wreck!

[KIKER]

A good friend of mine was involved in a traffic wreck last week. He was traveling east on a two-lane state hiway in west Texas, when a gang truck, traveling west, failed to yield and turned south in front of hm. He swerved to the left and hit the heavy steel bed of the gang truck. He was driving an '08 GMC 3500 cab/chassis with welding bed. The engine of his truck wound up under his right arm, where his console used to be, and his right leg was under the brake pedal. He had to be cut out of his truck and airlifted to Midland for treatment of his injuries. He now has a rod and some screws in his right femur that suffered a compound fracture. He showed me something that has me baffled. His wallet was in the console and had about $5-600 in it. The bills that were in his wallet are as fragile as dried leaves. He had the cash in a plastic baggie and it was all crumbling to pieces! I saw a couple of bills that were at about 30%, the rest were at about 2-5%. What caused that? What deploys the air bag? Could that have caused those bills to do that?

 

[JR]

Sorry to hear about your friend Kiker. Hopefully he will fully recover. As far as the air bag there is some pretty nasty stuff in them. When the sensor is triggered there is an ignition source in the wheel which lights the chemicals (sodium azate and something else, I don't remember) and there is a series of different chemical reactions which converts to nitrogen gas which fills the bag. The white powder is talcolm powder which is used during assembly to keep the bag from drying out. Supposedly there is nothing dangerous about them once theyve been deployed but it is pretty strange about the bills. I would think that if the air bags were responsible something similar would be happening to his clothes and the interior of his truck.

 

[Wayne M.]

I hope your friend has a good recovery from that wreck! I can't explain what happened with his bills either, but what else was in his wallet, and how did they do? Credit cards, biz cards etc?