Seat Belt May Have Prevented Corzine’s Injuries
PHILADELPHIA _ New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine probably sustained many of his injuries by being thrown about the interior of his SUV, and he likely would have been hurt much less severely had he fastened his seat belt as required by law, accident experts said Friday.
New Jersey state police say Corzine travels in SUVs for safety reasons. Safety experts say an SUV has risks that may outweigh its benefits.
“In terms of executive protection, all decisions have the governor’s security in mind,” said Capt. Al Della Fave, a state police spokesman. SUVs “operate in all terrains. They won’t get bogged down.”
“They are heavier and can withstand a crash better. Maybe if it had been a smaller vehicle, we would have been looking at more serious injuries at this point,” he said.
However, safety experts said SUVs are less stable and less maneuverable than passenger cars, even heavy sedans such as the Lincoln Town Car, which is another favorite choice for VIP travel. And the SUV’s height could have reduced the protection that a guardrail is designed to provide.
If the passenger side of the spinning vehicle struck the end of the guardrail, the bottom of the vehicle could have taken a heavy blow, accident experts said.
Without a seat belt to restrain him, Corzine likely was thrown violently about the interior of the vehicle.
His broken ribs and sternum suggest he was thrown into the dashboard, said Steven C. Batterman, a forensic engineering consultant and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and School of Medicine.
“It surprises me that he wasn’t wearing a seat belt,” said Batterman. “It just shocks me that he could get in with a trooper without putting on his belt.
“If he had been restrained, he likely would not have sustained the injuries he did.”
Dennis R. Andrews of Accident & Safety Consultants in Cherry Hill, N.J., said the governor’s upper-body injuries were consistent with being hurled about the interior: “If he’s not belted, he’s going to flail around, and that could do it. If the brakes are jammed on, I could just imagine him going right into that dashboard.”
New Jersey law requires all front-seat occupants to wear seat belts. Violators face a $46 fine.
Tom Shea, Corzine’s chief of staff, said the governor was “not always amenable to suggestion,” adding that Corzine usually wore his seat belt and had been doing so earlier in the day Thursday.
“If he was not, he certainly should have been,” Shea said, “and we would encourage the state police to issue a citation.”
“Given the severity of this accident, probably no one should have been seriously injured if they were wearing seat belts,” said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “But when your body is thrown around, there are lots of things that you can hit that hurt you.”
Jerry Donaldson of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety in Washington said passenger cars’ lower center of gravity and unibody construction can make them safer than SUVs in many types of accidents.
State police said Corzine was riding in a 2005 Suburban, which got three stars (out of a possible five) for front-seat passenger safety in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s frontal-crash rating. It was not rated for side-impact crashes.
“That’s not particularly good for a vehicle of its size,” said David Champion, director of automobile testing for Consumer Reports.
The 2007 Suburban, by comparison, got five stars for frontal impacts.
The 2005 Suburban also does not have side-impact air-bag protection, according to NHTSA. It does have electronic stability control, which reduces the likelihood of skidding sideways and rolling over.
Because it is large and heavy, the Suburban “is not particularly easy to control in emergency situations,” Champion said.
The state has at least 590 SUVs in its fleet of more than 11,000 vehicles, according to an inventory provided by the state Treasury Department. That does not include the SUV Corzine was traveling in, nor any others driven by state police, which also use the vehicles for patrol purposes. State officials said they would not release the numbers of vehicles used by state police for security purposes.
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(Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Jennifer Moroz contributed to this article.)
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