PHILADELPHIA, -- David Garcia, a complete quadriplegic as a result of injuries sustained in an automobile rollover in 1996, will testify at the Senate Hearing on 'roof crush' scheduled for Wednesday, June 4th from 10 to 11:30 AM in room 253 Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. The hearing is open to the public and the news media.
On May 25, 1996, David Garcia was driving his Ford Escort on Interstate 20 from Jackson, Mississippi to Dallas, Texas when, to avoid a vehicle coming into his lane, he took an evasive action; veering into a median grass strip between the interstate roadways; rolling over at a speed of only 35 miles per hour. During the rollover there was massive roof crush of more than a foot into David Garcia's occupant space.
Despite being fully belted with both manual lap and automatic shoulder seat belt, the roof buckled and deformed downward into David's survival space; eventually coming to rest pushing on the driver's headrest -- causing paralyzing injury to his lower neck vertebrae and rendering him a quadriplegic. Because his passenger Kristen Brown's occupant space was well preserved, she was able to exit the vehicle under her own power with no serious residual injury.
Eight years later, David completed a 300 page dissertation on the writer, Jesus Colon, and was awarded a Doctorate in Spanish American Literature and Latino Studies from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
In July 2007 David traveled with his family from their home in Endicott, New York to address the Emergency World Summit on ROOF CRUSH, sponsored by www.PeopleSafeInRollovers.org. Now David Garcia is making his second journey to Washington, D.C. to advocate for a major upgrade in the proposed Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard FMVSS 216 before it is finalized: "I look forward to confronting our lawmakers and telling them how my life changed in an instant because of the weak roof in my Ford Escort. I want them to grasp and see up-close the direct and dire consequences of our current roof strength standard and the gross inadequacy of the proposed standard. I want our lawmakers to know what has been so artfully hidden from the public by both the auto industry and NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) -- that many American vehicles lack occupant survival space if subjected to forces in a rollover. I want Congress to enact a law, now, of a strong roof strength standard that will protect occupants from injury and death in a rollover. And I want the roof strength, or strength to weight (SWR) ratio of all vehicles made public."
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