Choate Car Rescue Tool at NRA Meeting in Atlanta

ammoland ^ | 3 May, 2017 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

At the Knife Check for President Donald Trump's speech at the NRA Annual Meeting in Atlanta, I noticed that they were getting a few black composite ice scrappers.

I asked about them and was told that they were being given away at a booth near the FN display.

As I wandered around looking for the black ice scrapers, I noticed the Choate Machine Tool booth.

Choate had made a fiberglass reinforced letter opener in the 1980's so I decided to ask them if they knew about the ice scrappers.

That is us, they said, and hauled out a bag of ice scrappers to refill the empty basket at their booth.

Noting my interest, Fred Choate handed me the orange Car Rescue Tool shown in the picture. It costs $20.95, (price corrected, thanks to Chewy, in comments)  and is meant to be attached to the receiving stub of a car seat belt with a little dental floss or similar, breakable, line.  That would keep the tool from flying away if the car rolls. The idea is you would grasp the tool and break the line with a quick jerk when it is needed for emergency use. The three main features are the six inch blade for scraping ice, the recessed seat belt cutter, and the window breaker/spike/Phillips screwdriver.

I will be installing the one Fred comped me in my personally owned vehicle.

I did not test the Car Rescue Tool. I value my vehicles' windows and seat belts. But Fred said one of their customers is a first responder. The responder found an unconscious woman in a car in water. He broke out the rear window and cut the seat belt with the Choate tool to

[archy]

I wonder if this rescue tool is popular in California, New York, Maryland, and New Jersey?

If you get a chance to run into Garth Choate, you'll find he's a genuine nice guy and a heck of a machinist. I used one of his PDW sidefolding stocks on an H&K MP5K and far prefer it to any of the H&K offerings.

So far as his tools, since I mostly run a pickup truck in Wintertime, I really need a ice chipper with a longer handle. And by way of an emergency tool inside, I have a big flat metal prybar with a handle that's even pointed on one end and so can get through either windshield glass or side door sheet metal.

[ViLaLuz]

Scrapers, not scrappers.