Car kit. Mostly A seat belt cutter?

Chris Pierce

Chris Pierce

Joined
Nov 15, 2006
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Howdy folks
So my little family moved to the other side of the mountains last year and now it snows! :D My wife is worried about car wrecks and how we're gonna get the kids out if we drive off a bridge or if the car's on fire or something.
I told her that we ought to get some strap cutters and put them on our key rings, that way we always have them handy, maybe with a kydex sheath so we can just grab them off the ring. But I don't know what/who makes a good strap cutter. Any sugguestions? Maybe we need window breakers too...

Also. I'd like to pick up a couple of fire extinguishers for our rigs. And I keep telling me wife to carry food water and a warm coat in her car. I think road flares would also be a good idea. What do you all think?

Just so you know, she's got studs all around on a front wheel drive vehicle but no real winter driving training. She drives about 60 miles a day and goes up and down Mary Hill grade everyday. It's a particularly steel windy part of HWY97 in the Columbia River Gorge. The grade is salted in the winter and I believe that it's taken care of pretty well since it's a truck route and all. But it is still only one lane a lot of the way.

Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks.
-Chris
 
My wife and I both have a resqme glass breaker/cutter combo on our keychains. They have had some negative reviews saying the center punch style glass breakers don't work on some of them, but after testing ours I feel good about them. As far as a main car kit, I bugged her to get things together for months before I finally ended up building her one myself. Now she mentions how great it is all the time and enjoys tweaking it to her liking.
 
the res-q-me ones rate well, never used one myself. From a buddy who did both school-bus driving and fire-rescue, go to a junk yard, get some seatbelts, and practice. he said when he did it as training, (his suggestion as a newb) most of his squad couldn't figure out how to use them first try. They are not terribly intuitive. you need to cut at an angle, think machete principals, cutting 90* to the strap does not work. But most of the time, they only used cutters for the odd car that had belts on the door rail, or if they could not reach across, even the kid-safe kind are pretty easy to one-hand and thats faster than getting a cutter out. (and cutting both the lap and shoulder belt) Heck, they even had to weld doors shut so they could use the jaws of life on them, every simulated impact that was supposed to jam the doors, just opened them!

Blankets, triangle reflectors, candle, food, basic first aid should be enough. It's a known route, if something does happen, and she gets way overdue without contact, you can easily go looking. Get in the habit of checking road reports, dressing for the weather, checking in with each other, and leaving extra time. Trying to hurry is what gets most folks in trouble. Other than that its pretty basic, stay with the car, if you car doesn't have a pass-through to the trunk, keep at least some stuff in the back seat, as if you ditch the car, there is a good chance the doors will be stuck shut. Then its the usual, only run the engine with a window cracked, 10 min at a time.

As for training, find a big empty parking lot right after a snow, (one that you know has no major pot-holes or curbs) and get her to try to throw the car out of control, hand-brake turns and the like. Even just "crash stopping" so she can feel the ABS growl and not freak out about it. with studs it should grab pretty hard and recover itself well. Has she ever hydro-planed a car? its pretty much the same, save for you don't tend to get traction back in snow until you've stopped, but its a good starting point.

The other thing that will probably make her feel a lot better, is having a bail-out plan to stay in town if the weather goes bad and its late. When my wife was learning to drive in winter, she would have still been able to stay with her old room-mates that lived a couple blocks from where she worked, so she never had to dread the drive. If it looked bad, she could stay there over-night. It just took a bit of that edge off.

Hope that helps, I've been stuck in a car, ditched cars, and managed to teach an Aussie to (sort of) drive on ice, so I'm no expert, but if I can do it, it must not be that hard! By thinking over the "what-ifs" she's farther ahead than most folks.
 
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Chris Pierce said:
And I keep telling me wife to carry food water and a warm coat in her car. I think road flares would also be a good idea. What do you all think?
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Those items are all essentials ... I would add a warm blanket and an LED flashlight with spare batteries.
 
smith and wesson model number 911. that is what it is made for. it also has a spring loaded punch for the windows. now it is full size so you cant put it on your keyring. it comes with a belp pouch. I figger you could just keep it in the glove box or the rest between the seats if you have that in your car.
 
Chris,
If you have a grab handle on pillar post- I used to keep a small pouch attached to mine in the truck- contained a strap cutter, spring loaded center punch for glass and military grade strobe. If nothing on pillar post(like my Trailblazer) I have it around the rod supporting my head rest. It needs to be within easy reach even if car has been hit and loose items displaced.

The strobe came from reading stories of cars going off the road and people being trapped for days without being found. Pouch is attached via webbing and fastex buckle.

I keep a masons brick hammer in kit in back of car for getting into other damaged vehicles, along with 24" crowbar.
Bill
 
My wife and I have a resqme on my key chain. We actually gave them out as stocking suffers last Christmas.

Honestly the best thing you can do is purchase good tires. Get 4 dedicated snow tires if you are in an area that snows. My house has two Subarus and my wife and I each have our summer and winter wheel setups. Hers are a bit boring... Two sets of stock wheels (+1) for summer that are silver. I run +1 lightweight gold wheels in the summer with extreme performance summer tires and my stock wheels painted gunmetal in the winter with dedicated snow tires.
 
There are a lot more window breaker/seat belt cutters on the market than just a few years a go.The best window breakers are the spring loaded types because if you're in the water it's too hard to swing a breaker Get a large size automatic center punch at a hardware store ! Break side windows only and break the lower corner . I have a very fine seat belt cutter by Benchmade .
Safety triangles are good along with reflective safety vest .Can be a life saver when changing tires. Flares , either common ones or electronic [make sure electronic ones have DOT ratings ].One or two good quality LED flashlights.
 
I guess I should have said so, but my wife carries a knife and a sure fire already.

As far as going and getting her if she's late? She's notoriously bad at answering her phone or charging it even. But she is usually pretty good about calling me if shes going to be late.

Anyway, if she drives into the river I'm not going to be saving her. Or if her car is on fire she's got to get out herself. I can't just go rescue her if shes late. And she's got studs all round.
We don't have big parking lots around here :D We have wheat fields and go kart tracks.

I'll look into mentioned items. Thanks guys.
 
I really like my Benchmade Rescue Hooks you can get some real good deals for them on ebay with some patience, I believe the 8MED comes with a carbide tip for window breaking.
 
Some "hot hands" would be good to add as well. They have saved extremities more than once.
 
Good idea. I hadn't thought about hand warmers. I'll talk to her about all this stuff today.

I know that some folks think that it's easier to hit the seat belt release then to use a strap cutter. But when you're dealing with an infant's car seat it's not so easy or fast. And I'd hate to be in adrenalin rush trying to cut the straps with my folder and accidentally stab my daughter. Maybe if the car was on fire I'd try and just unhook the car seal and take the whole thing, but if we go off a bridge then no way since the seat would probably fill full of water and want to sink.
Hopefully I never actually have to deal with any of this stuff. But you never know.
My wife drives an 08 Kia Spectra5 btw, so it's not like I'm forcing her to drive the kids around in a beat up old dilapidated junker.
 
This sounds like a case of preparing for what you most fear, rather than what's most dangerous. Hollywood has done a great job of instilling the fear of being trapped in a vehicle, but in two decades of working in emergency services I can't think of a single situation where a person perished from not being able to undo their seatbelt or break a window.

Priority number one should be winter driving lessons. Regardless of what vehicle or tires you have, safely driving on ice requires a specific technique that is quite different from any other. There's also little nuances like understanding how the vehicle can fill with carbon monoxide if left idling, etc.. It's not rocket science, but it does need to be learned.

With good control over the vehicle an incident where your car ends up in deep water or on fire is so unlikely that it hardly warrants consideration.

What's much more likely is getting stuck behind an accident that takes a long time to clear. For that situation I'd recommend running on the top-half of the gas tank rather than the bottom half, and having sleeping bag(s), snacks, drinks, headlamps, children's toys (DVD's) and a good book available. I like the flashing yellow bubble lights that plug into a power outlet and stick to the top of your car. They're good insurance against getting hit by a snow plow when you fall asleep and the cars behind you just go around after the accident clears.

In the even of a slow-speed slide-off or intentional ditching to avoid an out of control vehicle (these comprise the vast majority of incidents on icy roads), pack road flares, a decent snow shovel, a tow strap (with the knowledge of where to hook it up if someone offers you a pull), and a phone charger that's zip-tied into the car so it's always there. It can take a few hours for a tow service to get to you, so the sleeping bags, snacks, drinks and entertainment material come into play.
 
Chris Pierce said:
She's notoriously bad at answering her phone or charging it even. But she is usually pretty good about calling me if shes going to be late.
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Ha. I feel your pain. It's been a long process getting my wife to understand that a cell phone is something you can actually carry around with you (and maybe should). But then she turns the ringer off. Or leaves it in her car. Or doesn't charge it...

9 times out of 10 I get no answer when I call her. Starting to take it personally. :D
 
sutured said:
in two decades of working in emergency services I can't think of a single situation where a person perished from not being able to undo their seatbelt or break a window.
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I'll second that after working tons of vehicle accidents as a police officer.
Not even an issue.
 
here is a picture of the benchmade strap cutter that I have. you can not stab anybody with it.
 

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Chris Pierce said:
Howdy folks
So my little family moved to the other side of the mountains last year and now it snows! :D My wife is worried about car wrecks and how we're gonna get the kids out if we drive off a bridge or if the car's on fire or something.
I told her that we ought to get some strap cutters and put them on our key rings, that way we always have them handy, maybe with a kydex sheath so we can just grab them off the ring. But I don't know what/who makes a good strap cutter. Any sugguestions? Maybe we need window breakers too...

Also. I'd like to pick up a couple of fire extinguishers for our rigs. And I keep telling me wife to carry food water and a warm coat in her car. I think road flares would also be a good idea. What do you all think?

Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks.
-Chris
Click to expand...

Don't tell her to, just put it in and it's done

Plus add a good set of socks and warm boots for her, women often wear shoes that are useless for winter
 
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