Why you should never put your feet on the dashboard

While it’s glamourised in the movies and instantly brings images of the breeze flowing through your hair and sun-kissed skin, kicking back in the passenger seat with your feet up on the dashboard while being driven around is incredibly dangerous and is also very illegal.

The main reason it's so dangerous is that if you happen to be unfortunate enough to find yourself in a serious situation and crash, when the airbags go off you'll be seriously injured.

Airbags can be deployed at a velocity of up to 322 km/h! While they are the standard in modern car safety equipment these days, they are only really intended to work provided you’re seated correctly.

So, while putting your feet on the dashboard may be comfy and bring big road trip vibes, it’s not going to protect your life and may even endanger it.

There have been horror stories of injuries from when passengers have had their feet up on the dash when involved in a car accident.

A US woman broke her ankle, femur, nose, shoulder, and arm when the car she was in collided with another and the airbags were deployed. Her own leg broke her nose and shoulder.

Two years after the accident, she was still recovering and was unable to return to work. Her doctors stressed that if she had rested her feet on the floor, she wouldn't have even needed to go to the hospital!

In 2016, more than 400 patients were admitted to hospital with injuries because they had their feet on the dash when a crash occurred. Research also shows that females are most at risk when it comes to feet-on-dash injuries, particularly on longer family road trips where men may still do most of the driving.

Well, to put it simply - an airbag is literally a fabric sack wrapped around an explosive. Since an airbag is triggered by a car’s collision with something else, it means the passenger’s body is also in motion.

So not only is there a chance that your leg gets pushed back, but it could possibly even go upwards and through the windshield or roof because the airbag deflects it. That isn’t a fun scenario to imagine!

Whichever way the passenger’s body is going, it’s not going in the way the engineers intended when they designed the car and its airbags.

Injuries are very common in accidents, and while they may not all be as gruesome or graphic as what was just described, they can still happen even if everyone is properly seated.

There’s only one way to avoid this horrific scenario and that is to keep safe and keep your feet off the dashboard. Focus on safely chatting to the driver and other passengers, or choosing which playlist will be playing through the speakers on your road trip.

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