Do you know what a biohazard is? Different industries have different standards for the word. In the auction business it means any vehicle where the occupants blood stained the interior. A few drops. An open gash. If a person had the misfortune of bleeding or dying in their car, it will be announced at an auction as a ‘Biohazard’.
Most of these vehicles are sold at’salvage auctions such as Copart & Insurance Auto Auctions. The general public feels queasy about these vehicles for good reason, and I always thought it would be a neat idea to group some of these cars together and have nearby high school students and DUI offenders visit the carnage.
Then again, maybe biohazard vehicles should be exhibited for a far broader audience.
Warning Signs: Signs are everywhere these days. But what about a smashed up car instead? When SUV Sally and her gifted progeny go forth with their texting and talking, signs don’t really matter too much to them.
Curves ahead. Drive slow. Warning. Not even the courteous ‘Stop Sign Ahead’ looks like anything more than scenery when Darwin’s future companions are trying to distinguish between the Q and W on their cell phone.
But a wrecked car with the words ‘Warning – Biohazard’? Could it be a zombie apocalypse? Throw that warning along with the obligatory traffic sign a hundred feet down or so. That would likely give them a lot of extra pause. Hopefully… maybe…
Humiliation: This wouldn’t necessarily be a biohazard vehicle. But what about a vehicle that is wrecked through extreme carelssness. Drinking. Texting. Talking. Random acts of extreme vehicular stupidity often require more than a ticket to remedy in the long run.
Those who cross this barrier should be subject to a public display. Especially if they have dropped their insurance or affected the lives of other people. That’s why some judges have seen fit to display cars to the open public. I would go even further. Have the vehicle displayed on the perpetrator’s driveway for an extended period of time. I’m sure a homeowners association would fight the idea tooth and nail. Tough. In my world this would be considered killing two birds with one stone.
Perspective: A lot of drivers consider driving to be a right. It’s not. But automobiles are essential transportation for a lot of us. That’s one of the many reasons why driving tests are so feared in this country.
Every state has their own standards for when someone needs to be taken off the road. Older folks. Even those of us fighting diseases or other frailties may find that we’re no longer safe drivers.
I think displaying a couple of these vehicles in areas where driving tests are performed would help defuse a lot of the anger that comes when someone fails a driver’s test. When you see the potential outcomes of what can happen when a driver loses their skills and judgment, you’re less likely to feel victimized.
The debate on safety has it’s extremes on both sides of the fence. So what do you think? Should wrecked and/or biohazard vehicles become more prominent as warning devices? Or we at a healthy medium where these graphic displays of death and suffering would have minimal impact on a bad driver’s behavior? What says you?
Last year, I was at a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new extension of the California 52 freeway in the eastern ‘burbs of San Diego. Among the old cars and other auto-related exhibits was a horribly wrecked truck, the victim of an accident at the old end of the 52 freeway and Mission Gorge Rd. Mission Gorge Rd was the main drag heading in and out of the ‘burb in question (Santee).
This exhibit served two purposes: One, to warn of the horrors of drunk driving (the accident happened @6AM on a Sunday morning). Two, to illustrate why it was necessary to complete the extension of said CA 52 freeway.
effected? no
affected yes
One of the most attended events in my state is the annual State Fair. The NCHP always have a horribly wrecked car/suv with the write up attached. It’s usually DUI related but recenting switched to teens and texting. There’s one county (not mentioning which) that I swear has the most teens killed each year. I don’t know why, maybe it’s that rural, drinking underage thing that some still think is cool.
I know that the local county fair always has a the same sheriff’s car on display that was smashed when a drunk driver t-boned the sheriff. Of course said drunk driver escaped with a few scratches and bruises; the sheriff on the other hand…
I was a school administrator. A few weeks before prom every year, we bring in two very mangled cars that had been in an accident that involved both alcohol and teenagers. These cars are placed in a very prominent position so that both our students and the general public driving by can see. Needless to say, it is a very sobering sight.
The state of Israel shipped civilian terrorist bombed Buses around the world to make a point. The more display, the worse the carniage the more the point might get through.
When I was in high school in the 90s they would tow in a wrecked car and display it in the main quad, as part of the annual drunk-driving/MADD awareness campaign. Not sure if it was really effective, but I remember it was pretty cool to see the wrecks up close.
I don’t recall whether there was a ton of blood in the cars or not. Probably not.
I thought it was a pretty common thing back then. Do they not do this anymore?
They had a crunched up F150 out in front of the local high school for a couple of weeks last spring so, yeah, some places still do it.
The HS my daughter attends goes one step farther with the wrecked car in front of the school. Just before the prom the local fire department and ambulance service bring in 2 wrecked cars, get some students from the drama guild, put full wound makeup and fake blood on them and load them into the cars. The upper classmen then come out to watch the extrication and the actors being hauled away by the ambulances. Being involved with this as a former Paramedic I can say it really hit home with the kids.
Where I live (Southern Maine), the city Police department put a wrecked CVPI in a high traffic area a bit after the accident occurred. The wreck occurred in late 2010 when some moron driving a giant Chevy pickup was talking on his cell phone and rear ended the stopped police car while the cop was helping a disabled vehicle. Luckily the cop was okay…eventually. It’s not like there were high intensity flashing blue lights or anything like that. Seeing the wrecked car was interesting. I’m not a dolt so I don’t talk or text while driving but hopefully it made someone more aware that you’re supposed to be focusing on driving when a steering wheel is in front of you!
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Accident-shuts-Portland-bound-lanes-on-Casco-Bay-Bridge.html
Interesting perspective.
I remember seeing a Ford pickup whose occupant had shot himself in the driver’s seat. The whole inside of the cab was covered with dark stains. New truck, nothing else wrong with it…what does one do?
The State Patrol exhibit at the Western Washington fair one year showed a barrier truck – a 3-ton dump truck that has a collapsible barrier behind it that’s placed upstream from a work crew. This truck had been hit by a big rig going about 60 mph, totally trashed, and shoved a thousand feet down the road.
Back in the day before trailers had Mansfield bars, I saw a kid driving a ’51 Chevy accelerate from a traffic light directly into the back of a semitrailer.
Such things that one sees tend to stay with one for a long time.
Now if only Mansfield bars actually helped at normal road speeds.
Slightly off topic, but I was reading one of those non-fiction accounts about the hunt for a serial killer. He’d been active for years and the police finally had a suspect. He used to own a car that matched several eye-witness accounts, unfortunately he sold it several years before the police tracked him down. So they find out who he sold it to, then went and asked permission to search the car. In it they found not only blood and semen residue, but also several torn buttons and other bits of clothing from the murdered hookers he killed.
Now the book played up the great forensic work, but I’m thinking – gee, someone bought a car and drove it for several years with God knows what biological hazards staining the interior.
Last several used cars I bought got the immediately heavy duty interior sanitization!
You haven’t seen the Top Gear episode where they’re sent off to buy cheap sporty convertibles and they all return with nearly identical BMW 3 series. A trip to the forensic lab was one of the challenges and I won’t spoil it for you but I will say that Hammond spent the rest of the film in a full body hazard suit.
Yup, saw that one too. And yup, mega gross. I went out and re-cleaned my truck one more time after that episode. Even removed the seats to better clean the carpet.
A tuxedo rental store near me always puts a wrecked car in front with a “Don’t drink and drive this prom season” sign.
No blog post on biohazard cars is complete without a link to the “death car” urban legend that I heard more than once while growing up in the 1970s:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/cursed/deathcar.asp
Didn’t know that’s what they called it at the time, but we owned a “biohazard car”. Dad bought a used 58 Pontiac in 1959 from the local Pontiac dealer. It was a beautiful car and my folks were very proud of it.
The first time it rained, the car leaked. Dad pulled the carpets out and found the car floor had been welded back together. Further checking found that the roof had been welded back on at the A and C pillars (4dr hardtop).
Later, the car began to smell inside. One day a fuse blew and Dad got under the dash to replace it. There he found dried blood hanging from the wiring, etc.
He sold it very shortly thereafter.
What about the minivans & SUVs that haul the cargo of precious little snowflakes & their leavings/discharges? During repairs, I’ve found “lost” soiled diapers & dried goo all over the interior.
I fail to see how US driving tests contribute to the safety of driving. The insurance-mandated-after-18-speeding-points Defensive Driver class, I see a point of. But as far as driving on lame streets, observing the stop signs, stopping on red before a right turn, and making sure you don’t hit the curb while parking, that’s not making us safer from those texting, drinking, smoking and browsing the net while driving. In Iraq the driving test was simple – conclude a figure 8 loop in reverse. That was pretty effective, and they don’t need to worry about texting when the road to Basrah is straight for 5 desert miles.
I find that people kindly provide the service of displaying carnage to the public on the freeways I use to commute on. Even more so when it rains. Unfortunately all this seems to do is encourage more people to crash, or at the very least simply cause a huge jam while everyone takes their eyes off the road to look at the misfortune on display.
I don’t think that there is much evidence to support the position that “scared straight” programs do much good.
The problem with driving is that most drivers believe themselves to be superior to other drivers, which leads them to assume that this stuff will just happen to someone else. They’re too smart and skilled and talented and clever to be affected; it’s the other guy who isn’t as smart or skilled or talented or clever who will be.
+1
I remember these programs from 30 years ago; we’d look at the carnage and act all solemn when the adults were around, then laugh our asses off about it once it was just us kids.
Somehow, I don’t think kids today are more conscientious than we were in the early ’80s…
Hence the Red Asphalt series went away–the movies weren’t effective.
Scare tactics work when they appeal to what the audience is actually scared of. One plane crash will alter thousands of people’s travel plans, but thousands of car accidents won’t. Displaying wreckage will mobilize mothers to restrict what their kids are allowed to do, but the mothers won’t change their own behaviors (because they believe their ‘skills’ make them immune).
To effectively improve safety, you have to identify & fix the root cause(s) of the accidents. While I don’t have data, I strongly doubt driving skill is a big one. My money would go on inattentiveness and poor decision making. Thus, methods that address focusing attention and training/testing one’s decision-making process would be more effective.
So, that story my neighbor told me in the late 1960’s about “someone” he knew who bought a month-old Cadillac for $500 bucks because a body was found in the trunk was true?
“The general public feels queasy about these vehicles for good reason”
What is the good reason? I suggest that a little blood aversion has the queasy factor, but lacks any basis in reason. If you want to worry about a car, worry about carbon monoxide, outgassing plastic, mold in the ventilation system, injuries from air bags, getting your head or something else stuck in a window, getting the shift knob stuck in something on you, pregnancy from semen on seats, burning yourself on the cigarette lighter, getting distracted by your radio or passenger, hidden rust, blown tires, carjacking and last but not least, your brother leaving a watermelon on the back seat an entire summer.
And I didn’t even mention dog fluids.
Wait a minute. Am i the first person to catch this?
Pregnancy from semen on seats? Hahaha
Apparently most of you people have never been to a self serve junk yard. You wanna talk bio-hazards? Blood is not even the most common. Some of the things I’ve seen in junk yard cars: Rotting food. Loaded up diapers. Used condoms. Used tampons. Used bandages. Hypodermic needles. By no means is this a comprehensive list.
I happened upon a “scared straight” car one day. It was a Toyota Carina that hit a concrete pole after flipping at a high rate of speed. The car was split in half. The engine flew an 1/8th of a mile away. There was blood and brain matter at the base of the pole. Two of the three occupants (all drunk) were dead. It has had a profound impact on preventing me from driving after even feeling slightly buzzed, and preventing others from doing so as well.
It probably helped that I knew these kids at the time.
Reminds me of the car we saw in a junkyard in 1969. It was a Mercury Marquis – a big car – it was hit by a train. Looking down, it was in the shape of a bow tie. the middle of the car was 20″ wide, including front bench seat! Simply amazing…and terrible.
Nothing funny about that.
Monday afternoon, I was in medium traffic on a 2 lane state highway. Stores and houses and everything. I am in the work van , doing 35 and about 10 car lengths behind a red car who veers left right into a Dodge pick up. The poor kid following the truck in a Jeep learned a life lesson about following distance. All the action was in the north bound lane. My path was clear going south. My oppo on the other side beat me to the draw and I could already hear the sirens. I dont think any one was seriously hurt. I talked to the guy in the Dodge. He was a bit stunned and bleeding from the nose. But OK. Kid in the Jeep was OK and the cause was struggling with the air bag. My van was just taking up space, so I moved on. Usually , stuff like this can really ruin a day’s commute. The week before, my ride home had 45 minutes added to it by some horror show involving unknown vehicles. Or a Med-Flight stopping traffic both ways. The worst was a bio hazard in TN that took 18 hrs to clear.
My high school took a pretty great approach to the whole thing…they would pick a few popular kids and ask them to stay at home for a day. During the day, a group of other students went from class to class (accompanied by someone dressed like the grim reaper) to make the announcement that so-and-so had died, then make the announcement over the PA during home-room (which was 4th period at my school) that there was going to be an assembly.
In the football stadium, the fire department would set up a wrecked car, where one lucky student acted as a victim, covered in fake blood while the fire department and paramedics extracted him and heli-lifted him to the hospital. Afterwards, they’d play a student-made PSA on the jumbotrons.
It was quite elaborate, and I think they do this once every four years. I think they should have left out the grim reaper part.
Does Aftermath do cars?
They do!
http://www.aftermathinc.com/Vehicle+blood+cleanup/
I work for a company that does biohazard/trauma cleanup. Vehicles are so much more difficult to clean than houses… you wouldn’t believe the places that the “red” can get into.
‘Every state has their own standards for when someone needs to be taken off the road. Older folks. Even those of us fighting diseases or other frailties may find that we’re no longer safe drivers.’
Agreed. With that said, the day I am ‘not allowed’ to drive will be the day I put a gun in my mouth. Just sayin’…