Same with me.
I personally became a fan of seat belts when I watched a driver safety film in my high school driver's ed class. In one scene, they showed the one good thing France ever did. They gave a prisoner a reduced sentence if he drove a car into a tree at 50 mph.
He did.
The front of the car looked like a wadded up Kleenex afterwards.
He unbuckled & stepped out of the car 2 seconds after impact without a damn scratch.
I was sold.
About 10 years later, I was driving home after dark, in winter, down a piece of highway that I'd driven down every day for years. It was cold - below freezing - but it handn't snowed for days. That road should've been clean & dry.
Apparently I found a spot where it wasn't.
Lost control of the car, started spinning around in circles, went off the right side of the road, down a shallow slope, and slammed driver's-side-door-first into a big ass tree.
My car had a distinct horseshoe-shape to it.
My injuries consisted of a couple small cuts on my right hand, because it landed in a pile of glass from the driver's-side window that had landed on the passenger seat.
That's all.
I'm still sold on seat belts.
Funny thing is, I told this story to the tow-truck driver who brought me & my horseshoe-car the 5 more miles to my front door, and his response?
"I don't like seatbelts".
Maybe one of his cars was wrecked by a French prisoner...
1
In the 23 years I spent working the roads of my county I never once had to unstrap a corpse.
In spite of that, we seldom wore our belts on routine patrol, we'd buckle up when we were in a chase or running to a hot call. The seatbelt slowed us down when we'd have to bail out of the cruiser to chase some as, um bad guy and the belt was very uncomfortable over that Sam Browne belt with all the crap we had to carry on it. Hard to get to the shootin' iron, too.
Funny, when I creamed that cruiser at a hundred plus, I walked away. I spent damned near a week in the body and fender shop when a drunk rammed me while I was stopped, sitting in the car unbelted writing a ticket.
The only times I wrote tickets for seatbelt violations when only adults were involved was when the citizen got real mouthy or the brass was on me for not writing them. Usually there were enough people that talked me into giving them tickets that the bosses stayed off my butt. Kids, though, that's another story. Grownups can decide to be organ doners, that didn't bother me but buckle up the kids or I'd be on the driver like stink on, er, white on rice.
These days? I don't drive down to the mailbox without the belt on.
Posted by: Peter at August 05, 2005 01:27 AM (QazL/)
2
"In the 23 years I spent working the roads of my county I never once had to unstrap a corpse."
LOVE that line :-)
The bad thing for me is that I've got a 20+ year habit of reaching for shoulder strap, and now my damn car has passive restraints, and 90% of the time I forget the lap belt.
I hate automatic seatbelts.
Posted by: Harvey at August 05, 2005 01:41 AM (ubhj8)
3
Man, my first car was a VW bug. Used to slide off the vinyl seat on sharp turns. at the very least I like the feeling that I'm firmly rooted.
Posted by: tbflowers at August 05, 2005 05:30 AM (lujBT)
4
Amen to all above.
I once read a e-mail by someone which started with the line of "We never wore (seatbelts or helmets when we rode bikes or some such) and we are still here and alive. I pointed out that was because the ones who weren't alive and well weren't using the computer to write such messages. She didn't get it.
Posted by: Rachel Ann at August 05, 2005 06:10 AM (PAocK)
5
I HATE "automatic" belts. Total crap.
And I'm in complete agreement here -- the laws requiring seat belts are 100% crap. If they're legitimate, why I am "permitted" to work in my yard when it's 100 degrees? Assholes (the state, not you people).
Posted by: Ogre at August 05, 2005 06:20 AM (/k+l4)
6
Farging seat-belt bastages....
Posted by: Madfish Willie at August 05, 2005 07:09 AM (ikJsr)
7
I wrote a post on seatbelt use in 2004.
Of all the people that died in vehicle accidents, 55% of those were not wearing seatbelts.
That equals out to roughly 23,000 people who probably would not have died if they took the few seconds it takes to belt up.
Oh, the hell with it. I will follow Harveys rule from above and post it on my blog.
Posted by: Machelle at August 05, 2005 07:16 AM (ZAyoW)
8
Yeah... it's bringing a post.
Posted by: Bou at August 05, 2005 08:54 AM (5JHEt)
9
I don't believe there should be any such things as mandatory seat-belt or helmet laws. That said, I often ride in Kentucky, which has no helmet law. I wear a helmet wherever & whenever I ride.
Back when I used to drink & drive, I totalled almost a dozen cars. Never wore a seat belt, never got seriously hurt. I wear a seat belt when I drive not for the reason most do, but so that I'm anchored behind the wheel & don't go sliding around during extreme driving.
Posted by: Tennessee Budd at August 05, 2005 09:49 AM (twjgR)
10
I sent Grau's note to a firefighter friend and he said the same thing as Peter, that in 20 years in the fire service, he never had to cut a seatbelt off a corpse.
If that doesn't sell you on using them I don't know what will.
Posted by: George at August 05, 2005 10:33 AM (NBcjQ)
11
My mantra to myself when I think about not clicking up on short trips:
"I don't want to become a quadraplegic because I 'didn't feel like buckling up'. That's just WAY too humiliating and it sounds like something a hippy would say."
Posted by: Harvey at August 05, 2005 02:39 PM (ubhj8)
12
Herbey... I'm thinking that maybe your injury was more serious than you care to admit... how else to explain your fucked up thought processi... anyway, if you ran into anything 'head-on' you'd disappear 'cause your head is so far up your ass!
Posted by: Madfish Willie at August 05, 2005 06:45 PM (ikJsr)
13
I prefer to think of it as wearing an "ass-helmet".
Safety First, Willie :-P
Posted by: Harvey at August 05, 2005 07:03 PM (ubhj8)
14
I'm the older brother and grew up with Harv,
the boy's been this way from day one
Posted by: bloggless brother at August 05, 2005 11:56 PM (4fLAh)
15
I was in a low speed collision a little over two years ago.
We were pulling out of the school parking lot, and, at not an alarming rate, we hit the car in front of us.
I was strapped in in the back, and hit my knee a tiny bit. No trouble, just a bump. like running into a table.
The girl in the passenger seat, however, (and keep in mind that we couldn't have been going more than twenty miles an hour), had not yet belted up and used her forehead to, not only crack, but render the car undrivable via shattered windshield.
Miraculously she walked away with just a bump, but that totally reenforced everything I felt about the belts.
Posted by: Chuck at August 06, 2005 02:55 AM (VMlbg)
16
Terrific post Harv. My mother was in an accident nearly 40 yrs ago in which she wasn't wearing a seat belt. Thrown through the windshield, body found far from the car and shoes far in the other direction. Survived with minimal frontal lobe brain damage and various deep wounds to face and legs but still bearing physical and emotional scars to this day. All would have been different had she just been wearing that belt. Yeah I'm buckling up, law or no law. So is she. Awareness beats evil nanny laws.
Posted by: Uber at August 07, 2005 12:33 PM (oXbKj)
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