By Automotive Online on March 6, 2009 7:46 AM

  In the United States alone, the most developed economy in the world about 6,420,000 auto accidents occurred in 2005. About 2.9 million people were injured and 42,636 people died as a result. Not just in the U.S. but also in other places around the world there are car accidents and thousand of people lose their lives each year. In the UK there were 189,161 road accidents involving personal injury in 2006 and 31,845 people were killed or seriously injured in the mishaps.
Given the status quo of road accident figures, car manufacturers feel the pressure to make cars safer than ever. Aside from newer technologies appearing on the scene such as side-impact airbags in some of the latest designs and other features like the intelligent side-impact protection system still in the pipeline, car safety efforts and accessories like car alarms seem to be moving ahead space.

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However on the flip side, in the quest to make car bodies sturdier than ever, reinforced alloys are being made use of. They do make the cars hard to break, but does this lead to an undesirable fallout as well?

Very often car bodies are deformed following an accident and the passengers become trapped within. This is the time when extrication measures are made use of by the emergency rescue teams. However, of late it has come to light that many a times rescuers find it tough to cut through the metal to evacuate the passenger because the metal cutting tools have gotten obsolete in the face of reinforced alloys. Consequently, arranging for more appropriate and latest tools for the purpose leads to loss of critical time when providing First Aid to the injured makes all the difference between life and death.

Another challenge faced by the rescuers are the airbags, as while cutting through the frame the emergency crew has to make sure not to activate the bags. Deployed at the wrong time, the bags can cause more injury to the trapped occupant, worse still the bag might rupture and burst harming the passenger.

Moreover, the rescue workers have sought to disconnect all battery wiring, so as to prevent accidentally triggering airbags, but presence of laptop battery pose a similar threat. As the newer reinforcements used in cars require latest and more befitting equipment to cut through, the emergency crew also find themselves faced with the exorbitant price that such equipment demands. Consequently, government funded departments may sometimes find it tough buy and do so in the right quantities.

Despite the odds put up by stronger than ever materials used in car making for the rescue workers, these materials might actually end up saving more lives as the occupants come out unharmed and unaffected from these “unbreakable” autos.