
 Flying glass-safety glass is b, no means universal yet-contrib utes much more than its share tt the spectacular side of accidents | doesn't merely cut-the fragment. are driven in as if a cannon loaded with broken bottles had been fired in your face, and silver in the eye travelling with such force, mean, certain blindness. A leg or arm stuck through the windshield will cut clean to the bone through vein artery and muscle like a piece oi beef under the butchers knife, and it takes little time to lose a fatal amount of blood under such cir cumstances. Even safety glass may not be wholly safe when the car crashes something at high speed, You hear picturesque tales of how a flying human body will make a neat hole in the stuff with its head -the shoulders stick-the glass holds-and the raw. keen edge of the hole decapitates the body as neatly as guillotine.
 Or, to continue with the decapi- tation motif, going off the road into a post-and-rail fence can put you beyond worrying about other injur- ies immediately when a rail comes through the. windshield and tears off your head with it's splintery end mot as neat a job bSt thoroughly efficient. Bodies are often found with their shoes off and their feet all broken out of shape. The shoes are back on the floor of the car.