I just wanted to remind everyone.....

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Not wearing your seatbelt makes baby Jesus cry... ;)

And yes, I too remember how we were told seatbelt laws would oh-never-ever-ever be the sole reason for a traffic stop. Just gotta get your foot in the door, baby!
 
Got the perfect solution...

Just enact a law (or lack of one) saying that the insurance companies don't have to pay out for an accident where seatbelts weren't worn.
 
third rail....I know, thats why we have the mute button.... telling me something I already do...just makes me smile...and shows me, again... I am ahead of the game..I don't take it personal !
 
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up (buckle up)
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up
Buckle up safe and secure,
Yes I’ll say it one time more
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up

Please make sure that mom and dad buckle up too (come on, Mom)
Please make sure that mom and dad buckle up too (come on, Dad)
If you’re big or if you’re small
Doesn’t matter not at all
Please make sure that mom and dad buckle up too

If you’re riding in a car please buckle up (buckle up)
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up
Buckle up safe and secure,
Yes I’ll say it one time more
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up

If the child is very small, use a car seat (that’s right)
If the child is very small, use a car seat (always!)
Please show us you are wise
A car seat, just the right size
If the child is very small, use a car seat

If you’re riding in a car please buckle up (buckle up)
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up
Buckle up safe and secure,
Yes, I’ll say it one time more
If you’re riding in a car please buckle up




:p
 
In many states when there is an accident when someone is not wearing a seat belt is injured it is considered to have contributed to the injury. So if the injured person was not wearing a seat belt the at fault person will not have to pay the whole amount of the total damages to the injured person. I have been told that this often reduces the amount awarded by 20% to 40%. I think having a seat belt law is one of the things that makes this possible. That is the injured person broke the law and this contributed to the injury therefore they are not going to get fully compensated.

I was in a multi-car accident about 2 years ago and only two individuals had more than minor bumps and scraps. Neither was wearing a seat belt. One of them had a significant head injury as he went into the windshield head first. Everyone in my car was wearing their belts and none of us was injured in any way.

I will not leave my driveway until everyone in the car is buckled up. It would not matter if there were a law about this or not. I have also been in cars a few times in the past when one of the passengers refused to buckle up. Having a law about this helps the driver in these situations as he can say "Hey I don't want to get a ticket so please buckle up". If I were driving I would say "Either buckle up or get out of the car." So again the law would not matter.

I agree with the poster above who said that it should be something that the insurance companies handle. If you don't want to buckle up you pay more (way more). I don't think this is out of line. After all part of how much your insurance costs is based on how safe your car is in a crash and buckling up makes your car safer. Seat belt use would just be an added factor in how costly the insurance is.
 
Well, I have heard the statistic that almost (less than) 60% of fatal crashes involved people not wearing their seatbelt. So what does that mean? Almost half the people that died in crashes were wearing their seatbelt! Really, how good are those odds? I'm not really being serious, I just love it when they trot out that statistic since by itself it doesn't really mean much.

I have no problem with wearing my seatbelt, but I have a serious problem with the government hassling me over anything related to personal choice, even as it relates to my safety. Life is dangerous and the sooner people get used to the idea and leave everybody else the hell alone, the better I'll like it. Of course, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

I don't think it's necessary for there to be a law requiring seat belt usage in order to implement an insurance-type solution. All you would need is a couple of checkboxes on the accident report.

Rick
 
"They all concerned small cars that were ripped apart and the occupants dragged out by their seatbelt."

It didn't help matters a bit that the seatbelts were attached to the *door*, not the *car*. Yes, wearing a seatbelt in a crash can kill you, but with a relatively modern design and implementation (say, 1980 or later, with exceptions going both ways), a lot more people are prevented from death/serious injury by wearing one than by not. Most deaths from a seatbelt are from people who are not wearing it properly; some people seem to think the "lap belt" portion should be across their lower rib cage, and this can get messy in an accident.

Yes, the state telling me to wear a seat belt rankles. But, until we come to the point that we can tell motorcyclists who distain helmets, and car drivers who ignore their seatbelts that, in the event of an accident, they will not be able to receive any medical care NO MATTER THE OUTCOME OTHERWISE other than what they can fund out of pocket, there will be laws telling people to do things that most rational persons would do anyway.
 
The thing that really frosts my ass about this click it or ticket BS is that the government runs these Gestapo-like checkpoints so the cops can write YOU a ticket, but nobody makes the cops or other government employees wear THEIR seatbelts. I'll bet that around here seatbelt compliance by cops and other city/county employees is around 25 percent at best. I keep a running list of all the government goons I see riding around without their belts on so that next time I get corralled in the sweep, I can ask the cop why they don't have to wear their belts, and when he replies that they do, I can whip out my notebook and start reading.

By the way, I wear my seatbelt 100 percent of the time, even if I'm driving across a parking lot.

This just pisses me off. They could make better use of confiscated tax dollars by going after real criminals. Heck, the policeman of the year in this town only solved 50% of his cases, you'd think that rather than hassle otherwise law abiding citizens about their seatbelts that he could use that time to solve maybe one more crime.
 
A point I like to bring up.

If this is all about saving lives, and saving medicals money, why do we stop there. Why don't we take all the technology learned from racing and make it mandatory. What if we put roll cages in all cars, to prevent them from being ripped apart in a side impact? What if we required firesuits, to delay injury in case the car starts on fire? Head trauma is a biggie in car accidents, a helmet would reduce that. Whiplash and broken necks can be reduced by a Head and Neck Restraint device.

After all, it is to save lives. If it saves your life, isn't it worth it?
 
I feel the same way you do. I have a hard time restraining myself from smashing the TV in with a baseball bat when I see those commercials. :cuss:

I've always worn my seat belt, but this ad makes me not want to. It's not about wearing a seatbelt, it's about the government telling you to.
 
School Busses

I don't have any stats, but I believe that the yellow school bus is about as safe as it gets as far as over-the-road transportation.

The problem is that when they are involved in an accident, it's an "Omygawd Children!" reaction.

The problem also is that they're built to standards that would scare the crap out of you if your car was built the same way. When's the last time you saw a car's body and chassis going different directions after an accident....

However, over the years, a good deal of effort has gone into improving the insides of the vehicles. The "disaster" accident - a semi or a train, for example, is extremely rare, so the interiors are designed to keep the kids in the area defined by their seats and the back of the seat in front of them. As long as the kids stay in those areas, they're about as safe as they're likely to get in a normal accident.

(Bear in mind that except for "Field Trip" usage, they rarely are driven all that fast in most areas, and spend a toof time at 25-30MPH.)

Keeping the kids in the cocoon isn't the easiest thing for the driver to do, but it's not impossible. IMHO keeping seat belts on the kids (some of them are kind of tiny, too, and may be in danger from the belts) ought to be nearly impossible. The feeling seems to be that a very large percentage of the risk is in slow-speed accidents, so let's keep that as safe as possible and just hope for the best otherwise.

Just IMHO, of course....

(As to seat belts and helmets for adults, well, I wear belts and don't have a motorcycle. I object to the "mandatory" nature of the laws, but favor the use of the devices. I agree, too, that a lot of traffic enforcement is strictly revenue. Locally, we had a speed trap city nearby that was forced to send the traffic cases to a muni court instead of a "Mayor's Court". This resulted in most of the revenue staying with the muni court. The PD is still out there and writing tickets, but for real violations....)
 
Bravo11 said:
I don't buckle up. I want to be thrown clear of the wreckage
Click to expand...

Roger that --- Who wants to have to hang out in a mangled car until help arrives? ..... NOT ME!!


What if the car starts on fire?......I don't wanna be in there, for sure!!


Seriously, I'm an adult. I don't have to eat vegetables, or wear a seatbelt. That's just how it should be.

If you're worried about increased healthcare costs due to my robbing the poor insurance companies, maybe we can tap into the 40% + of my earned wages that are taken from my paycheck. Now where's that money?................Oh yeah, that's right - It's being spent to tell me I'm being naughty.
 
Note to Jeannie Johnson

Johnson told the New Hampshire Sunday News that Vermont got a $24,000 federal grant to put up billboards reminding drivers of the seatbelt law. Here’s what’s funny: Vermont bans billboards.
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***? Bureaucracy at its finest? :fire:

“Here’s the deal: We either don’t do it at all and send the money back or give it a shot,” she said. “The fact of the matter is it’s federal money and if it only helps New Hampshire and not Vermont, that doesn’t meet my goals, but it’s good for the country.”
“I hate the idea of using my money to help New Hampshire when I need help so badly, but I don’t see how anything bad can come out of it,” she said.
Click to expand...

It never was YOUR money; it isn't LEGAL within your own borders, therefore you should have never applied for the grant in the first place...of course the upside is you can spend every penny and get those federal road funds ransomed. Even if seatbelt usage continues to be low, you can always whine for more money next year, because obviously $24k wasn't enough. :banghead:
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I know it's never gonna happen, but I wish that someday some state legislature collectively "grows a pair" and tells Big Daddy Fed that they're gonna withhold revenue > the amount the fed agency is holding hostage.
 
In every second year of school they'd scare us half to death and thus encourage us to use seatbelts, gruesome videos, gruesome stories, gruesome cafeteria food...

I agree that a seat-belt that saves your life is no reason to make it law, it stops you from being sucked out the window in a roll-over, but that's not a reason to codify them in law.

There is one fact they told us that would justify seat-belt laws, I guess it is that when there's more than 1 person in a car and they crash at higher speeds, the occupants to a lot of damage to each other. Often that's what kills them. And the problem is that both people have to wear belts to stop it, or else the 1 guy without the belt will be propelled into the guy with the belt and they still get messed up. So when someone is in my car they wear a seat-belt, they're just a 200 pound bag of cement and rocks as far as I'm concerned, like a loose cannon on a ship of the line they need be tied down.

But that's my car, my law, I'm not sure that's reason enough to impinge other's freedom. I'm pretty sure it's not.
 
" Jeff, why do you hate the children so much?"

I hope, for your sake, and the next generation's sake, that you were kidding when you said that.

The number of "children" that will some day be killed in the fight to take back liberty in this country will far outweigh even automobile deaths among people who refuse to wear a belt.

rr
 
Putting on my seatbelt when I sit in a car is as automated to me as making sure I have my wallet when I go out.

As to being trapped in a burning/sinking/something car by the seatbelt... well, that's why we have seatbelt cutters. Or knives. You do carry a knife with you, right? A seat belt cutter is $3. There are worse things you could spend your money on.
 
Stupid people

My Wife and I wear seat belts, all of the time....except... Pauline had been to a play in the downtown area, I was picking her up, as she suffers from Woman’s disease! Too cold if air conditioning is on! She had a shawl with her, on jumping into the Jeep and telling me all about the show and of course with the shawl across her lap, neither one of us noted the seat belt had not been snapped on.

The I4 was just two blocks from the pick up point, so in a minute or so we are doing 60MPH, on our way home. Nitwit young Lady driver attempted to come across three lanes, to leave the I4 via the most dangerous left leaving lane in the State, needless to say she had left it too late, my horn told her she was in my path, as I tried to lesson the impact by hitting her square on!! 04 Grand Cherokee, great disc brakes, she booted it, I did not hit her, my Wife was on the edge of her seat, both hands on the dash! just about to go through the glass!

You can do what you want, we wear ours.

Side bar, the idiot bodyguard of Princess Di did not have his charges wear belts, they died, he had his on! He did not.
 
Just enact a law (or lack of one) saying that the insurance companies don't have to pay out for an accident where seatbelts weren't worn.
Click to expand...

You probably wouldn't even need a law. Insurance companies could put it in the policy. Most would deny coverage if you do something stupid. If I left my keys in the car and it was stolen, do you think they would pay out?

If this is all about saving lives, and saving medicals money, why do we stop there. Why don't we take all the technology learned from racing and make it mandatory. What if we put roll cages in all cars, to prevent them from being ripped apart in a side impact? What if we required firesuits, to delay injury in case the car starts on fire? Head trauma is a biggie in car accidents, a helmet would reduce that. Whiplash and broken necks can be reduced by a Head and Neck Restraint device.
Click to expand...

There was an article a while back that said that (in MI) over 90% of drivers complied with the seatbelt requirement. The steps you talk about are much more expensive than a seatbelt, so people would make a stink, especially the auto manufacturers. The high level of compliance, along with the fact that most people that don't like the law wear their seatbelt anyway (they just don't like being told), makes it highly unlikely that there will be any major protest against this law.
 
Putting on my seatbelt when I sit in a car is as automated to me as making sure I have my wallet when I go out.
Click to expand...
:D In my case, I hardly ever take my wallet unless I am going to town. Same thing with using the seatbelt. The gravel and dirt roads within about 10 miles are about the same to me as "going to the end of the driveway"


Not that it means anything statistically, but about a year ago there was a tragic accident near Billings. A mother and two kids rolled their car. possibly after a near collision with a deer. None were wearing belts, all were ejected, the mother died and the kids survived with injuries. Those who inspected the car afterwards said the mother would have lived if she had been wearing a belt, but the kids would have been killed because that side of the car was totally squashed. It goes both ways, FWIW ....
 
Seatbelts are a good thing. I was in an accident once where I ended up with a few bruised ribs instead of being thrown through the windshield. Sensible people should wear them.

However, it is not the job of the government to regulate sensibility, as much as I sometimes wish otherwise :)

Around here, they do those "seatbelt checks," usually after midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. It gives the police a chance to get a peek in your car and a whiff of your breath. Given that I've got lifelong injuries from a drunk driver, I'm okay with that.
 
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