Raising your car’s windshield wiper blades before a snow storm doesn’t make much of a difference.
Before the arrival of a snow storm it’s not uncommon to see people lift their car’s windshield wiper blades up. It can make people who do not do this question if it is worth doing and the answer is a resounding: maybe.
If the arriving storm will have lots of ice then lifting your wiper blades up helps prevent them from freezing to the glass. Attempting to move blades that have frozen to the glass can damage the rubber of the blades or even the motor of the wipers. That said if the blades are frozen with ice so is the rest of your car. You will most likely be letting the car’s heat & defrost run for a while which will free your blades and fix this problem.
There seems to be no consensus as to which way is better. Any potential benefit seems negligible. If you want to lift your car’s windshield wiper blades before a big snow storm, go for it. If not, that works too.
Sammy Davis Jr. lost his eye on the steering wheel of a 1954 Cadillac Eldorado.
The Cadillac Eldorado (named for the mythical tribal chief / city of gold) began production in 1953. It was decorated with aeronautically inspired fins and conical “bullets”, as was the style at the time. The “Dagmar bumper” was the chrome front bumper that had two decorative bullet projections, named for the buxom American actress Dagmar. Included in this ‘50s bullet styling was a hard bullet shape at the center of the steering wheel, nicknamed “the bullet wheel”. The car had no seat belts.
The Eldorado’s “Dagmar bumper”, named for the buxom figure of American actress DagmarThe “bullet wheel” of the 1954 Cadillac Eldorado had a hard “bullet” at the center of the steering wheel, similar to the styling found elsewhere on the car.
Sammy Davis Jr.’s career as a song & dance man started when he was a child in the 1930s. In the early 1950s his career was on the rise and he was performing in the clubs of Las Vegas while also working on projects down in LA. On November 18, 1954 Davis and his valet Charles Head left the New Frontier Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in Davis’s Eldorado to drive through the night to Studio City in LA the next morning.
Helen Boss was a widower from Akron, Ohio that liked to live as a snowbird, traveling to LA in the winters to avoid the cold of Ohio. She was traveling down Route 66, not far from San Bernadino around 7:00am on November 19th, when she missed her turn. Instead of turning the car around she simply put it in reverse and went backwards to the fork in the road where she went wrong. At the same time Sammy Davis Jr. was driving the same road and before he realized the car in his lane was driving backwards, slammed directly into the back of Boss’s car.
The Accident
The resulting accident sent people flying. Charles Head, who had been sleeping in the backseat, was launched into the front seat where he broke his jaw. Helen and her friend broke bones when they were sent into the backseat of their car. The V-8 engine of Davis’s car was pushed backwards into the dashboard as Davis was sent forward, his head colliding with the steering wheel. He hit his head hard enough that he dislocated his left eye on the bullet portion of the wheel.
The accident was a front-page story around the country. This brush with death, combined with a visit by a rabbi chaplain, led Davis to convert to Judaism. In the hospital Davis’s damaged eye was removed by doctors. He wore an eye patch for the next few months. His debut album, Starring Sammy Davis Jr., was released the following year and the album cover features Davis wearing an eye patch. Eventually he switched to a glass eye. Later in life Davis would say “I’m a one-eyed Negro who’s Jewish.”
Davis initially wore an eye patch but eventually switched to a glass eye.
Form Follows Function
In the words of architect Louis Sullivan, “Form follows function”. The bullet wheel was a costly example that the style of the steering wheel (its form) was less important than its purpose (its function). Looking cool was less important than being useful & safe. After Davis’s accident the Eldorado’s bullet wheel was discontinued and replaced with a safer design.
