Seat Belts

There's something wrong about a pair of 7-year-olds lounging like sultans in the back of a $60,000 luxury vehicle, downing Go-Gurt from an armrest mini fridge, watching Godzilla on a private screen enhanced with 17-speaker surround sound, and bicker-battling over a remote control that commands a rear-seat massage feature. When I was a kid, cars were cars. They weren't mobile living rooms. But times change. And few things exemplify our changing world more than Hyundai's new Equus, a premium sedan that poses a challenge to the popular conception of Hyundai as a poor man's Honda.

Richard and Carolyn Carlson were driving through rural Colorado in February 2005 when they hit a patch of black ice. Their Chrysler PT Cruiser spun backward into an embankment, causing the back of Carolyn's seat to collapse. She was hurled into the roof and partway through the rear window. In an instant, Carolyn Carlson became a quadriplegic, and one of the thousands of Americans who suffer injuries, or death, each year in crashes in which car seats break. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has looked at forcing automakers to build stronger seats, first considering new rules in the early 1990s.

Ten illegal immigrants in the back of an SUV crammed with at least 27 people were killed when the driver lost control and rolled over on a remote southern Arizona highway, authorities said Sunday. The Ford Excursion had no rear seat and most of the men and women were ejected when the SUV crashed before midnight Saturday near Sonoita, about 40 miles southeast of Tucson. Authorities said all the victims were thought to be illegal immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador and perhaps Mexico.

Re "Metrolink balked at safety upgrade's cost," Sept. 17 Your article was right to point out that if positive train control technology is to work, the anti-collision technology must be used by freight and passenger rail. That is not the case today. In California, there are roughly 5,000 miles of rail track, over which more than 20 freight railroads, five regional and commuter operators, as well as Amtrak, run trains. All those railroads need to be equipped with collision avoidance systems that communicate with one another if we are to reduce the likelihood of accidents.

Arnie Peterson's evening train, the Metrolink 111, banked to the left, toward the coast. The work week, and the metropolis, faded behind him. He and his fellow travelers were a motley crew: a lawyer with tasseled loafers; a young man with a shaved head and the words "KICK ASS" emblazoned on his shirt; Peterson, a 47-year-old cement worker for the city of Burbank, clad in his orange work shirt, headed home to Simi Valley after another long day....

My stomach churning, the sun beating down on my aching cranium, I slowly uncurl my fingers from their death grip. My eyelids creak open. I'm lying on my back, with my upper torso restrained by a harness and my legs feebly kicking in midair. "Sweet merciful savior," I think, "it's nearly over." An old aphorism says that there are no atheists in foxholes. I'd amend that to include roller coasters.

THE HOMEROOM Graffiti his path to an art career For those who have been following posts by Manual Arts High teacher Antero Garcia about using graffiti in his classroom lessons, the latest issue of the newspaper LA Youth has a story by Ramon Marcos. "I'm more artistic now," Marcos writes about the art classes he's taking at Skillz 'N Action, a free, urban art program for teenagers. "Before coming here I didn't even think about going to college, Marcos says. "I saw myself in the future having a lousy job that I would hate.

If you are the type to worry about a meteor crashing through your windshield, here's a more realistic problem: drivers who lose consiousness in a moving car. A letter from a reader asked what a passenger can do when the driver becomes incapacitated. "If a person is a passenger in the front seat and the driver all of a sudden has a heart attack or stroke, how can the passenger stop the car?" asked Judy Hoffmann of Westlake Village. "There's that big console between the seats.

NEW YORK -- When Consumer Reports posted a blog this month criticizing Miley Cyrus for not wearing her seat belt in a new film, Hannah Montana Nation rallied in her defense. Before long, the posting had received nearly 200 comments (far more than the typical one or two) -- and made national news. "Absolutely we were caught off-guard," said Don Mays, who wrote the post. "Whether people agree or not with our analysis, at the very least, I would like them to understand the risk."

Heavy fog and low visibility contributed to a 15-car pileup in this small southwest Kern County community early Friday. Eleven people were injured, several of them seriously, authorities said. The chain-reaction accident began about 8:10 a.m. when a big rig truck heading south off an Interstate 5 offramp tried to turn left at a stop sign onto California 166, said the California Highway Patrol. The truck driver -- who told authorities he was having difficulty seeing through dense fog -- had begun to make the turn and his trailer was still blocking lanes when drivers heading west on California 166 began slamming on their brakes to avoid hitting him. A series of accidents followed.