Weather It Is (A Safety Tip for Wet Roads)

Good Evening:

For the first time this year, the clouds really look like rain clouds.  They have grey bottoms and are showing some vertical depth.

However, our forecasts are not showing any tropical rain showers until possibly Thursday, and then things become a bit murky.

What we do know is that the weather at end of the month will be chillier than its been in quite sometime.  We also know that an upper air system (at 500 mb) will pass by on Friday morning, and that it could trigger thunderstorms throughout the area.

However, beyond this, we see possibilities of a more substantial rain, but nothing definitive.

So,  we'll have to wait a day or so to be better able to say how the pattern develops.  Certainly, it is more fall-like (or even wintry) than we saw just a couple of days ago.

Regarding that safety tip.  Sometimes we are faced with the situation where there are more kids to put in the backseat than there are seat belts.  The "traditional" solution to this problem for small children is to buckle them together.

However, it turns out that there is a relatively new law in Israel that says this is illegal, and the penalty is a possible loss of license.  The question is why?

Unfortunately, it's basic physics that are obvious when given a moment thought.  The seat belt is shaped like a parabola (a semi-circle).  In a crash, there is both a frontal force from the seat belt repelling the forward deceleration of the car,  as well as force from the side (since the seatbelt is curved inwards).

The end result is that children sitting together can knock their heads together with such force that of them can main or even kill the other.

Pretty serious, and that's why there is this new law.

Barry Lynn