Ankle Injuries after accident?

Geez Louise. Are we now going to split hairs about whether the affected are might be called the upper ankle or the lower shin? You can call it whatever you want, but either way it is likely to ram into the parking brake pedal upon impact.

 

What ever happened to the OP anyway, he makes one post and never returns??? It would have been really interesting to know if his (or his mother's) leg injuries were as a result of the park brake or something else.

 

Yes, we are going to "split hairs." That's what one does when examining causality. You made this hypothesis about ANKLE injuries not leg injuries, so we are analyzing that. And more specifically your hypothesis applies only to left ankle injury in the U.S.

It's not at all clear that the OP was referring to the parking brake pedal. Instead it appears to have been a reference to the regular brake pedal. The affected leg was not identified either.

Either way the physical arrangement requires modifying your hypothesis from the ankle to the left lower leg/shin injuries. The good news is that in "splitting hairs" one should be able to get a far stronger signal from the data than your "somewhere below the hips, either side" approach would.

Of course the other critical part that is required in testing the hypothesis is in identifying a wide pool of similar sized vehicles that do not have a similar parking brake/foot rest arrangement for comparison. That's going to require some legwork (pun intended) since the Prius pedal arrangement appears to be common enough. In fact, the post from geeky teacher above your initial response should have clued you in: "My brother had an emergency brake embedded in his leg. That was actually one of the least of his problems from his mini-van accident." So we are definitely not talking about a Prius specific problem. It would apply to my full size truck or the mini-van mentioned.

In light of this it probably would have been better to have started a more specific question in a new thread as the connection you attempted to make to this thread just doesn't stand scrutiny. I'm not claiming that the parking brake pedal arrangement is ideal or that it could not be improved. So I encourage you to follow this up by analyzing actual data, and let us know what you find.

 

Shawn, your argumentation is disingenuous, and can be summarized as follows:

1. "you should have said shin, not ankle"

It is the lower shin or the upper ankle. If you had a real argument, you would not need to split hairs over this terminology.

2. "you must show data"

Data is hard to come by. If we had a photo of all legs of all drivers in all Priuis accident, and related data, that would be great. But we don't.

3. "we need STATISTICAL data"

No we do not. What is needed is a collection of accident post-analyses that establish whether left legs hit the parking brake pedal, and what injuries result.

4. "this is not specific to Prius"

I never said that it was. But this *is* a Prius forum, so we talk Prius here. And Prius has the unusual combination of being a relatively small car and having a parking brake pedal. Additionally, as seen in the photo, the pedal is placed very closely above to the shin/ankle of a 6ft driver. *That* is why I want discuss this.

5. "you should have started your own thread".

If you do not have anything substantial to argue, I suppose you can argue about thread creation, naming or other minutia.

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I predict that within 2 years, it will be a well known fact that the Prius parking brake pedal placement is a cause of unnecessary and sometimes severe injury. Feel free to sit back an hold your breath in the meanwhile.

 

Geeky, would you mind providing some more details about the mini-van accident? Make/model/year?

 

The Prius has been sold in the US for 8+ years (Gen 1 01-03, Gen 2 04-09, Gen 3 '10). The placement of the parking brake is not significantly different for the Gen 2 & Gen 3 models; I think the Gen 1 is similar as well.

 

Disingenuous? Now, you've tread where you shouldn't have. I've been upfront about this while you've been sloppy and spun distortions.

It was you who came in here attempting to make an obviously FALSE causal link with the original post. People have humored you, but now you are developing troll like tendencies.

If you are going to quote someone, at least do so accurately. Instead you attempt to distort what I've said.

The actual quote: "requires modifying your hypothesis from the ankle to the left lower leg/shin injuries"

Actually, I was trying to point you in the right direction so that you could analyze this. Starting out searching for injuries to the wrong body part is a duffers move. A competent engineer would try to define the problem to narrow the search. I've never referred to my shin as my "upper ankle". The ankle is a joint and the bone immediately arround it...not the sum of the bones around the joint. The shin is the tibia.

I believe you were directed to the source for such data. As to whether or not it is sufficiently detailed, I don't know. We have members here who have sifted through it for other information. I guess they are less intellectually lazy than you.

That isn't a quote from me. However, you do need some COMPARISON data to prove the point. And yes, there should be some statistical indication of a problem if you want to go anywhere with it. How rigorous the statistics are is not a major concern of mine. That's not my field.

You feel strongly about this, and that is your right, but to come in here and suggest that it is a big issue without a single shred of evidence to support it, and berate us for asking for some evidence is incredibly pompous of you.

I don't know what your engineering experience has been, but mine has been that when you have a disruptive theory you have to find some evidence for it before folks take you seriously. Stop talking trash and do some homework.

Several of us have already admitted that it doesn't appear to be an ideal pedal placement in a collision. What is missing is an analysis of data that supports the concern. And if you go off half-cocked about the wrong body part (as in ankles) then folks are likely to dismiss you as clueless pretty quickly.

That appears to be a lie, you've said it or at least strongly implied it multiple times...including at the end of the same post.

If you are going to level serious safety accusations, at least have your crap together. Instead you resurrected an old thread that conflicts with your assertions in several ways. What lousy "engineering judgement." And when people point it out you dismiss that as "splitting hairs."

I think you should hold your breath instead since you are the one claiming that this will be coming soon. I'll continue breathing normally while you remain breathlessly agitated.

And the funny part about this it again shows how disingenuous your "I never said that it was" statement really is.

 

Here, see if this helps:

Toe bone connected to the ankle bone
ankle bone connected to the shin bone
shin bone connected to the knee bone
knee bone connected to the thigh bone
thigh bone connected to the hip bone
hip bone connected to the back bone
back bone connected to the collarbone
collarbone connected to the neck bone
neck bone connected to the head bone
head bone connected to the neck bone
neck bone connected to the collarbone
collarbone connected to the back bone
back bone connected to the hip bone
hip bone connected to the thigh bone
thigh bone connected to the knee bone
knee bone connected to the shin bone
shin bone connected to the knee bone
ankle bone connected to the shin bone
toe bone connected to the ankle bone
ankle bone connected to the shin bone
shin bone connected to the knee bone
knee bone connected to the thigh bone
thigh bone connected to the hip bone
hip bone connected to the back bone
back bone connected to the collarbone

Tom

 

Am I "splitting hairs" that one should be specific in looking for the logical point of injury? We could examine incidence of hemorrhoids, but I doubt it will tell us anything about the emergency brake pedal. Does anyone sit that low in the seat? You would have to be a giant.

 

I have only ever seen the park brake pedal in American cars and some old Holden Torana's but Holden dropped it like a hot potato as Aussies didn't like it. Personally I'd prefer Toyota used another park brake activation method, I'm not a fan of the pedal.

I don't see the pedal as a safety hazard.

 

I prefer hand levers.

Tom

 

I know it's a parking brake, not an emergency brake, but.... if you're going to stop the car in an emergency and this link to the rear brakes is all that's working at the time, I suspect that your leg is likely to be a better choice than your arm, and it might also be good in such a situation to have both hands on the wheel. I've owned more hand parking brakes than foot ones, and have had to use one once.... not very efficient at stopping. Very nice with a manual transmission when starting on a hill, though.

 

The foot brake isn't very efficient at stopping either. It only runs the rear brakes.

Tom

 

Here is the only real reason to put the emergency brake within reach of your hands and not your feet.

E-Brake Drifting Technique
How To:

• 
  [*]Coming from the straight towards a corner
  
  
  
  [*]Brake and heel-toe downshift
  
  
  
  [*]Enter the corner a bit too fast
  
  
  
  
  [*]Release the brake and steer into the corner
  
  
  
  [*]Step on the clutch and quickly pull the e-brake for about a second (keep your thumb on the release button!)
  
  
  
  [*]The rear wheels lock-up. Feel the back end lose traction and start to countersteer with the wheels along the corner’s path
  
  
  
  [*]Wait until you see that the car is facing the direction of the corner exit. Then gently give it a little power to pick up the drift. Control the throttle throughout the drift towards the exit.
  

How to drift using E-brake (handbrake) Drift Bible | Graspr.com