Girl Killed in Freak Car Accident Involving Shoulder Belt : Van Nuys: The collision caused a fatal neck injury because she had failed to fasten the lap constraint.

A 16-year-old Van Nuys girl whose auto collided with a patrol car was killed by her vehicle’s automatic shoulder belt, which crushed her neck because she failed to buckle her lap belt, Los Angeles police said Friday.

A police officer described it as a “rare, bizarre” type of accident that could occur again as more cars are equipped with the passive-restraint shoulder belts, which are automatically put into position whenever the vehicle’s door closes. But this type of accident could only happen if motorists also neglect to fasten their lap belts by hand.

Piraporn Thienmanee was pronounced dead about an hour after the accident at Lennox Avenue and Sherman Way in Van Nuys on Wednesday afternoon.

Thienmanee, who apparently failed to yield the right of way after halting at a stop sign, was attempting to turn left from southbound Lennox to eastbound Sherman Way when her car was struck in the left rear by a patrol car headed west on Sherman Way, said Detective Henson Dial.

The impact caused the car to spin out of control counter-clockwise. Because her lap belt was unfastened, Thienmanee’s lower body bounced around inside the car while the shoulder strap of her 1991 Nissan Sentra held her head and upper torso against the seat, Dial said.

“There was nothing holding her pelvis down to the seat of the car, but her neck became tangled up in the strap,” said Dial. The shoulder belt crushed her jugular vein, “broke her neck and shut off her windpipe,” he said.

“She basically hung herself,” Dial said.

The girl, who had only a learner’s permit, was driving illegally because she was not accompanied by an adult, police said. The car had been given to her about a month ago by her brother, Dial said.

The two officers--Tom Mason, 28, and Daniel Randolph, 24-- were en route to investigate a report of a man with a gun but were not using sirens or flashing lights, Dial said. They were treated for minor injuries at Valley Hospital Medical Center and released.

Thienmanee was living in Van Nuys with another teen-ager and attending St. Genevieve High School in Panorama City, Dial said. Her parents live in Bangkok, Thailand.

“As long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve never seen one like this,” said Dial, a 22-year department veteran. “But we could see more of these because more cars have automatic shoulder straps, but people forget to also buckle their seat belts.”

“This should teach people to use both the seat belt and their shoulder strap,” he said.

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