 The fatal motor accident that killed Mansfield and spread the rumors of her decapitation had been the subject of many plots and scenes. In the film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, Miss Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze) remarked while trying out a vintage yellow convertible, "I feel like Miss Jayne Mansfield in this car!" Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) replied "Uh oh, Jayne Mansfield, not a good auto reference." In Severance: Stories, the 2006 story book containing 62 postmortem monologues, each 240-words long, by Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Award winning writer, Mansfield's death is included along with James Dean, John the Baptist, Maximilien Robespierre, Marie Antoinette, Cicero and others. The underride guard, a strong bar made of steel tubing fitted underneath the rear portion of a semi-trailer, is also known as a Mansfield bar, commemorating her accident that occurred before the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act required underride guards on semi-trailers.
