I'm sort of conflicted because the only really serious accident I've ever been in (toyota truck rolled end over end 5 times, maybe moving 36-40 mph in those inclines in the middle of the highway in Nevada), the driver would have been killed if he was wearing his belt and I think I would probably have been at least injured.

As it was nothing happened to us, other than we had to spend the day in Battle Mountain, and I got a painful scrape that took nearly a month to scab properly on my back.

of course we were lucky, but in the same way George Bush likes to think he pulled himself up by his bootstraps I like to think it was not just luck but brains and skill that saved my ass that day!

I can't seem to convince a couple of my friends that they need to buckle up in the backseat as well as in the front seat.

Drives me bonkers.

What makes you say the driver probably would have been killed?

Sure, there are accidents where being held in place by a seatbelt puts you in place for an impalement while being thrown out of the vehicle turns out better all around, but still, that isn't the majority of the cases. They're more in the "my uncle smoked three packs a day for sixty years, and he died at age ninety when he was shot by a jealous husband" sort of story. Yeah, the guy's uncle didn't die of lung cancer. But that doesn't mean that smoking is good for you.

"He started it with a push; he thought he could stop it with a shove. They had to amputate both legs, but they saved his life." I explain electrical safety practices by saying, "999 times out of 1000, it's a nuisance, and the 1000th time it saves your life." There's this whole domain of low-level risks where people's reasoning...just goes weird. Sure, it probably won't happen. And they're scary, people don't even want to think about them, and when people think about them you get all these weird ideas like "thrown clear" (and then you hit the pavement at 50 mph, yeah, right.) It's an educational problem, really. The levels of energy and strong materials we use day-to-day in the developed world are potentially very dangerous; we have good standard safety practices so that we're pretty safe. But explaining them to people who don't understand the forces and possible injuries is bloody difficult.

Builders of future space colonies take note.

I used to work in the billing department of a hospital, so I'm quite familiar with how many patients a hospital emergency room gets via car accidents small and large.

It's not just the big-time accidents with rollovers and flames that can send you to the ER -- even a fender-bender can give you serious enough injuries to require real and expensive medical attention -- not to mention serious pain.

My grandpa had his life saved twice by seatbelts. Once he was caught in a massive multi-car pileup on the Bay Bridge. A seal between sections had opened up, so when it rained a heavy curtain of water fell to the lower deck. It completely cut off visibility. Somebody slammed on the brakes and started a chain reaction. Without his seatbelt my grandpa would have gone through the window onto a bridge deck in the middle of a pileup. The other time he lost control on a curve and went off the road and rolled. When the car stopped, it was on its roof, and they were hanging upside down in their seats.

There never was any question in our family as to whether we would wear seat belts. I don't feel comfortable in a car until I'm buckled up.

I think the "thrown clear" bit is because a lot of people are obsessed with the idea that they might be trapped in a burning car.

Where would you rather be: In a burning (or flooding car) and unconscious, or in a burning (or flooding) car, conscious but seatbelted? Or thrown clear -- clear through a wire fence.

I haven't been to a rollover with unrestrained passengers and driver since ... Thursday. My state doesn't have a seatbelt law yet. I see a lot of this stuff.

My cousin was in the back seat of a car that was driven too fast and went off the road into a creek. So they're down in the creek and the water is pouring in the windows and they have to get out. Did he regret wearing his seatbelt? Hell no. He was banged up, but if he had not been wearing a belt, he could have gotten hurt much worse, and maybe stuck there. If he'd been "thrown clear" of the car, let's just say it was a fair ways down to the creekbed and there were rocks. As it was, the worst injury he suffered was when the girl next to him stood on his kidney while she was climbing out.

I'd like to point out that the same reasoning behind wearing a seat belt applies to wearing helmets for biking (motor or otherwise) and horseback riding. Not only do unprotected heads smack into things, but your brain smacks into your skull, or what's left of it.

One rider posted an account of deliberately destroying a riding helmet (so that someone wouldn't dig it out of the trash and think they could use it with that little dent in one side) that saved her head after a fall. Neither bullets, an axe, nor a sledgehammer produced more significant damage to the helmet than the fall had.

My personal anecdote relates to my elder brother, in his boy racer days (20 years ago). A Golf GTi, a fast downhill stretch of A-road, and a patch of black ice ...

I think he was doing something between 70 and 90 miles per hour when he hit it. The car came to rest a third of a mile down the road, facing the wrong way, with only three wheels able to touch the ground at the same time. (It rolled several times.)

He walked away from it, albeit rather shaken, and switched to driving Volvos ... cautiously. I'm kind of glad I grew up in a family where wearing a seatbelt was drilled into me about the same time I was learning to use a knife and fork.

What have we all learned from this, children?

Don't leave bowling balls on the rear deck of your car.

(And, y'know, the seatbelt thing.)

Back in the early sixties my father had seat belts installed in our car. Everyone we knew thought this was exotic. Later, when he was on the ambulance squad, he would occasionally go on about how prescient he had been. And because I was trained to this so early, my household rule is that the-car-doesn't-move-until-everyone-is-belted-in-I-don't-care-that-your-mother-doesn't-make-you-wear-the-seatbelt-when-she-drives.

I once went on a road trip with a woman who refused to wear seat belts because she didn't like anyone telling her what to do. I wonder if she's still alive.

Aconite @10: Seconded. I've crash-replaced three bike helmets in the last ten years. None of those were in particularly exceptional circumstances (racing, off-road, etc) -- just something unexpected happened and my head hit the ground.

Or, in one case, the hood of a car. And then hit the ground 15 feet away after being thrown by the force of the impact with the vehicle.

Around here, helmets are becoming more and more the norm rather than the exception, it seems -- though it still irritates me no end when I see parents riding with their kids, and the kids are wearing their (required-by-law) helmets and the parents are strangely bareheaded. Perhaps they simply have thicker heads.

Some public-safety messages.

Especially this one (not safe for Teresa): No Seatbelt, No Excuse

My brother died in a car accident on May 18, 1976. I started wearing my seatbelt on May 19, 1976, feel naked in a car until I've buckled up, and will not shift out of "Park" unless every person in the car is belted.

One of the more grotesque accidents I know of occurred here in Oregon a few years back. A man was driving under the influence while his five-year old daughter was playing with toys in the cargo space of his station wagon. He collided with something, and she went flying out the open back window; she was killed instantly. He went to jail.

Umm.... as one of those idiots who routinely doesn't put on her seatbelt (mainly because the damned thing tends to creep up to right under my neck), even though I actually got a ticket for it a few years ago, I have to say that your graphic description will probably change that.

So I thank you and my family thanks you.

While learning to ride a motorcycle in my laters years (as compared to my early years that I still have an elbow scar from) I took the Rider Safety Course (which, BTW, I highly recommend, they're in all states, it's cheap, and they have a long wait list so sign up now). In the classroom side the instructor was talking about helmets (which a student needed the second day, went down on pavement doing 10mph or less, she had just started up when she went down, fortunately had a full face helmet which saved her pretty face, the helmet was scratched all up, I always wear my helmet, jacket, and gloves, even for short rides). The instructor was talking about all those idiots you see who have the helmet in a bungie net on the rear seat of their bike. He asked if we all knew we were going to be in an accident if we would wear the helmet. Most people raised their hands. He said, "Wrong. It's a trick question. If you know you're going to be in an accident you don't get on the bike, period. The trick is, you never know when you're going to be in an accident."

I had been rather casual about wearing my seat belt until 1984. Then some friends (baron, baroness, senseschal and I can't remember the fourth) were killed in a violet accident returning to Des Moines late at night from an SCA Event. Wiped out Coeur d'Ennui's entire board save maybe one.

The drunk that hit them was going in excess of 120 mph. so I doubt that even if they'd had seatbelts on they would have survived.

I recall they were all unrestrained, the impact was so hard that it tore the drunk guy's car in half. Oddly enough he survived, but in a nursing home until passing just a few years ago.

I don't EVER get in my car without a seatbelt and badger passengers until they put theirs on.

Toni, whatever my own issues with regard to seatbelts, my kids were always restrained, and it makes me really upset to see children loose in a car. Just the other day I saw a car with a toddler standing up in the back seat.

The only time my kids were not in child restraints or seatbelts was the time my six-year old unbelted himself as I was pulling into the driveway, stood on the door of the convertible, and jumped onto the lawn, where he ran around flexing his muscles and going "Rah! Rah!". I damn near drove through the garage door. Fortunately, he was unhurt -- although he was sent to his room for a looooong time so I would not kill him. That and it was a while before he got to ride in the convertible again.

When I calmed down enough to explain that he could have gotten badly hurt, or fallen under the car and gotten killed, his answer "But I wasn't!" I said "But you were lucky." He said "Yeah, I'm lucky! I can do stuff like this!"

I know adults who have very similar reasoning processes.

I'm not playing devil's advocate. I use my seatbelt every time I'm in the car, and have been seriously glad more than once.

I managed to be in an accident where I was thrown free of my seatbelt (but not out of the car).

I was rear-ended by a loaded 18-wheeler, hard enough to break the back of the driver's seat; pushed up the highway; then popped out from under the truck bumper and rolled and spun. I left a headstar in the upper *passenger* side of the windshield -- with the back of my head. When EMS cut open the door to get me out, I was on the roof of the car, with one leg still hanging through the belt.

And through all that, I came out with just three broken ribs, whiplash, a hell of a concussion, and assorted scrapes and bruises. The broken ribs took about a month to heal and a year to stop hurting all the time, the effects of the concussion lasted about six months, and I have sensory nerve damage in my upper back, which is aggravating but not life-impairing. I suspect that had I not been wearing the belt to begin with, things would have been a whole lot worse.

(If you're interested, here are pictures of the remains of the car.)

"What makes you say the driver probably would have been killed?

Sure, there are accidents where being held in place by a seatbelt puts you in place for an impalement while being thrown out of the vehicle turns out better all around, but still, that isn't the majority of the cases."

yep, impalement was the case. when the truck stopped rolling I looked over, he was pushed to the left and the steering wheel column was pushed up where he would have been if he'd been sensibly belted in place. And this was only one of the slightly amusing factors in this incident!

If I wasn't wearing a seatbelt that day in 1987, at the very least I'd have a very different face.

No, wearing a seatbelt isn't a guarentee. But.

A friend of mine worked as an EMT for 10+ years, and said in all that time, he never once had to cut a dead body out of seatbelt.

Hell's Highway -- The True Story of Highway Safety Films.

As the child of a forensics engineer, where I got to hear all the stories (ATCHOAFE WIGTHATS), I could certainly do a 1-person Highways Of Death show. It's the sort of stuff we grew up with, conversations at the dinner table: "...And there weren't any body parts larger than this here wine cork."*

Don't ever drive with your head out the window. Please.

But my anecdote: I'm leaving a hardware store, walking across giant the parking lot. I hear an engine being gunned and look around. Someone has floored her accelerator in the lot, and she's headed straight towards a concrete-based lamppost.

She hits it.

As several of us run towards her, she gets out, still arguing on her cell phone. She'd wanted to make a point about exactly how angry she was. She'd been wearing a seatbelt and the airbag went off, and other than the uncurable stupidity, she was fine.

The front of her car had a concrete-base sized indent, and the windshield was spiderwebbed by unsecured items that flew from the back. That's how fast she'd been going.

---
* Oh yes, I can prove that this phrase was uttered at a Christmas dinner. We had guests.

Cars should not do pirouettes. A teenaged boy should not take off his seatbelt in the back of a moving car when he decides to stretch out for a nap. A teenaged boy who has the permanent reminder of the exact shape of a Civic's rear window cut into his face (as he was thrown "clear") has a lot of family very happy that it was two inches thataway, and only a flap of skin, rather than two inches that other way, and his brains spewed onto the highway.

(If he'd been wearing his seatbelt, he would have been unharmed, as were the other two people in the car. As it was, he was thrown into a grassy median, and bruised up a bit, and the leaving-the-car injury was the worst that happened to him. But the whole brains spewed onto the highway possibility is the sort of thing that one dwells on, shuddering, for quite some time afterwards.)

And thus are several more people reminded daily, just looking at his face, that seatbelts are our friends.

Brian: is it legal in your country to sell vehicles that don't have collapsible steering columns?

Impalement by steering column should be a non-issue in this day and age.

Pat Greene at #17: I have the same problem with the belt riding up to my neck. It's very uncomfortable, and seems to result from, uh, the difference between a woman's bust and that of a crash test dummy.

You can buy things called 'seatbelt comforts' that wrap around the bit of the belt that touches your chest, so that you're being chafed and/or half strangled by a bit of padding, not the edge of a nylon strap. Sometimes this even helps it stay where it's meant to be. It won't stop the seatbelt from doing its job. It worked for me.

We were driving back to campus after a late-night study break when the other guy ran a red light (2:15AM is a bad time where the bars close at 2AM). Our friend in the back seat was thrown clear--through the back window and onto the curb. He was lucky he didn't hit a tree or get run over by the car.

Best we can tell, he knocked the nice, seat-belted girl in the backseat into the side of the car with his butt on the way out. Causing her some amount of damage. I was in the front, belted in, and I went to the hospital to help and observe my friends.

So that bowling ball? Ig can and should be strapped down if it's your friend's butt.

My hubby was in an accident in our lemon of a Grand Prix years ago. He was wearing his seatbelt, but the thingy that locks the shoulder strap in an impact didn't work, so he was propelled upward a bit and bumped his head on the roof. The belt kept him from moving a lot, though, and the roof wasn't the main thing stopping his upward motion; the belt was.

From that bump on the noggin, which wasn't serious enough to give him a concussion, he ended up with a couple of compressed disks in his neck and has to do a little PT from time to time. If he hadn't been wearing the belt...shudder. And this was from a perfectly standard commuter rear-ender pileup, nobody drunk and all in a nice straight line.

As for being thrown clear...this same hubby was riding a bicycle two summers ago, took a turn a little too sharply, and was thrown off. He caught himself on his hands and ended up with a 7-part radial head fracture in his right elbow. At car speed he would have broken a lot more than that.

So, thanks for this post...I'm a complete bear about seat belts (front and back seat) and don't care how much it annoys people. If they don't like it they can get the hell out of my car.

well the country it happened in was the U.S since Nevada was mentioned, and the time frame was not specified. The day and age was 1989 and the truck was, i think but not sure, a late 70s early 80s truck.

I wonder whether the woman who refused to wear seat belts because she didn't like anyone telling her what to do (#13) would refuse to obey any traffic rule for the same reason... Madeleine's right, she's probably past tense.

Here in Europe we've had laws compelling us to wear belts in the front seats for twenty to thirty years, and in the rear seats for about ten. And if I don't "belt up", my Toyota makes an angry noise until I do.

And we've had enough crashes of coaches (long-distance buses, or tour buses) that they have to have seat belts fitted too.

#33 - I hate it when the bus seatbelts don't work. Last time I got a belt that would only have helped if I was as wide as both the seats.

About a year and a half after we graduated from high school, my best friend Kerri and several other kids were driving home after midnight from a Counting Crowes concert. The sixteen-year-old driver saw a dog in the road, slammed on the brakes and sent the van into the ditch.

Everyone was wearing her seatbelt--except Kerri, who in her inimitable hippie-rebel style, was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the van massaging someone else's feet. Everyone else was shaken but unharmed (including, as far as we know, the dog). Kerri went through the windshield, broke her neck and was killed instantly.

She was a singer, an actress, a very-much-loved fixture of our local community theater who had just been accepted to the Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts. There were over five hundred people at her memorial service. And in the thirteen years since then, I've never again made such a good friend.

Wear your damned seatbelt.

Vassilissa #29:

Both of our cars (Toyotas of fairly recent vintage) came with adjustable shoulder belts that you can raise or lower to a more comfortable angle that doesn't collide with your earrings or jawline. The only problem is that my husband is over a foot taller than I am, and he keeps readjusting the thing every time he drives "my" car. (Of course, he also moves around the seat and the driver's side mirror and the rear mirror ...)

As a general comment, when I was growing up, there weren't seatbelts. When they first started showing up in used cars we bought, we tended to ignore them. The first time I actually used a seatbelt was in driver's ed. To this day, I don't know if my father ever used one. But I got it drilled into me by my (not then) husband, who refused to take it out of park until I was belted in. So it's been ingrained in me now for about 30 years.

I'm buying a ski helmet this weekend as I've decided I'm serious about skiing.

Keep in mind that you need to buy a specific helmet for each specific sport. A horseback riding helmet has different padding needs from a bike riding helmet. Same's true for a ski helmet.

The only time I plan to ride without a helmet is when I'm showing Western and need to wear the big hat. Otherwise--it's all helmet time, especially when I'm jumping.

And for Pat Greene at 17 and Vassilissa at 29--some cars have seat belt adjustments that allow you to move the points around so you don't experience the seat belt creep up onto your neck. My Subaru has that feature--I didn't realize it until my son pointed it out, and adjusted it for me. Well worth the price for a small, busty female!

The unwillingness of people to wear seat belts, and even defend the practice of doing so never ceases to amaze me. I've always worn mine, ever since they showed us those classic "Red Asphalt" films in driver's ed. They show slo-mo film of what happens to unbelted drivers going out open windows in a rollover accident. How can you not always wear you seatbelt after that?

I won't put my car in gear until my belt is on. It's such a reflex, I don't even notice I'm doing it.

And yet, I can't help but think of my former co-worker, who was driving on the highway in her Jeep and hit a patch of black ice and went into the median, straight at a stand of trees. In reflex she dove to the right, and her seat belt disintegrated at the meeting point of the latch. This allowed her to lean all the way over into the (unoccupied) passenger seat. This way, once the Jeep finished slamming into the tree she was able to open the passenger door, slide out, and then look back at where the steering wheel would have cut her in two. Her only injury was a bruised wrist.

(The seat belt thing is still a reflex, though, and always will be. But nothing is 100% guaranteed.)

Jim, I have the same problem as Pat - shoulderbelt rides up to nestle in my neck. That never stops me from wearing it, but I do tend to move it down to the very top of my upper arm every twenty minutes, until it creeps up again. I know a woman who has a cheap plastic clip that does something similar - changes the location of the top of the shoulder strap so it's closer to the shoulder.

My hunch is that, in an accident, the few inches of positioning won't make much difference, but I've always wondered whether that's correct. Do you know anything about shoulder straps and the very short? (I'm under 5 feet.)

Thanks for this post. I've always been a seatbelt user, but will pay closer attention to my passengers now.

There's one further reason I always wear my seatbelt: I know that if I'm an unsecured victim in an MVA, injured but not killed, I will never, ever hear the end of it from Jim.

I'm always astonished that there are people who *don't* wear seat belts as a matter of course. (They've been mandatory here in Finland since the seventies, and have cut down the deaths by a *lot*.)

Seat belts are effective at reducing the injurious effects of car crashes. No doubt about it.

Trouble is that there's this thing called risk compensation lurking in the corner...

If you believe John Adams (author of Risk) the main effect of seat belts has been to drive vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists) off the roads, in response to the increased risks that drivers (as a group) take when they wear seat belts. Perhaps not the result that the original proponents of seat belts intended.

Reference question: Jim, have you posted one of these about bicycle helmets? My partner is engaged in a running battle with a vociferous bunch of idiots on one of the Usenet bike groups, and could use some professional backup.

I'm extremely insistent and can be rather impolite about having everyone in the car strapped in before the car goes anywhere, including across the parking lot. Stangely, the only time I was injured in a collision, I was thrown out, and it was a very good thing. However, I'm still an almost unbearable nudge about belting in.

About 30 years ago I was driving home early in the morning, nicely belted in, after flying a press all night to help out some friends with their small circulation tabloid. Two blocks from home I fell asleep and kept going straight when the street curved off to the left, and hit a light pole good and square.

At that time I was driving a 1970 Volkswagon minivan, which did not have a collapsable steering column. My advice to others driving that vehicle had always been to drive as if you were strapped to the front like an Aztec sacrifice, for the thin front of the VW was only good for keeping the wind and bugs off. The windshield was better protection that the rest of the front of that car.

The front of the van wrapped itself almost completely around that pole, and the bolts holding the pole to the base were sheared clean off. Somehow (it was never quite clear) the belt popped, the driver side door opened and I flew through it, landing on somebody's front lawn. On the way out, the side of the door struck me right on the bridge of my nose, with the jagged edge of the broken eyeglass frame just missing my right eye and neatly slicing across my face. (It's a nifty scar, but it is almost completely hidden by my glasses and my left eyebrow. So much for Talk Like a Pirate Day.) All I remembered was a great slam, and then looking up from the lawn with a tremendous headache.

When an onlooker and I checked the car, we discovered that the (non collapsable) steering wheel was buried nicely at chest height in the driver's seat.

That did not change my mind about fanatical use of seat belts though. Attending quite a few accidents as a reporter later just reinforced my prejudices.

Buckle the *** **** ******* belt or get out of my car. Now.

Early in his cop career my brother John crashed his cruiser into a carload of teenagers who had jumped the red light (turning left out of a right-turn-only exit -- geniuses!) and only some very good reflexes let him steer into the rear panel of the car instead of t-boning it.

John was wearing his brand-new bulletproof vest... and he hit his seat belt so hard, he had a vivid diagonal bruise across his chest.

Pulling some likely sounding numbers out of my head, consider that there's a one-in-a-hundred chance you'll end up in an accident where a seat belt will save you some pain and medical bills, versus a one-in-a-million chance that you'll be in the rare kind of accident where being thrown clear would save your life.

I know which odds I'd rather play.

I had seat belt wearing grilled into me when I was a kid. By this point I notice buckling in even less than I notice locking the front door on my way out. There's no arguing that seat belts are the smart odds, but I'm interested to see a debate I've had with my Dad for years played out here. Sure, seatbelts are the smart thing to do, everybody ought to wear them, but should seatbelt laws be on the books?

I'm old enough to remember when cars didn't have seatbelts and the heated controversy about using them. But when I bought my first used car in 1968 I was happy it had lapbelts. I buckled up from then on.

But I still see young people--who grew up with seatbelts and who probably had parents who insisted they use them--driving around without seatbelts buckled. Last week a young couple (ages 25 and 28, driving from Pennsylvania to North Carolina) died instantly when they were ejected from their car after a crash into a guardrail on I-270. The car was a convertible and it ended up flipped over so they may well have died anyway. But still...

Why were these two twentysomethings not buckled up? It's senseless.

I've been in a couple of heavy prangs in my life, and I honestly think that the only reason I walked away completely unscathed was because of seatbelts.

Back in college, a few of my more invincible friends would stubbornly refuse to wear a belt. To counter this I developed a simple technique called the 'Bastard Stop' which would quickly affirm the importance of seatbelts to my passengers... Just after you pull away (doing no more than a walking pace) slam on the anchors. Once they've clambered out of the footwell, they'll generally comply.

The technique got it's name for obvious reasons and makes an excellent demonstration of newtonian physics.

The people I boggle at are the drivers who act like my wearing a seatbelt, as a passenger in their car, means I don't think they're a good driver. Some of them apparently take me wearing a seatbelt as an insult. Seriously, what the hell?

(When I was a year old, my aunt took a header out of her windshield after falling asleep at the wheel. Her body survived. Her brain did not. If she'd been wearing a seatbelt, she'd have walked away from the accident.)

Lee: Nggggg. *Please* don't drag the cycle helmet flame wars here.

No, I haven't posted about bicycle helmets. I might. I do have some funny stories.

Every year the ambulance squad has a bike rodeo and we give away bike helmets.

Nice post. Can we get to the sucking chest wounds, please?

I learned to drive in the early '60s, when seatbelts were becoming standard issue. At the age of 17, even before I actually had a license (was running on a learner's permit), I went round a curve, overcorrected* trying to avoid an oncoming car, ran up the side of a hill, and came back down, rolling over and over. The car ended up sitting on its roof, and my passenger and I were almost completely unhurt, hanging upside down in the seatbelts. The worst injury was my pride, which was especially damaged because the driver of the oncoming car was a high-school classmate, who was very vocally annoyed at me for scaring the living sh*t out of her.

Ever since that day, I will not put my car in gear without have my seatbelt and every other person's seatbelt buckled. I even remember one girl I dated who was impressed by that, as a sign that I cared about her safety.

As anaea points out, there are civil liberties issues that get brought up every time some high-profile accident brings up seatbelt or motorcycle helmet laws. My solution is simple: change the law, so that it is legal to not wear a helmet or buckle your belt, if you are a legal adult. And if you're in an accident, not having a helmet or a seatbelt is the legal equivalent of a Do Not Resuscitate order: the EMT's get to ignore you, or triage you last, and your car insurance doesn't have to pay for your medical bills. That gives civil libertarians the choice they want, while making the cost explicit, and let's Darwin deal with the consequences.

* This was in a Corvair, which was notoriously unstable in the back end when turning. To this day I don't know if I screwed up the turn, or if the back tires broke loose, resulting in a skid. The deputy sheriff who looked over the accident site was of the opinion that it wasn't my fault, for what that's worth.

Can Jim or anyone else speak to the dangers of reclining the front passenger seat so you can sleep on a road trip? When the the belt is attached to the frame it puts several inches of space between the upper part of the shoulder belt and your chest. I've always wondered if this was unsafe.

Anaea, 47: Yes, seatbelt laws belong on the books. *I* don't want to pay the bills for an uninsured macho asshole who thinks he's too cool to wear one...nor for the 3yo whose idiot parents think it's OK to skip the booster seat.

I always wear my seatbelt, and I insist that others in my car do. The statistics are even clearer than on smoking; it's the smart thing to do.

I think the "thrown clear" thing dates to the pre-seatbelt era, when if you dissipated all the energy against the dashboard you were a goner; the only survivors of major crashes were the ones that got thrown out of the cars. People remembered this when seatbelts were being introduced (and crumple zones and collapsible steering columns and padded dashboards), and naturally felt it was crazy to belt yourself into the car.

And while road rash is never good, seems like dissipating the force over 100 feet of sliding rather than much smaller amounts of crumple zone has a lot to recommend it (and I'd start wearing leathers in the car or something). But maybe I'm wrong, AND it doesn't matter -- there's no way to ensure you exit the car safely and get to decelarate along the road. So wear your seatbelt!

Oh, and Randolph -- "He started it with a push; he thought he could stop it with a shove" has always bothered me. It should be *true* -- the amount of energy he used to start it should equal the amount of energy needed to stop it.

The line I use to passengers is "You should buckle up, because I'm driving." It always seems to work.

I think I found the answer to my own question: it's very dangerous. Only do it if the belt is integrated into the seat:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/10/earlyshow/main1195540.shtml
http://www.langdonemison.com/CM/Articles/Articles2.asp

My father installed seatbelts in two of our three vehicles in about 1961 (the other wasn't suitable for installation, having front bucket seats). we got trained early to buckle in.

I was in an accident nearly twenty years ago, in a '71 Corona. While I was making a more-or-less oblique left at a signal and more than halfway through the turn, some kid in a classic Mustang came barreling up the street at probably closer to 45 than the posted 35 (I was doing 20 to 25 going out of the turn) and nailed the right front corner (which in that model contained only the battery). The car and I got turned about 45 degrees left and shoved into the curb. I got a broken rib or two (cracked, mostly) and a nasty bruise, probably both from the gear shift knob as (I think) I went sideways onto the passenger seat. Without belt - I don't know, I think I would have gone through glass.

Oh yes: NJ needs to raise their seatbelt law fine to where it hurts. (Speaking as a California resident, where fines are generally on the order of 'and I mean it', even for little stuff like parking on the street on cleaning day).

"He started it with a push; he thought he could stop it with a shove"

-what's that from? Seems familiar but I cannot place it.

Phil Armstrong @ 43--I wonder if the same thing could be said for the scores of SUV drivers who seem to think they are driving armored tanks in which nothing can happen to them, and therefore drive with less care, if not more outright stupidity, than those of us in random sedans?

K @ 40, I always try to remind myself that if I hit anything with sufficient force that the belt running pretty much straight over my neck will be a problem, without the belt there'd be an even larger problem.

I banged my nose hard enough for a nosebleed with those "hold your butt to the seat" belts in a normal breaking maneuver -- not even an accident. Twice. Jackknifed and smashed nose-first in the backrest of the passenger seat. Got to respect the forces of speed and mass...

We here in Germany have to fasten seatbelts on every seat. Espacially if combined with an Airbag it can be dangerous not to wear the belt.....I have seen people who were smashed between the Airbag and the roof of the car...not really a nice picture.
You should also consider that modern security systems as emergency belt fastener do not work if you aren't actually using the belt and many mordern (European) cars offer also "active" seats which alters its position to protect the passenger in a case of emergency.
These security measures will only have an effect while using a belt ;)

drive safe....fasten you seatbelt ;)

your

DooMMasteR

I'm not religious about much of anything except for using seat belts for the last 42 years.

My brother had a "thrown clear" accident when he was sixteen. He wound up being lucky - he was only in a coma for about a day. But he had a lot of his scalp ripped off...

This January, my daughter was crashed into on her way to work. Here's what the car looked like after the crash:

http://www.dpsinfo.com/images/family/mann/car07/070103car2.jpg

Luckily, she was wearing a seatbelt and we had airbags, so she just got a broken wrist and various bumps and bruises.

When I heard the description of Corzine's injuries, I told Jim I thought he was an unrestrained passenger.

Madeleine@63: Very likely. Volvo drivers used to be the poster child for this (anecdotally) in my youth.

My ex-girlfriend died in a car accident AND she WAS wearing a seatbelt. Her new husband wasn't. Side impact, he flew into her, crushing her/killing her. He survived.

Wear them.

I also lost a cousin in a car accident where he was the only one not wearing. I think of him everytime I buckle up
-art

In the accident that led me to find out I had mini-epilepsy, my car ran off a curving road into some low-lying area. I guess I came to when people arrived to get me -- all I remember is the starred windshield and a woozy trip to the hospital with a slight concussion. But if I hadn't been wearing a seatbelt, I wouldn't be here to tell you about it.

PS: I hope NO ONE will be inspired to try any of the stunts in the second Grindhouse flick!

Just had to add to the chorus.

My parents trained us so well in seatbelt use that it's just part of the motion of getting into a car, for me. Open door, sit down, close door, buckle seatbelt, turn key, put car in gear, press accelerator and drive away.

My boyfriend often buckles his seatbelt as he's beginning to drive away, and it makes me extremely nervous that he waits that long. It feels the same as if he waited that long to close the door.

I have a friend who was driving from Arizona to Colorado. She doesn't remember how it happened, but somehow she lost control of her car and essentially drove off a mountain, in the wee hours. She was wearing a seatbelt. When another driver happened on the scene, she was still conscious and lucid enough to tell her to call 911, and then to tell her her name, her parents' names and phone numbers, and ask her to call her parents. I don't think she remembers doing that, either, but the other driver did.

She had broken almost every bone in her body and more than one vertebra. She was in the hospital for months, and in a wheelchair for even longer, and in a neckbrace for longer than that. (She said the worst part was that the neckbrace prevented her from reading during all the months she was stuck at home. She couldn't incline her head, and her arms got tired holding the books straight out in front. I sent her a large package of audio books.)

But she was not paralyzed. She made a full recovery.

When I was told that she had been in a serious accident, the world tilted and for five seconds, I was sure the teller was leading up to tell me she was dead. If she hadn't been wearing her seatbelt, she would have been. "Thrown clear," all right -- clear off a mountain.

So, you know. Wear it.

When I was a teen, and already a compulsive seatbelt user, the car door next to me popped open on a turn, and I calmly reached out and closed it. The other members of my church youth group were kinda freaked.

So much for trying to pass as normal.

Madeleine Robins @ 63

Oh, yes, SUV drivers seem convinced they're immortal. They also ignore several of the laws of physics when driving. My favorite is situation is what happens around here every winter when ignorant SUV drivers hit the black ice and/or silver rain we often get. Several times I've gotten to watch some loon sail past me and remark: "You can slide just as easily on 4 wheel drive as you can on 2."

My best friend was in the left lane on the Beltway last year when she swerved to avoid debris in the road. Her anti-lock brakes failed. Her (brand-new) car hit the median and spun, causing three-quarters of it to crumple around her. The car was totaled, but she walked away with whiplash and a small burn from the airbag deploying, because she was wearing her seatbelt. I would probably not have a best friend anymore, otherwise. Wear your seatbelt.

Bryan (1), statistical probability comes down overwhelmingly on the side of "wear your seatbelt." Your friend the driver was improbably lucky.

Carrie (2), I suspect the safety film Jim has noted as "not safe for Teresa" is the one that demonstrates why your friends should wear their belts in the back seat: unsecured passengers don't just get killed, they kill the other passengers.

As a general principle, large unsecured objects are a hazard in cars. Tom Mix Wash isn't all that far from where I grew up. It's named in memory of silent-movie cowboy star Tom Mix, who died there. His car went nose-first into the wash, but what killed him was his suitcase, which had been sitting on the back seat.

Mad (13), is that the same woman who followed a "tour guide" she'd just met into a dark alley in Morocco at night?

Jim (15), I assume that's that Irish safety film with the unsecured teenagers and the slow-motion ballistics? If so, thanks for the warning. It was extremely instructive to see it once, but I haven't forgotten a second of it, so I really don't need to see it again.

Pat (17), seatbelts do the same thing to me. If I'm going on a long driving trip, I take a length of twine (a long shoelace will do), tie it firmly to the seat belt, then tie it to the shoulder belt so that it bends down a bit in the middle. The belt still passes over my shoulder in good safe fashion, but it doesn't creep up and saw at the side of my neck.

Paula (19), something like that happened a few decades back to the first Montreal worldcon bid committee. I used to think about that when I was chauffeuring the Iguanacon committee in the summer of '78.

There's not much you can do about a drunk doing 120 mph late at night, except be somewhere else. At that speed, being drunk seems almost superfluous, except insofar as it contributes to the initial mistake of driving that fast. No one can maintain control of their car at 120 mph unless they're on a racetrack or the Autobahn. American roads just aren't engineered for it. My idea of a truly useful new safety feature would be a governor that kicked in around 90 mph, like the one they have on moving vans that won't let you exceed 55-60 mph. That's still faster than anyone but Nevadans has reason to drive, but it would take the fun out of seeing how fast a car will go.

Pat (20), if you didn't put him in a cargo net every car trip for the next ten years, you're a candidate for sainthood.

Janet (21), it's that second photo that got me. You don't often see a car where the side panels have been pulled apart like the chocolate coating on the side of a candy bar. It looks to me like the left rear side got wedged under the front end of the semi and was ground off against the pavement.

Kathryn (26), did you all jump on her, wrestle her driver's license away from her, and tear it to tiny bits? While phoning the police, and offering to testify, and taking down the contact information for her insurance company? In short, is this woman, who should never again be allowed behind the wheel of a car, still out there on the road?

John Stanning (33), we don't have laws requiring us to use seatbelts in buses. In fact, I have yet to ride in a bus that has seatbelts at all. It makes me extremely uncomfortable, every time, to have to do without them.

Phil Armstrong (43), I'm convinced that the additional safety features have led to an increase in aggressive driving. That was obvious the minute the SUVs hit the highways. But the statistics say fatalities have gone down; so in this one instance, at least, technology has temporarily outstripped stupidity.

I'd happily tack an extra $5 on my taxes if the money went for beefed-up enforcement of the highway code.

Speaking of which, some years ago, I saw a catalog ad for what I thought was a brilliant little device. Basically, you pointed it at a speeding car, pressed the button, and it emitted enough radar signals to set off a radar detector. It came with a set of rules for a game called Trolling for Tail Lights. I haven't seen it advertised since then, but I think its inventors gave up on it far too quickly (probably because SUVs hadn't yet become popular).

I've never needed a radar detector. If a semi-random assortment of cars around me suddenly start to slow down, I do too. Funny how often there's a speed trap around the next curve.

Anaea (47): Yes, seatbelt laws should be on the books. Tell your father I said:

(1.) A belted-in driver is a safer driver. In an accident, critical decisions can occur after the initial impact. Being belted in greatly increases the chances that the driver will be be awake and alive, and thus able to do what's needed.

(2.) In an accident, an unsecured passenger is a potentially lethal projectile that can kill other, smarter passengers.

(3.) Some people think their survival in auto accidents is nobody's business but their own. They're wrong. The chances are very low that a given driver has enough assets and insurance to cover the cost of lifetime care in the event that they survive a catastrophic cranial or spinal injury. If they have dependents, the odds are even lower that they'll have enough assets and coverage to pay the support the driver would otherwise have provided for them. We all pay for stupid accidents. And by the way, the same goes for people who want to ride without helmets.

(4.) Even hardened old EMTs and ER personnel will count it a Very Bad Day if they have to pick pieces of your face out of your windshield, or the smashed remains of your teeth out of the smashed remains of your sinuses. They'll get queasy if, when they cut down your pants leg, a section of femur falls out onto the ground. People who actually know and love you will take the whole thing even harder. Don't insist on your right to be an asshole. Buckle your seatbelt.

Finally, if you're not going to wear a seatbelt or helmet, make sure you've signed an organ donor card.

Phil (51), if the bicycle flamewarriors show up here, Jim will eat them alive.

Bruce (54), EMTs in the field can't exercise DNRs. Also, see my comments to Anaea. It's not a bleeping civil liberties issue. It's money, ballistics, and public safety.

John Houghton (71), I've been in more than one car where that's happened. Without seatbelts, way too exciting.

Marie Brennan (12):
What have we all learned from this, children?
Don't leave bowling balls on the rear deck of your car.

What scares me is that in a rollover, you become one with the entire contents of your car, and I frequently have a LOT of stuff (inside the cab, and in the pickup bed). I travel many miles in winter conditions (ski instructors don't get to call in sane on snow days). I've broken into the ski school to stay overnight rather than drive on one memorable occasion.

In a sudden stop, I'm not sure that being impaled by skis is any different that being hit by the bowling ball, survivability wise. I try to remember to lock the skis on the passenger side of the truck.

John (75), go with the impalement by skis. They make a big puncture wound, but they don't pulverize everything they hit.

Oh, and just to add to the pile of proof that you shouldn't be unbuckled in a car for any reason, consider my cousin, who was about 8 years younger then me. On a car trip with some friends he took a nap in the back, unbuckled. The car was in a bad accident, and my cousin sustained head injuries that put him in a coma for more than five years, before he finally died. Nor was it a Persistent Vegetative State; he was still there most of the time; if you put a guitar in his hands he would try to play it, though he never regained sufficient consciousness to speak or to signal that he'd heard anyone else.

The rest of the family were even worse victims; I don't think his mother ever recovered from the emotional devastation of watching him lie there for 5 years.

The only time I skipped wearing by bike helmet in the last 10 years was the day I got doored by a Miata. And I landed on my head (and my back). True, i didn't get hurt too bad (road rash), but it could have been worse. Luckily, No ill effects. True I dodn't get hurt too bad, but it could have been much worse. Luckily no appearent damage. True, I could....hey wait a minute.....

Teresa@74

Fatalaties have gone down because traffic density has gone up, reducing average traffic speeds.

And I'm not dragging the cycle helmet war here :)

Only one car accident; I was in the rear seat behind the driver, and the car (going to a first aid competition) spun into a large pileup at the bottom of a long slope covered in black ice. When I sat back up, my head came into contact with the wing mirror of the small pickup truck we'd wound up side by each with.

Seatbelts are good; so is ducking, if you get the chance.

One broken bone so far in my whole life, due to an arrested front bicycle wheel -- picked up tar from the freshly-patched crack in the road, and the first time I used the front brakes they hit the tar and locked the wheel. Another near-broken elbow twenty-odd years previously due to an arrested front bicycle wheel. My current bicycle has disk brakes, and I replace my bike helmet every time I drop it or walk into the top of a doorframe with it (or the ceiling over stairs...)

The cognitive-immunity-to-Newtonian-mechanics thing that I especially and particularly just don't get is the number of people who cut off streetcars ("trolleys") in Toronto. The little ones are not quite thirty tons, the big articulated ones fifty plus, and all that mass is down low. (Never mind that a good third of it is the bridge girder connecting the front and back trucks, and that the thing you hit, right behind the entirely disposable airshell, is the one inch thick square steel plate welded to the front or back of the girder.)

Low speed -- streetcar less than 20 feet from a dead stop -- collisions crumple cars into utter junk. (When the tow truck picked up the wreck, one of the front wheels fell off, McPherson strut and all.)

High speed, well, the story I heard was that the long set of concrete curbs and heavy steel posts got put in on Spadina, warding the streetcar lines completely off from the driving lanes, at the cost of some millions of dollars, after the second time some goof managed to run a red light/make an illegal left turn and get his car hit from the side by north and southbound streetcars at the same time.

And people still try to beat the streetcar away from the light so they can make a left turn in front of it. It's bizarre.

When I was in junior high, I audited a college intro 'Physics for Poets' kind of class. The teacher used auto collisions to illustrate principles of physics. After running through one of the 'Red Asphalt' type films, plus some slide shows of accident scenes and victims from the Michigan State Police, he did some chalk diagrams to illustrate how physics applies in a head-on crash, and had the class work it out on some problem sheets.

If you're strapped to the seat, you experience the stopping distance and therefore the associated deceleration G-force of the car as a whole; the stopping distance will be 2 or 3 feet due to the front crumpling. If you're free falling until you hit the dashboard or windshield, you get your own stopping distance of something under 1 inch, divided between the dashboard's crumple and your skull's crumple. By simple physics the force on your body without the seatbelt is therefore 24-36 times more, even without considering the difference in which parts of you it gets applied to.

I have always worn my seatbelt since, and have brought up my kids to do it automatically. As a friend of mine once said, "You pick that bet, you want to ride it all the way."

Oh, plus the aforsaid vulnerable road users have been driven (ahem) off the roads by the increasingly aggressive attitude displayed by car drivers.

Teresa @ 74

I'm not arguing against seatbelt laws; it's just that I've lived in several states where they couldn't get passed, and in one state where the bikers got pissed at the helmet law, rode en masse to the state capital, and scared the legislature into repealing the law. If we can't enforce the wearing of helmets and the buckling of belts, then we need to find a faster way to reduce the population of the idiots who won't use them.

And yes, I know what cleaning up after the idiots does to people. I've had a number of friends who were EMTs or ER personnel, and I've worked in a medical school with ER surgeons. Although probably the nastiest stories came from a TV news cameraman I used to see almost daily when we walked our dogs. He had to see the wreckage and the bodies, and didn't get to be of any help to the victims. It's not something I'd wish on an enemy.

Phil (79), I can't imagine you're arguing that roll cages, crumple zones, airbags, and improved belt design has had no positive effect on the rate of casualties and fatalities stemming from MVAs.

The idea that our measurable reduction in injuries is wholly the result of slower driving due to congestion seems to contradict the thesis that safety measures have only made drivers more aggressive.

Also, the amount of data that you'd have to collect to back up those assertions is huge, some of it would require measuring fine differences in behavior over time, and a lot of it would have to be collected in the wild. I don't believe I've heard of that happening.

Bad driving didn't come in with the SUV. There've always been insanely aggressive drivers. All it requires is the belief that driving on public roads is not a cooperative activity, and a complete disregard of the potential consequences. You can do that in any car that'll run. Maybe aggressiveness has increased in some drivers under some circumstances, but I just can't believe it's increased so much that it swamps all other inputs.

OTOH, my wife is alive solely because she WASN'T wearing her seat belt, and she got this information from the paramedics who rescued her, broken pelvis and all. The driver fell asleep in a car which had been altered with a sunroof that fell short of safety specifications. When the car went off the road, the car rolled over. She was thrown out and broke her pelvis on landing. The car itself was squashed so badly that there was room for exactly ONE body, repeat ONE body, in the interior. Both she and the driver would have been very messily dead (think squashed tomatoes) if she had been restrained in place.

So don't try to sell me that seatbelts always save lives.

Graydon @ 80

There was an accident just yesterday in Long Beach (CA) where an SUV made an illegal left across the Blue Line trolley tracks (onto a one way street) and got turned into scrap. Both driver and passenger survived, but I don't know how. It tied up traffic nicely for a couple of hours.

I took a one-day driving course for the company a couple of weeks ago. The instructor said one time they went out in the van for the practical check, and one student-employee took the wheel and drove around a railroad crossing gate. Said employee was unemployed before 5 pm that day.
(We are required to wear seatbelts, period.)

To those who have trouble with the seatbelts riding too high up or down on your shoulder: You should know that in most cars they are adjustable. You can slide where the shoulder belt is attached to the B-pillar up and down.

It's obvious when you look at it, but many people don't.

(If this post saves only one life, then it was almost worth it.)

Sandy@62 -- it's from The Rolling Stones (Heinlein).

My mother's sister was killed by a DUI in 1977. Her car only had lapbelts, and she was wearing hers, but upon impact she rammed into the steering wheel, which essentially cut her in half on the inside. My mum maintains that if the car had had a shoulderbelt (and an airbag), I'd have an aunt today.

In my family, the car does not go into gear until the driver confirms that everyone has belted up.

As for helmets ... I've tumbled from bikes and horses enough times to wonder why anyone would not want to wear one.

The next time you drive with somebody who won't wear seatbelts, remember that an unrestrained person in an accident is essentially a 150-250 lb projectile. It's not just about their safety. If they say, "No thanks. I don't wear seatbelts. I'll take my chances," you can say, "Thanks, but I don't want to take MY chances with you slamming into me at 60 mph as you're on your way to being 'thrown clear'." It's not just a safety issue for the person wearing the seatbelt, it's a safety issue for everyone in the cabin.

Graydon @ 80

Yes, what is it with stupid drivers and large masses of metal? I see people cutting off semi-trailer rigs all the time (and triple-trailers are legal on the freeways here, fully loaded that's got to be over 50 tons, and they jackknife at a hostile glare).

But even worse is that every year in Portland several cars get crushed because the drivers stopped them on the light-rail tracks (usually right near a station, so the trains aren't going full speed). And every three or four times that happens the driver of the car is either seriously injured or killed. These are two-car trains, so it's not like getting hit by a freight train, but you can bet that the inertia of those two cars is a lot higher than even your best-armored SUV.

I think what bothers me the most is that the horns on those trains are LOUD; I wouldn't fail to notice that horn, and I have a serious hearing loss. So what's clouding the minds of these people that they don't notice?

There are examples of people not wearing seatbelts and therefore surviving.

Seatbelts kill people, airbags kill people, smoke detectors kill people, doctors kill a lot of people, antibiotics kill people, amublances kill people, vitamins kill people, exercise kills people, emergency exits kill people, those oxygen generators that deploy when the passenger compartment depressurizes kill people, child-proof caps kill people, hand-rails kill people.

You're still stupid if you use that fact to justify not using them.

Teresa: Greater traffic density is an externality that affects all drivers & no individual driver can change it. The driving habits of individual drivers however are under their control.

Risk compensation affects individual behaviour choices.

Geoffrey@#85: So don't try to sell me that seatbelts always save lives.

As Damon Runyon said, "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."

Bruce: added fun, here in the UK, is the complete fsckwits who think they can argue the toss at an unattended automatic level crossing. We don't have many of them, but when the lights are flashing and the barriers go down you've got about thirty seconds before a train comes through. Even if it's a local commuter service, that'll be about 100 tons traveling at up to 100 miles per hour.

Geoffrey --

I don't think anyone is talking absolutes; they're talking odds.

And, playing the odds like a rational creature, the seatbelt is always the right bet. It isn't always going to work, in the sense of saving life or preventing injury, but everything is tradeoffs and the tradeoffs available in a violent and chaotic situation such as a car accent are generally pretty sucky.

P J Evans --

My very favorite streetcar accident was the one where a somewhat befuddled driver backed up at what was certainly high speed for travelling in reverse and rammed their Miata under the front of a stopped streetcar.

Miata driver was fine; it looked like the streetcar had decided to eat the sportscar and was chewing a bit before the second bite. Streetcar driver nearly had a fit before the constable on the corner managed to stop laughing long enough to reassure him that the constable had seen the whole thing. (The TTC's policy is that if a TTC vehicle has an accident, it's the TTC driver's fault, absent a choir of angels claiming otherwise.)

Graydon (80), so that's why there's all that stuff on Spadina? I'd wondered.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that people try to beat out streetcars at lights. After a century of automobile use, they're still trying to beat out trains at railroad crossings. Talk about your losing proposition.

Is it even legal to do a jackrabbit left turn as soon as the light changes? I was taught that a legal left turn is made after the oncoming traffic clears.

Phil (82), not all of the vulnerable road users. You've never seen me on a bicycle making an automobile-style left turn at Fifth Avenue and 20th in Manhattan during rush hour. Curb-hugging isn't safe. Half the trick is making it clear to automobile drivers that you are vehicular traffic, and have the right to a lane. The other half is staying visible and scrupulously observing the traffic laws. In short: act like you're a car.

Bruce (83), sorry for being unclear. The bleeping wasn't meant for you. My intended target was people who argue that they shouldn't have to wear helmets.

Geoffrey Kidd (85), no, they don't always save lives; but by very long odds, that's the way to bet.

Keeping in mind that everyone ought to wear seatbelts, my concern about seatbelt laws that give police officers the power to pull cars over for suspicion of not wearing a seatbelt is that such a law is in practice the equivalent of giving police officers the power to pull over anyone, anytime, for any reason.

In Massachusetts the seatbelt law is subject to so-called "secondary enforcement," which means that if you are pulled over for something else, the officer can cite you for not wearing your seatbelt, but you cannot be pulled over for that reason alone (which is "primary enforcement").

To quote Stephen Colbert, "People tell me I'm white, and I believe them because police officers call me 'Sir.'" But not everyone is a middle-aged white person who basically never gets hassled unnecessarily by the police.

Charlie @95: I think part of the reason people try to run level crossings is that you sometimes get 4 – 5 minutes rather than 30 seconds. It's still an unspeakably expletive stupid thing to do, but it's marginally more explicable.

Phil (93), I'm not saying that increased aggressiveness has had no effect. I'm saying I can't believe that building much safer cars has had no effect. No criticism of you, but that feels like the kind of argument that, when you trace it down, turns out to have been funded by the industry that's being regulated.

#17, #29 - in addition to the faux-sheepskin wrapper thingies that go around the seat belt where it chafes your neck, there are also thingies (vocabulary gap here: it's not exactly a "device" or a "gizmo" or a "gadget", but "item" is too vague... anyway) that I find helpful.

They are intended to be installed on lap-and-shoulder belts worn by elementary age schoolchildren (the kids too big for a carseat but small enough to have the seat belt chafe against the neck.) The one I have is a padded V-shaped sleeve with snaps that hold it snugly around the belts with the clasp at the point of the V. Once slipped on it can be slid across the lap to adjust the angle of the shoulder belt.

Sometimes I worry that because I'm a lot heavier than an 8-year old, it might fail in an accident. And adjusting the angle probably increases my chances of slipping out of the shoulder belt toward the center of the vehicle. But then I think, it's probably way better than not wearing a seat belt on long trips in my boyfriend's car (whose seat belts don't adjust at the shoulder end.) And it's definitely better than having the seatbelt chafing my neck and smushing my boobs.

TexAnne @ 56: *I* don't want to pay the bills for an uninsured macho asshole who thinks he's too cool to wear one...

If said uninsured macho asshole kills himself at age 35 in a car accident that everyone else walks away from, you'll only have to pay for the funeral. Which is a whole lot cheaper than if the guy lives to be 90 and gets all kinds of expensive-to-treat illnesses.

If it was only about health care costs, we should all smoke like chimneys and drive motorbikes without helmets on...

Teresa @ 74: I have to try this shoelace trick.
And after driving in the US, I fully agree on that "going 120 mph" thing. I used to think going 200 km/h was no big deal -- I never before realized how much it depends on having roads suited for high speeds.

#55 Can Jim or anyone else speak to the dangers of reclining the front passenger seat so you can sleep on a road trip?

I haven't done a study or anything. Anecdotally, the only person I ever had whose seatback was fully reclined also had a fractured spine.

As a fifteen year old idiot I was in the back seat of a car that ran into a tree. The driver, in front of me, was the only person with a seatbelt on. I smacked into the back of his seat pretty solidly, but suffered only very minor bruising because the seat (secured by the driver's belt) didn't go anywhere. The person sitting next to me hit the back of the passenger seat which folded right over, allowing him to continue on into the windshield where he got himself a scalp laceration to the tune of 176 stitches. I'm a big fan of one trial learning and I figured I burned an entire lifetime's worth of auto accident luck in one go there. Since then, if I don't have a seatbelt on it means I'm walking.

DDB @ 57: "He started it with a push; he thought he could stop it with a shove" has always bothered me. It's plausible if the "push" was over an extended time -- a very massive object accelerated slowly.

In the spring of 1999, the King of the S.C.A. Kingdom of Ealdormere was killed when he rolled his truck on his way home after an event -- flung from it, dead at the scene. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt. The young woman who was sleeping unsecured in the back was also killed. His squire in the passenger seat, wearing his seatbelt, suffered a scratch on the head and on his arm.

Teresa: Not all no :) But the numbers are down significantly. Especially pedestrians in the areas people live: one of the reasons children on longer play on the street is that parents believe (probably rightly) that the roads are too dangerous for them to do so safely.

Re @100, well I take your point, but whenever anyone has actually gone & looked, the effects of safety features don't show up in the accident statistics. They shift the injuries around, but they don't seem to change the overall rates. There's an obvious mismatch here which needs explaining when you set this population data against the obvious (and measurable) effectiveness of (most) safety features in reducing the injuries received in a given crash.

Teresa at 97
Graydon (80), so that's why there's all that stuff on Spadina? I'd wondered.

One of the accidents was especially gruesome -- optimally bad angle/timing, so the entire car and all four passengers were in the space between the streetcars, mostly in the space between and just behind the front trucks. It was also a monster cleanup job in the middle of a major intersection.

(Step one -- if we joggle this mess even slightly, are we going to short mains voltage/dump the compressed air for the streetcar brakes/both through the ruptured fuel tank of the car?)

Is it even legal to do a jackrabbit left turn as soon as the light changes? I was taught that a legal left turn is made after the oncoming traffic clears.

Nope, not legal at all.

Even with an advanced green signal for the lane next to the transit lane, you have to give the right of way to the thing in the transit lane. Without that, you'd be breaking more laws. But apparently there really are people who would rather die than wait, worst case, through another whole stoplight cycle time.

I've been in four car accidents in my life. I was belted all four times. I was not injured in any of them. Two of those accidents involved other vehicles, which ALSO had only belted people in them, and none of THOSE people got hurt either.

Seat. Belts. Oh yes.

Inge (102), I've driven on British motorways at speeds I'd never attempt in the US (unless I was out between Winslow and Gallup, and could see empty road three miles ahead of me). Motorways are engineered for higher speeds, and frankly, the drivers are better overall.

I've also been on the section of road the Colebrook ambulance squad refers to as "Deadman's Curve," which doesn't look nearly as dangerous as it is. If you take it at the posted speed, you're probably going to be fine, unless there are weather conditions. Take it any faster than that, and you'll discover that the downhill grade's just a tad steeper than you expected, the curve itself just a little sharper -- and the roadbed slants down, not up, toward the outside of the curve.

The single most useful thing I was taught in Driver's Ed. is that the reduced speeds posted at tight curves and other tricky spots have been calculated by engineers, and are there for a reason.

"If said uninsured macho asshole kills himself at age 35 in a car accident that everyone else walks away from, you'll only have to pay for the funeral. Which is a whole lot cheaper than if the guy lives to be 90 and gets all kinds of expensive-to-treat illnesses."

Second, no class of driver always drives alone. An unsecured driver is still going to be a projectile that can potentially kill other passengers.

Third, as I mentioned earlier, drivers can wind up having to make critical decisions after the initial impact. If they've been stunned or knocked unconscious or killed, they can't do that, which makes us all less safe

Fourth, it'd be one thing if unsecured or unhelmeted motorists either got killed or walked away unscathed from accidents, but neither is the likeliest outcome. What's far more likely is that they'll get hurt. That's expensive. Sometimes they get hurt in ways that require permanent ongoing care, in which case it's even more expensive.

Fifth, speaking of social costs, your hypothetical 35-year-old driver has just been the recipient of 18-30 years of care, education, and training: a worthy investment for society to make, but an overall debit on the great balance sheet. His or her most productive years are just getting started. The value of that productivity considerably outweighs the cost of retirement and geriatric medical care at the end of his or her life.

All rights are social rights.

Teresa@74:

If I'm going on a long driving trip, I take a length of twine (a long shoelace will do), tie it firmly to the seat belt, then tie it to the shoulder belt so that it bends down a bit in the middle. The belt still passes over my shoulder in good safe fashion, but it doesn't creep up and saw at the side of my neck.

Oh! Simple but brilliant; thank you. I'm tall, but the shoulder belt on my '90 Camry is in fixed position at cuts-across-my-neck height, and it bugs me. Doesn't keep me from using it, mind you, but even with the 'comfort pad' it's an irritant.

Again, thanks!

My neighbor's daughter was in a very nasty accident just last week or so and is now the only person I've ever met who was lucky not to be wearing her seatbelt. She was in the back, riding with three friends. A young woman smashed into their car, which smashed into some sort of rock formation and rolled several times. My neighbor's daughter was thrown out the back window at some point and wound up with a nasty concussion and some lacerations, but the seat where she'd been sitting was crushed entirely.

On the other hand, the people who used to live next door to me once had a son. His own family was unable to recognize his body.

On a cheerier note, my older brother was once rear ended by a school bus that failed to stop at a red light. He was belted and came away with only a mild concussion and some neck pain.

Glinda (110) You're welcome. The only trick is getting the knots tight enough that the twine doesn't migrate toward the narrower point of the V. These days I'm driving rented cars, but if I were going to make it a permanent arrangement, I'd sew or rivet the modification to the other belts.

Teresa @ 84: Bad driving didn't come in with the SUV.

But the way SUVs are constructed makes them a lot more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists (though not to streetcars...) than sedans.

How does a broken femur endanger someone's life?

Kit (114):

"How does a broken femur endanger someone's life?"

For now, you'll have to make do with one datum: untreated fractures of the femur have an 80% mortality rate.

Kit @ 114: Presumably when bone fragments or marrow gets caught up in the bloodstream and causes a blockage. But I'm no doctor.

#85 So don't try to sell me that seatbelts always save lives.

Fortunately, no one said that seatbelts always save lives.

Debra, #94: May I have the brain when you're done with it? That was exactly what I was going to post, only you did it first! :-)

Teresa@112:

Oh. Sew it on, right. I've even got craft/leather needles, and heavy carpet thread around here somewhere. I'm going to be driving up to Vancouver on the 24th, so I'd best do this before then.

Thank you again - this is one of those "why didn't I think of it?" BFOs*.

*Blinding Flash of the Obvious

In 1972, my parents' car (tankish 1970 Chrysler Newport) rolled over on I-40 in Sare, OK at 75mph. It rolled once and landed upright on the shoulder. Everyone was wearing a seatbelt. The worst injury was my mom who was driving -- she had a sprained back. No one else had anything worse than scratches. However, contents of the car were scattered down an 1/4 mile of highway from being ejected during the roll. The car was totaled, of course. We ended up taking Greyhound to OKC to get a rental car.

My friend's son, who is a bit accident-prone, has destroyed two bicycle helmets so far. The shells were cracked and the interior foam was crunched up.

Mythbusters tested the "things on the back shelf" story. The myth was specifically about a tissue box being lethal. They weren't able to confirm that, but anything any heavier would have caused serious injury or death. A hatchet ended up embedded in their target block. A bowling ball flew right through it.

And one more place you need to pay attention to your seatbelt: aircraft. Some people thing that everyone will die in a plane crash anyway, so what's point? Contrary to that belief, a lot of people survive crashes only to die in the post-crash fire. Having broken limbs will greatly reduce your ability to escape.

More likely than an actual crash is turbulence. People have been severely injured and killed by the secondary collisions Jim talked about. In severe turbulence an aircraft could experience -1G. Look up at the ceiling and imagine being dropped on your head from that distance.

These situations are rare, but the insurance (wearing your seat belt) is very, very cheap.

Teresa @ 109, my reply about the "uninsured macho asshole" was to TexAnne who brought up that type and his hypothetical hospital costs. The point, which I probably didn't make well enough, was that reducing public safety questions to health care cost arithmetics tends to produce unwelcome (and not especially useful) results.

I think I'm on to something here.

I'm struck by how many of the "thrown from the car" stories that have been reported here are about evading damage that happens after the initial collision. If a car clips an obstacle and an unsecured passenger is thrown out, that's one collision. If the car then proceeds to roll down a mountainside, or fall thirty feet into a rocky creekbed, or get creamed by a semi, those are separate accidents.

In all of those accidents, as Clifford Royston has pointed out, someone who's not wearing a seatbelt is subject to 24-36 times as much force as someone who is. That's not good. The apparent benefit of being thrown from the car is not produced by being unsecured; it's produced by the thrown-out passenger not being in the car during the secondary collisions, rollovers, et cetera.

Thus, the moral of the story is not that seatbelts don't always save lives. It's that it's better not to be in a car that's about to have another accident or three. Failing convenient teleportation or the ballistic equivalent thereof, if you're in a car during an accident, a seatbelt's the right way to go.

I worry about entrapment too, but I deal with it by wearing my seat belt and always carrying a little serrated pocketknife in reach.

Inge (121):

"reducing public safety questions to health care cost arithmetics tends to produce unwelcome (and not especially useful) results."

The only people whose opinion on the relative risks to secured vs. unsecured passengers matters a damn to me are the people who spend EVERY DAMN DAY PULLING PEOPLE OUT OF WRECKED CARS.

There's always going to be someone out there who heard of one wreck where blah blah blah. Jim et al see enough wrecks to have a valid sample. The rest of us, mostly no.

Well, yeah, sort of; but where's the fun in just listening?

PJ (61) -- I don't know what it is now, but 8 years ago the fine for failure to use a seatbealt in Santa Clara County was, no joke, $20 for a first offense. I had a completely clean record otherwise, so that may have had something to do with it, but in any case I am assuming it has gone up since then.

Teresa (74), all it took to get him to behave was to threaten to put him back into the booster restraint he had just graduated from (and which he passionately hated). Still, the cargo net would have been a good idea if the car had had one.

And as far as the impact of safety improvements on driver behavior, I can't say. But I do know that the rise of the SUV has been bad news for pedestrians and bicyclists -- the SUVs cause more damage than sedans when they hit people. I learned that one first hand when my eldest got hit by a young man driving a Subaru Outback. The grill caught him in the face and head, smashing his upper jaw and causing him to lose several permanent teeth, where a sedan would have hit him much lower. The ER doc said that if the grill had been an inch or two higher my son would be dead. I've had this hatred (some would say unreasoning) of those vehicles ever since.

Joyce Reynolds-Ward @ 37: The only time I plan to ride without a helmet is when I'm showing Western and need to wear the big hat.

Just in case you haven't heard about this, there are Western safety hats now. The profile isn't quite as sleek as a non-safety hat, but they don't give you the mushroom-head look.

Pet owners: I assumed this went without saying, but I guess not: For godssakes, please use a carrier when your pet is in the car, and strap it down. I nearly had a heart attack when someone I knew casually transported his cat by picking it up and dropping it in the car.

#114 How does a broken femur endanger someone's life?

There are a couple of ways. First, right beside the bone (on the medial side) lies the femoral artery. That's a big blood vessel -- essentially the aorta split in half. It's as big as your thumb. Cut that (and a broken femur puts jagged bone fragments next to it) and you can bleed out in seconds. Second, as mentioned, you can get a fat or marrow embolus sucked into the femoral vein. If it travels to the lungs, you get a pulmonary embolism. To the coronary arteries, a heart attack. To the brain, a stroke.

Not a good injury at all.

Now, for the benefit of all, here's Dead Man's Curve, where Hollow Road becomes Park Street along 145. The road is tending down hill as you come from the north.

Yes, the Dispatch Center really does call that location "Dead Man's Curve" when calling us away. (To the east, up Creampoke Road (a road that's closed from mid-November to mid-March) you find Mudgett Mountain, named after the same Mudgett family that gave us Dr. H. H. Holmes of Chicago.)

Another really bad location is Steel Bridge (where East Side Road turns into Mohawk Road on Rt. 26). The road tends downhill there from both the east and the west, bottoming out at the bridge. On one occassion, a group of motorcyclists (none wearing helmets -- not required in this state) heading east on 26 at a high rate of speed passed a local cop heading west. He flipped on his blue lights, they took off even faster. He shut off his lights and called for an ambulance to Steel Bridge. Sure enough, that's where we found them. We had a pretty good on-scene time.

Steel Bridge is also where I came on a motorcyclist while I was out just driving. Out of radio range from base, there. I stopped to render assistance, which consisted of holding C-spine on the guy while he was walking around. Eventually another car stopped and asked if I needed any help. I said, "Yes, drive up to the Balsams and call 911. Tell them motorcycle accident, head injury, at Steel Bridge."

That was when I learned the fun fact that if a guy's nose is off you can look right down his throat. Also, a bit about distracting injuries: turned out he was walking on a fractured leg.

Phil @79: Point of information -- the insurance coverage on my 2007 Accord, identical to the policy on my previous car, a 2000 Civic, is less expensive even though the vehicle is more expensive, and a greater theft risk.

I've been belting in since there were such things and, yes, it's automatic. It doesn't even feel right, not being belted in.

My aunt, who is one of the Best People Ever and whom I love dearly, not only doesn't wear a seatbelt, she is permanently attached to a cell phone. We were traveling together a couple years ago, road tripping through Eastern Washington. It was her turn to drive, and we almost got into a knock-down screaming fight when I told her she would wear the seatbelt and she would not use her cell phone. I had to evoke the "My Car, My Rules" commandment to convince her.

Two things that Jim (129) left out:

1. They later reattached the guy's nose.

2. The peculiar thing about femur fractures is that femurs are under tension by the constant pull of those long muscles in your thighs. If the bone breaks, those muscles will keep pulling, turning a simple femur fracture into a telescoping femur fracture. If the jagged ends of the bone don't initially nick the femoral artery, the telescoping action may cause them to do it anyway.

A ruptured femoral artery is one of the fastest ways to have a fatal bleed-out.

things you carry should be kept as low as possible to reduce risk to the equastion

One thing to remember is that there are a lot of other features in a modern vehicle besides seatbelts, and they work together.

Crumple zones

Reinforced passenger-containing structure.

Air bags.

Telescoping steering columns

It's all intended to keep you inside a protected box while the vehicle absorbs impact energy.

I think the "thrown clear" meme keeps coming up because our monkey brains are very comfortable with the idea of flying through the air. They freak out at the idea of being strapped down.

This is very similar to why people drive SUVs. Being higher up makes our monkey brains feel safer.

I'm comfortable with wearing seatbelts because I'm not at all claustrophobic, and because I associate seatbelts with memories of my mom buckling us in. It's like knowing someone cares about you, is holding you, and keeping you safe. Nothing to freak out about.

Re seatbelt adjustments:

You can also buy a heavy plastic or metal doohickey, kind of like a buckle with two open sides, for adjusting the fit of the shoulder belt. You thread the lap and shoulder halves of the seatbelt into the buckle and slide it to a position where it pulls the shoulder belt down at the right angle to keep it properly adjusted for you. They cost a buck or two, I think. My wife has the same problem with her car, where the belt wants to either squish her breasts or slowly saw her neck off. With the buckle added it fits comfortably.

Besides the Rolling Stones bit mentioned in #88 above, Heinlein also has a bit in I Will Fear No Evil where a woman complains about an uncomfortable shoulder belt and is told that it needs to be adjusted to fit her.

I grew up in a town with a 'Deadman's Curve': a sharp 90 left, followed a couple-three hundred feet later by a sharp 90 right. Later on, they rerouted the road so it had two 45 degree bends to connect the same sections, but the second bend was farther from the old angle. (I can't remember it ever actually killing anyone, though.)

The really deadly bit of road was on the other side of town, and originally had a series of seven hills (rise and drop) along it. That was re-graded, end to end, after a very nasty accident involving two cars of high-school kids. One stopped at the bottom between the two highest rises. The other came over the top a bit fast, went airborne, and landed on the first car. There may have been survivors, but I don't remember.

Phil @ 43:

I admit I have not read the book, but I am dubious that seatbelts specifically have significantly increased drivers' risk-taking, because I think most car users greatly underestimate the risks of not wearing a seatbelt.

I would buy the argument as applied to Antilock Braking Systems, for instance. I know some surveys have shown that most drivers completely misperceive what those will do for them. I think a lot of people have fantasy ideas about how airbags will protect them, too.

I would wonder myself how much of the present traffic accident rate can be attributed to technological distractions that didn't exist before. It's never just one factor that changes.

I started wearing a seat belt all the time when my three year-old daughter, back in about 1983, asked why she had to wear a seat belt in her car seat when I wasn't wearing one. Smart kid. How could I argue with that?

It helped hold me in my seat once when I got run off the road and into the brush along the road. With that stability I was able to hold onto the steering wheel and aim for one of the smaller trees in my way. It still totaled my car, and I had a messed up back for a while, but the trooper was shocked I hadn't rolled going across that hill.

On the other hand, when I was a teen, I came across (and almost was part of) an accident involving some friends. Being "thrown free" by the guys in back didn't work - their legs were trapped inside and their heads were erased on the the pavement as the car spun around. I watched the friend in shotgun die from a broken neck - I found his hat 50 feet off the road, along with the windshield, wrapped around a tombstone in the country graveyard. My buddy in the back seat middle didn't die - he was bending over tying his shoes, so he 'only' got compressed vertebrae and wore a halo brace for about 6 months. The driver didn't get much injured, but went into a psych hospital for 6 months or so over his grief and guilt.

Yeah, I'm ok with wearing a seatbelt.

Seatbelts also hold you tight to your seat while you are busy maneuvering your way to safety.
ABS brakes work so well most of the time that people supposedly tend to leave less space between cars. Unfortunately, reaction time is not improved by stuff you add to your car with predictable but expensive results.
My description of all-wheel / four-wheel drive is that it gives you better than four times the steering control and about twice the traction of a rear-wheel drive vehicle. On black ice, 4x0=0 and 2x0=0. With a higher center of gravity you are far more likely to roll over after your tires trip on the curb, and on winter trips I see rolled SUVs on cloverleafs.

You're just a gawddamn idiot if you don't wear your seatbelt. How do I know this? I've rolled a car twice. Once in a Taurus about 5 times at moderate speed (~50mph) and once in a Volvo S70 where I only rolled it on it's roof, but going about 75mph. Walked away from both accidents with zero injuries other than being real sore the next day.

It's like the morons who keep their gun loaded and the safety off because "I might have to use it at moments notice". No, lackwit, vastly better odds that your 8 year old will use it ventilate your toddler. Let's not even go into the "it's my god-given right to not wear a motorcycle helmet" loons.

Funny about the Taurus accident. I managed to pull this one off in front of a fire station. I guess someone there saw at least some of the accident. I had gotten out and was standing next to the car when some firemen ran by me and looked in the car. He looked around and then at me and said "where is the driver?". Say I, "I'm the driver". He said "no you're not". We looked at each other for about 3 beats and he says "wow you're lucky...are you okay?" and proceeded to give me a thorough inspection.

Posts in this thread need to get an initial time stamp for when you started to type it, which would at least justify the redundant comments.

I don't mind redundant comments. We all write at different speeds. I'm slower than most.

Teresa in #74 says "A belted-in driver is a safer driver. In an accident, critical decisions can occur after the initial impact."

Or even before; it's quite possible that the seatbelt will hold you in position to keep driving, even when you've just swerved abruptly to one side trying to avoid a collision...and realized that you are headed for somewhere else you don't want to be. If you've managed to swerve yourself into the passenger seat, it's gonna be really tough to do anything useful to avoid the second situation.

I feel better now, I wasn't the only one still typing and previewing before posting.

TomB (135): I have a bad tendency to drive aggressively. I fight it. But speaking as a sinner, I can tell you what the appeal is in an SUV's higher positioning, and it's got nothing to do with monkey brains. When you're sitting higher in an SUV, you can see a lot further in traffic, which makes it much easier to make strategic moves. It's like being in a fight where everyone else is on foot and you're on horseback. Meanwhile, the SUV's extra horsepower isn't for hauling loads of cinderblocks for your weekend projects; it's to give you faster acceleration, which again helps you beat out other drivers in your move to the front of the pack. The big bumpers are there to say, "If we have an accident, you'll take a lot more damage than I will."

I hate SUVs. I think they're bad for the public good, and an utterly cynical development by the car manufacturers. In the meantime, on occasions when I'm forced to drive one, damn but they're fun.

Definitely a sin.

I suppose this is now a redundant comment on redundant comments. How meta.

I always wear my seatbelt, and have as long as I can remember. It has something to do with having a father flying MEDEVAC helicopters and a mother who worked in a children's hospital. Not quite the same level of reinforcement that Jim Macdonald gets, but more than enough to make it second nature (and to insist on "belts on before engine", or at least before moving even an inch).

Any time you're involved in an accident where your helmet gets pounded, you might consider getting a new helmet even if there's no obvious damage. In the same way, if a seatbelt saves your life in an accident, get a new seatbelt. Not only do seatbelts hold you in place while the vehicle is crumpling, slowing the rate of your own deceleration, they are elastic. They stretch -- but once stretched, they need to be replaced.

Re:#98: Alkali, thank you. I fervently believe people should wear seatbelts, and wear mine even in taxis. But, as a Black woman who grew up in the Bronx in the 1980's, I'm uncomfortable with yet another excuse for the police to stop and search a car I'm in. And, while I'm not a Libertarian, I talk to several on a regular basis, and I'm wary of laws designed to protect adults from their own stupidity. Making something illegal doesn't make it impossible, it just gives the authorities another excuse to enter one's life.

So, then, what's the answer? I'm not sure. Public education campaigns, and everything short of laws, perhaps. But I'm not sure I can support actual laws.

Next time your passengers come up with that "thrown clear" story as an excuse for not buckling up, just ask them to jump out of the car while you are cruising at 55mph.
If they refuse just ask them why, because its the same as being thrown clear.

on car crashes:

1. Each year in the US 42,000 people die from car crashes. That's out of the 6 million auto accidents reported to the police, or 1 death per 143 car crashes.

2. The single largest cost of an automobile each year isn't gas, insurance, or depreciation, it's the total cost of car crashes. The total cost is thousands of dollars per person per year (not just drivers in accidents):
a. lost lives
b. healthcare, including LifeFlights and ICUs and rehab: for every death there are several near deaths, and then more with moderate injuries...
c. permanent lost income for those disabled by the accident
d. police, fire and EMP infrastructure to deal with 6,000,000 accidents and 42,000 deaths per year.
e. millions (possibly billions*) of lost person-hours in traffic. In the Bay Area, a death usually means the highway is closed for a few hours.
f. $2900 average to repair each vehicle in an accident
g. insurance, etc.

Stats taken from Brad Templeton's essays on the benefits of self-driving cars.
---
* for a billion lost hours, that'd require 170 hours per accident, or 680 people delayed for 15 minutes. Even a fender bender that's immediately moved to the shoulder can cause this on highways.

145 comments and no-one has asked about knitting needles yet? I recall an episode of Car Talk in which the brothers Tappet recommended against knitting in the car because the needles could become dangerous in an accident. So I stopped knitting on dpns while riding shotgun and switched to circular needles. Am I kidding myself? And would a crochet hook be just as bad a thing to be holding?

With shoulder belts mounted, it's easy to tell from outside the car if someone's wearing their seatbelt.

As far as laws go ... I'm not convinced that they're the best idea. I think that the rates of seatbelt use in states without primary seatbelt laws and states with primary seatbelt laws is about the same. Public information and social pressure is a better path, I think.

We have a name for motorcyclists who don't wear helmets. We call them "organ donors." I can see making lack of a helmet or seatbelt be implied consent for organ donation.

Science fiction writer Elizabeth Moon (also an EMT) has a funny story about a convertible rollover. Convertible, top down is upside down beside the road. It's night. She's the slender little thing who gets to crawl under the wreck to see what's inside. She makes her way through the gap between the ground and the top of a door -- and this beer-flavored breath comes in her face and the driver says, all cheerful-like, "Hiya, honey!"

Depending on how good your Spanish is, this PSA covers both unrestrained rear-seat passengers and being ejected (note: not for Teresa):

Abróchate el Cinterón

Charlie, #28. "Is it legal in your country to sell vehicles that don't have collapsible steering columns?"

It is not. Well, not passenger cars; I'm not sure about all motor vehicles.

Phil Armstrong, #43. "...the increased risks that drivers (as a group) take when they wear seat belts."

That sounds quite fictional to me. Well, maybe SUV drivers; as far as I can tell, seat belts don't make much difference to other drivers. In fact, I suspect it's more the other way around; people who drive carelessly also refuse to wear their seat belts.

David, #57; The problem with "stopping it with a shove" is that the load tends to go sideways or, if many parts are involved, many of them keep moving. Even if the load is properly rigged, and on tracks, you can still trip or slip and be run down--heck, if you're not properly braced your knees or ankles can give way.

Sandy B, #62. It's a Heinline quote; I think he used it in several places.

Inge, #102. "If said uninsured macho asshole kills himself at age 35 in a car accident that everyone else walks away from, you'll only have to pay for the funeral." If killing themselves was the only likely outcome, perhaps. Reality is, of course, that these people often severely injure themselves (or others) and need a lot of care, making a great deal of difficulty and unhappiness for all involved.

Perhaps the appropriate punishment for not wearing a seat belt is eight hours of community service, doing custodial care of someone who was severely disabled by not wearing a seat belt.

It amazes me that there's anyone who DOESN'T wear a seatbelt - here in Australia, almost everyone does. It's been in law, nationwide, for...I don't know how long, my 24 year lifetime at least. Not only is it the law, but values like wearing your seatbelt and not drink-driving have been thoroughly entrenched into mainstream culture - with the aid of some very gruesome and sometimes amusing government ad-campaigns (an all-time favourite slogan was ,"If you drink, then drive, you're a bloody idiot.") It's pretty unimaginable to me that anyone wouldn't wear one. I don't know whether it's true, but I've heard anecdotally that vehicle airbags in the US deploy much more forcefully than over here - because a much smaller number of people wear seatbelts.

Jim,

Was Elizabeth Moon in Dayton, Ohio when that happened? If so, was there also a ruptured fuel tank involved?

On the people who lived without a seatbelt, ATCHOAFE WIGTHATS I have thoughts about that*...

Humans tend to be biased towards what we can see, or meet, or touch. In part because of this, we tend to be really bad at risk estimation.

If you meet someone who lived without a seatbelt, then you think "Ah, +1 for no seatbelt." The people who die without a seatbelt? You don't get to see them- the casket is closed- so your brain doesn't go "Ah, -1 for no seatbelt."

We're not good at balancing one real life lost vs. hypothetical lives saved, or vice versa.

It's only people like paramedics (or forensics engineers) who actually know the stats, rather than just feeling the stats. i.e. after 40 accident reconstructions, you've met the one person who lived, and the 39 families of the people who died.

---
* because when I was old enough, I helped with the admin part of the business.

Including organizing photos.

You die, and it isn't just the first responders and the few hundred drivers who drove by before the road was closed who have to see your brains on the windshield (thank goodness they often don't recognize what they're seeing). It's also the investigators and expert witnesses and 12 jurors for the civil case (even if there isn't a criminal case). You don't want to wear a seatbelt, so some poor guy has to be on jury duty for a few weeks. Nice of you, that.

I've been on a plane on a night when a passenger on another plane in the area died from not being buckled in, and several people on different planes were injured badly enough to be hospitalised. There's a reason why the cabin crew do regular seatbelt patrols nowadays. Wear your seatbelt on the plane.

My parents pretty much drilled it into us that we should wear seatbelts at all times. I get so downright paranoid just riding the company van down the street if there are no seatbelts that I'll just end up walking instead.

The femur fractures being fatal: I broke my right femur (and my left clavicle) in a non-auto, but completely freak accident when I was 17....and thankfully, people waited until I was well on my way to recovery before dropping that fact on me. I pretty much refused to let my brother try moving me, and made him get an adult, and made the adult cover me with a coat and check me for shock after calling 911. (My special form of shock seems to be that I go all girl-scout and regurgitate everything I can remember about broken bones. Which is not a bad thing, I guess, since you wouldn't believe the number of people who wanted to help me get up and move around. The ambulance guys said I was their most lucid broken femur victim that week and their best behaved.)

TomB @ #6: I actually almost experienced the Bay Bridge stuff today--either the seals all need replacing or it happens all the time when it rains. The water falls between the sections in huge splats and deluges that your windshield wipers can't really clean off in time--it's pretty unnerving. Every time I came up on one, I just took my foot off the gas and coasted through at a bit under speed, keeping my eye on the very blurry headlights ahead. I could totally see somebody reacting badly to the waterfalls though.

Jim, do you see more accidents on Deadman's Curve from people going southbound? It seems like the curve would be sharper if you're going south, and that the straighter road means that people might accelerate more and hit the curve at a higher speed.

Rats. I thought I'd deleted the spam addendum.

Clifton Royston @ 139

I would buy the argument as applied to Antilock Braking Systems, for instance. I know some surveys have shown that most drivers completely misperceive what those will do for them

My observation has been that a lot of people don't know how to use ABS brakes. Most cars have them these days, yet most drivers I see on wet roads or on ice and snow in the winter seem to be manually pumping the brakes (if they use them at all) when they start to skid, instead of letting the microprocessor do the work. I admit I had to unlearn the old habits when I first started using ABS, but that was more than 20 years ago. I'd expect few drivers to be unfamiliar with them, and yet I seem to be wrong about that.

I am fairly ambiguous about seat belts, to be honest. With great certainty I can say that they work- ten years as an EMT and a firefighter have shown that to me first-hand. I always use them, and get a kick when I leave the station when fellow volunteers leave the station, lighting up a cigarette and driving off without buckling up. Ben Franklin was right- nine men in ten are suicides.

But my objection is that we simply don't have enough organs to go 'round. It would be fairly simple to pass a law that equated no seatbelts (or, for motorcycles) into an automatic organ donor in the event the accident produced a corpse with viable organs.

This would be very useful, particularly in light of how the number of organs up for transplant have dropped as seatbelt use has improved.

My sister had an accident while on her way to work one morning; we think it was caused by a tire blowout. She was going at highway speeds when she lost control, skidded off the road, and rolled the car.

She was wearing her seatbelt. She suffered a badly broken upper arm, which I suspect was caused by the seatbelt coming across her arm instead of over her shoulder. She also fractured two cervical vertebrae (C2 and C7) but did not injure her spinal cord. She spent three months in a halo brace, and was really not a happy camper for a while, but she survived without permanent disability. Without a seatbelt, she'd have been killed.

I always buckle my seatbelt, but I also take a moment to settle it properly on my hips and shoulder and make sure it's snug. I got into the habit partly because of my sister's accident, and partly because I have two kids, and adjusting the straps of their carseat (or seatbelt, once they were in a belt-positioning booster) got me to think about how I could do this for myself, too, and protecting my children's mom was worth ten extra seconds when getting into the car.

John Houghton @ 141: As I understand it, ABS does not improve stopping distance at all in normal conditions (though other brake system improvements may.) ABS just keeps the car relatively steerable while you're braking, and reduces skids on slippery conditions. The fact that most people think it will reduce their normal stopping distance, when it does not, may be the cause of the problem. (If so, it would not really be a case of risk compensation so much as simple confusion.)

Riding without a belt is not worth the risk. In my youth I rode without a belt, and one afternoon I got the sinking feeling, mid-drive, that I needed to put my seatbelt on (perhaps there was a police car near?) and about 30 seconds after I put my seatbelt on I totalled my car. Had I not been wearing my seatbelt I would have likely been thrown through the windshield. I walked away with extremely minor injuries considering the condition of the car. Wouldn't ever ride without one again! Thanks for the informative story... linked from BB... hope more read it and buckle up!

My sister was in an accident in her teens. She was in the backseat and had a seat belt on. The driver was drunk and rolled the car into a ditch with enough speed for it to flip back out the other side.

She had bruised kidneys and a concussion. Two other people in the car had seatbelts on and had minor injuries. The boy in the passenger seat was not wearing a belt -- he was thrown out the side window and killed.

Yeah, I always wear a seatbelt. Wish I could put one on my dogs. (They make canine seatbelts, but I can't make the canines wear them.)

I think I've posted this before. Rt 16 in NH. Drunk driver crosses to our side of the road. I swerve to avoid and hit and then flip over guard rail and just before completing flip hit something and bounce back. I am driving and seatbelted. 2.5 year (this was a decade ago) old is in car seat in back. Husband is belted next to her. We all walk away (we have a few minor ouches, but not a scratch on the kid). The car is totaled.

No one gets driven in my car who isn't properly restrained.

I don't get people that don't wear seatbelts. I just can't understand anyone not wearing one.
Then again, I don't get why adults (not teens trying to be 'cool,' I was one myself) smoke cigarettes.

I'm 41. When I was 4, I had a favorite playmate, my cousin Carol. I only have the slightest memory of having once had a dim memory of her.

When we were 4, my aunt was driving and hit another car head-on. Carol was in the back of the station-wagon.

She was "thrown clear." Through the windshield, and through the other car's windshield.

She was decapitated.

My brother-in-law lets my six year old nice ride in the van without buckling up. Lets her lay across the seat for naps.

He also smoked for decades, and a year ago when he learned he had cancer, opted not to get traditional treatment, instead going to spiritual healers.

He's now days from death, and still convinced he's healed and just has a "sinus infection."

I see all of these things as connected. People lie to themselves constantly, especially when it comes to their own mortality.

My friend, 63, just retired, newly remarried, was asleep in the back unbelted as her husband and stepson were up front, wearing belts. They had minor injuries. She died immediately of a broken neck.
My niece fell asleep at the wheel a few miles from home. Her dad is a first responder and as he pulled up, he was sure she was dead--the entire front of her car was crushed. Because of seatbelt and airbag, she literally walked away from the accident and into her father's arms, with only a broken wrist and sprained ankle.
My brother fell asleep, but he wasn't as lucky. He was 31. He'll always be 31.

Use your freakin' belt. You want to die, fine, but I've lost enough people I love.

I have a little scar on my chin to remind me to buckle up everytime I get in the car.

James at #154, glad I'm home on a weekend, I cracked up because I can envision Elizabeth doing that...

Physics works. SUV drivers often think it doesn't. Me, I drive a very small efficient car. I worry about them not seeing me while they're having complicated phone conversations and running me down. So I drive really defensively, especially on the highway. But also, where my office moved, I CAN get to work without bothering, and without taking any more time, which is actually quite nice.

Plus, I don't allow myself to talk on the cell phone while driving, even though I do have a Bluetooth earphone. Too distracting. If it rings and I see it's a family member, if I can, I pull into a parking lot. If I can't, i just let it go until I can safely pull over.

Paula @174

A few years ago I heard an accident and looked out the window to see a big SUV flipped onto its back. (I was at an office right next to a highway's offramp.)

After waiting for the emergency response to finish up, I went outside to rubberneck. The other car involved was a small sedan: low to the ground, likely 1/2 the weight of the SUV, seemingly slightly damaged on its front and hood.

The little car alone had flipped the SUV. The SUV had been waiting at a red light when the car came too fast off of the highway.

The SUV's driver was still there, talking with (police? Can't remember), at times repeatedly asking "How'd she do that? Why is my [SUV name] upside down?"

i can see that easily. SUV's are top heavy, I test drove a Mercedes SUV a couple years ago on a test track and even that felt wrong if I accelerated too much. I'm even fairly careful of our minivan (once upon a time my Grand Am and I went skittering across water-slick lanes in my neighborhood in a difficult turn on Gillham -- long before I lived here. I was able to get steer-control before we went up the curb and down into Gillham park, but it scared me, my car was brand new then...)

Teresa @74: No, a whole different person. The nice lady I traveled with in Morocco was simply naive and trusting. This woman had a stubborn unwillingness to let anyone else's rules rule her. We rode with their family in their minivan once; while Danny, her husband (who was driving) and I all wore our belts, and Julie, who was then a tiny thing, was in her carseat, her son (who was six) sat in his Mom's lap in the front seat, both of them unrestrained. I was a little surprised and asked, mildly, if he shouldn't be in a carseat. She not only didn't like the rules about seatbelts for herself, but was disgusted by the notion of "trapping" her child in a carseat.

If she becomes an organ donor, that's life. But I wonder how her son is doing, all these years later?

Clifton Royston (167):
As I understand it, ABS does not improve stopping distance at all in normal conditions (though other brake system improvements may.) ABS just keeps the car relatively steerable while you're braking, and reduces skids on slippery conditions.

On good dry pavement, ABS actually lengthens stopping distance a bit, but it adds so much control that people don't have the frequent reminders of their tenuous grip on the road from skidding a bit at every hard stop like they used to. This makes them complacent. Hell, it makes ME complacent, and I know better. I paid way more attention to following distance in my old, light, no-fancy-brakes pickup that would start to rotate when I thought about braking.

Two things, one about the laws of physics and another about the way our monkey brains effect driving decissions:

1. Ten years ago, almost exactly, we came around a corner on wet pavement and there, ahead of us, was a car up against a broken tree and four young people lying on the ground, with one tending them; we had a wide assortment of blankets, coats, sweatshirts and sweaters in our van and spent the interminable ten or fifteen minutes before the EMTs showed up trying to keep the kids from going into shock.

The cause of the accident was pretty basic: a K car, two petite girls on the driver's side, two big boys on the passenger side, all belted in, and the driver's twelve-year-old sister sitting, unsecured, on the front seat passenger's lap. Curve signed for 25mph, downhill and to the left, pavement crowned at the center to keep the sringwater from the uphill side of the curve from covering the road. The driver was probably going thirty, at the most, but what pulled them off the road was the extra 200 or so pounds of load on the outside of the turn. Especially in a small, tinny car with notoriously bad suspension, just the way the kids loaded themselves may have been sufficient to cause the wreck.

None of the teenagers were badly injured, but the unsecured little sister broke her collar bone, humerus, and three ribs, and sustained a concussion. My husband and I may, some day, recover from coming around the corner and thinking, for a moment, all the people on the ground were dead.

2. Teresa is, as usual, right: people pick SUVs because out monkey brain feels that it's safer to be able to see- not just ahead, but around. Jersey Barriers, grand though they are for preventing high-speed head-on collisions, make us poor primates CRAZY because we can't see where we are. The more miles of highway lined with New Jersey Barriers, the greater the psychological attraction of tall vehicles (which, of course, diminish the effectiveness of traffic barriers).

I'm feeling particularly grumpy about this because the State of Washington is currently studying two fatal accidents which occurred where new cable barriers were installed, which the apparent subtext being that if barriers are effective, nobody will ever die.

OH: we always wear belts, of course.

Excellent post. No flinching. Thanks.

Alan@ #120: And one more place you need to pay attention to your seatbelt: aircraft.

I have a friend whose parents are both NTSB investigators. He tells me that their conclusion has been that the number one thing you can do to improve you chances in a plane crash is to wear shoes that tie on.

Flats or Loafers will come off and if you survive the initial impact, you want something on your feet so that you're not slowed down by walking on broken glass or hot twisted metal.

Madeline Robins, #177. I wonder if the person you are thinking of was concealing a phobia; the remark about "trapping" is suggestive.

Kathryn, #175. Obviously the answer is jujitsu--size and mass are a smaller part of the story than motion.

There is a broader problem here, of how to teach non-intuitive life-safety practices. There is even a linguistic connection; Benjamin Whorf of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, an insurance company inspector, told a story about how the way people thought and talked about "empty gasoline drums" led them to believe that the drums were not dangerous, whereas, of course, the drums were empty only of most liquid gasoline but were instead fullfull of explosive gasoline vapor.

Mechanized Death was screened at my high school back in the sixties after a horrendous string of crashes involving students and teachers. Sounds and images from that film are in my head forever and I don't recommend the experience. Riding with a drunk driver had been a regular feature of my childhood. I have never been in a car with a drunk or without a seatbelt since I saw that film. When my daughter was 3, I once started the car while she was being buckled in, and she hollered bloody murder. She refused to ride in her grandparents' van because there were no seat belts.

A couple of years later we visited a high school friend who sat right beside me during Mechanized Death. As a special 'reward' for good behaviour, she allowed her three children to ride unrestrained in the back of her station wagon. Just before we decided to travel separately, my daughter asked her why she didn't want her kids to be safe.

Back in the day before seat belts, my aunt used to put her arm out in front of whichever one of us was riding shotgun when she needed to slow down or to stop quickly. She was the first person I knew to insist on seat belts (mid sixties), but for as long as she drove she continued to offer that extra protection that only the arm of an optimist who loves you can bring.

It's true that sometimes the seatbelt won't save your life. I had a classmate who was well on the way to being a total loser, but he turned his life around in his senior year: clean, sober, and passing his classes with enough margin to get into a good trade school (auto body, IIRC).

So while perfectly sober, he got into his '77 Bronco one night and decided to celebrate his impending adulthood by going up the Old Pillar Mountain Road. This is also known as the route for an annual one-hole extreme golfing tournament.

There's this thing about old Broncos: They are very flippy even without being jacked up, which his was. And when they do flip, the space between the door handles and the top of the car instantly decreases by about 90 percent. It wouldn't have mattered if he were wearing a seatbelt or not.

A--- N--------, RIP. You idiot!

Speaking of American things that go vroom vroom beep beep, O non-US readers, wanna hear something really scary? I mean, really scary?

There are no seat belts on school buses.

In the last ten years, I've been:

A passenger in a Crown Victoria t-boned by someone going at least 40 (on my side) - managed to hit us twice, somehow

A passenger in a Mazda 626 hit on the driver's front by a pickup backing out of a parking space

A passenger in a Mazda 626 hit from behind hard enough to break the driver's seat. (2 men ran out in front of cars turning onto a freeway on ramp. The cars in front of us stopped. We stopped. The people behind us stopped - eventually.)

A passenger in a Mazda Protege when another pickup truck backed up into us. (We were parked - totally stopped and honking like crazy. We couldn't move back because a pedestrian was right behind us. I'm not fond of pickups.)

I've been hurt worse tripping over curbs. In a car, I've always worn a seatbelt and I always will.

P.S. Thanks for the tip about having seatbelts replace. I didn't know that.

SUVs and rollovers:

There's a particular curve here, which exits a tunnel into a tight left curve, downhill, at the edge of a steep mountainside - Oahu drivers will recognize this as the exit of the Likelike tunnel, Kaneohe-bound. It's posted 35 mph, I see most drivers take it at 45-50mph, and of course that's vastly "too slow" for some. One day while I was teaching my daughter to drive, we exited the tunnel to find a police car with flashers directing traffic around a large SUV flipped on its back in the right-hand lane, top mostly crushed, with its nose pointing back in the direction it had come from. Either it had flipped end-over-end, or had both rolled and spun; I never figured out which.

Coming the other way, the uphill right curve into the Honolulu-bound tunnel is also a 35 mph zone. According to the paper, this is where a different SUV left the road at 85 mph, flew into the air off the concrete barrier between the two sides of the highway, and flipped. Some but not all survived. Again according to the paper, a lawyer for one of the survivors was trying to sue the State on the grounds that the barrier had caused the accident. I guess his theory was that if the SUV had simply driven head-on into the mountain face next to the tunnel at 85 mph, or into the oncoming traffic on the other side, or gone straight across both lanes on the other side of the curve and over the cliff, everything would have been fine.

I also agree with the monkey-brain theory, but it's not just that in an SUV you're up high, it's that they're BIG. People anthropomorphize and feel big things must be powerful and strong. Lions. Elephants. Dinosaurs. I am an SUV, rrawwr!

Driver's Ed in high school ingrained the seatbelt habit so deeply in me, that I get a Sense Of Wrongness if ever I'm in a car and I don't have the seat belt on. (I find myself literally unable to drive unless I'm strapped in. I'm in deep trouble if I ever find myself in a car which does not have seat belts.)

As for SUVs, they give me the creeps. I don't feel safe in them at all. I've only driven them a few times so maybe it's just a lack of experience. But SUVs aren't very agile or stable. In the event of an actual emergency, I don't think I could get an SUV out of danger's way. This is particularly sad since my baseline is the Prius which, at least the version I have, is not known for its manuverability (or it's view out the rear).

Speaking of the Prius, it turns out to be dangerous in a way that I didn't expect. Since it's possible for engine to shut off while you're driving, I find that pedestrians don't always realize they are walking into the path of my car. I am extremely conservative when it comes to pedestrians. I assume that they're going to walk into my path and stop accordingly. (Honestly, though, I run into this the most when I'm trying to park the Prius.)

Before the Calibogie Road got straightened -- it's over a Shield outcrop, 10+ MCAD/km in 1980 dollars -- there was this turn.

It was signed for 25 km/hr; there was another sign insisting that they meant it.

It was a 110, 115 degree turn onto a steep downgrade; the problem was that if you didn't make it, and managed to get over the wire barrier, you went off a cliff and fell several hundred feet into a deep lake, sploosh.

The local cops hated that turn with a mad inhuman passion, in large part because accident reports tended to consist of "we think it was a car and we think it was blue".

As long as people are excoriating the drivers of SUVs, can I take a moment to cast some opprobium in the general direction of drivers of silver-grey late-model Lexuses or Infinitis? It's not just their "I've got more money and better lawyers than God" style of moving through traffic, it's the way their vehicles are just the right color to blend into falling rain, or a fog bank, or the landscape at twilight (and they don't turn their lights on in daytime any more than they signal when they change lanes.)

I've heard that one of the problems drivers of SUVs (and probably also jacked-up trucks) have is that, sitting up high, they have trouble judging their speed against their view of the ground. (They apparently see themselves as moving slower than they actually are.)

JC, I've been driving a Prius for nearly five years. The rear visibility is a problem - you can't see where that back edge is - and I've been thinking about getting one of those mirrors like delivery vans use to see their back end. The engine standby condition: well, I try not to run over people.... There are a surprising number of people who can walk through a busy parking lot, or across a street, without looking around them. (I don't think it's coincidence that a lot of them are either on a cell phone or wearing some kind of headphone. It's not a good idea to do this in areas with moving vehicles. Especially if you're driving one of those moving vehicles.)

Teresa (74) -- My description of what happened is based on the accident report and its witness statements. (And the article in the paper the next day, in which the senior cop at the scene was quoted as being amazed there were no fatalities -- one 18-wheeler hit four cars; he sideswiped the first, I was the second, and then he hit two more before finally coming to a stop.) My memory of the whole thing goes from "Hm, traffic is stopped [on the freeway], I should turn on my hazard lights" to "I am upside down and there are paramedics in my car."

Whey they started asking the orientation questions, I knew who I was, approximately where I was, and about what time it was, but when they asked me what had happened, all I could come up with was, "There's obviously been an accident -- is anyone hurt?" I get stupid -- and very talkative -- when I'm in shock.

I'm a certified child-carseat inspector in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada; led here by Boing Boing. Your post was nothing new to me in the general sense, but I was horrified by the laxity of the law laid out in the page at the Saddle Brook Police Department, linked to in your article. There's no way an 18-month-old child can be protected from anything in a regular adult seat belt, for example. A quick google showed me that there's a more recent version at the Division of Highway Traffic Safety:
http://www.nj.gov/lps/hts/seatbelts.html

"Children up to age 8 or 80 pounds must ride in a safety or booster seat in the rear seat of the vehicle."
Newfoundland's booster seat law only goes to age 5 or 18 kilos, so you're better off in that area. Ideally I'd like to see the word "appropriate" in there so the babies aren't in booster seats of the wrong size. Since airbags are treacherous for under-average-size people of any age, I'm glad to see it legislated that even in a safety-seat the front seat's no place for a child. The adults in the back seat still legally don't have to wear belts, though; very strange.

I hope your post changes a few minds, and I send my best wishes for fewer and fewer horror stories as the years go on.

On SUVs vs sedans: I drive a 93 Jeep Cherokee Sport (mainly because though I wanted a minivan, I couldn't afford the ones on the lot that day and HAD to purchase). When I bought it, I noticed the bright orange label on the back of the driver's sunshield, warning about how SUVs are prone to roll over.

I noticed the higher center of gravity, and believing the warning, have so far managed to avoid spinning on that axis. (Actually, I've only once ever spun on another axis without control, and managed to avoid hitting anything that time.)

But when I go to Florida to visit my family, and drive the sedans there, I notice how much closer to the ground I am, and how much more stable. (Sort of like a baseball batter who warms up with a weighted bat switching back to his normal lumber.) So far, I've also avoided driving faster and cornering harder as a result. But you never know; senility might set in any time I go down there :-)

(No. I have no intention of driving unsafely, and the family belts in or we don't move. Guests, too, when/if I drive with them, which is quite rare as there are no empty seats.)

Tye (183): Back in the day before seat belts, my aunt used to put her arm out in front of whichever one of us was riding shotgun when she needed to slow down or to stop quickly.

You know, it's funny-- I usually keep my purse on the passenger seat when I'm alone in the car, and my purse is both large and heavy, due to my habit of carrying wallet, phone, camera, spare glasses, knitting, some light reading and three months of old receipts and random bits of paper. So whenever I brake, I have to reach out to stop my purse from thumping over onto the floor and spilling its contents everywhere.

Apparently the habit is so ingrained that I do it with a passenger in the seat, because the other night, on the way to a movie with my friend, she noticed it and cried "You do the soccer-mom arm!" Which, she explained, is what moms do when they've got a kid in the passenger seat. I had no idea it was a common thing, or that it had a name.

Dad was a WWII (B-17) pilot. Put seat belts the family sedan before the Highway Patrol had them. I drove Phone Co. vehicles when there was only AT&T and everybody learned the Smith System. Where is it today? You can bet your ass my kids do too.

graydon @80 writes:

> The cognitive-immunity-to-Newtonian-mechanics thing that I especially and particularly just don't get is the number of people who cut off streetcars ("trolleys") in Toronto.

Melbourne has trams too. I've seen the aftermath of a tram derailed by a bus - the bus was severely concertinaed while the tram, though it was about two feet off the tracks, looked pretty much as it did before.

And a bus is heavier than a car.

My Mom did the Soccer Mom Arm thing when we'all were kids.

The first few family cars I remember didn't have seat belts.

How Times Have Changed: A few years back (1990 or so) I was behind a car waiting at the toll both of the Whitestone Bridge. There was a toddler loose in the back seat. I had to restrain myself from honking and getting out to scold them. It seems utterly insane to let kids roll around loose like that.

It seems utterly insane to let kids roll around loose like that.

Oh, absolutely. I suspect the reason I didn't know about the Soccer Mom Arm is that my parents wouldn't let us into the front seat until we were well on the legal side of the weight requirements for sitting there. And, of course, we always buckled up.

I did spend a number of long car rides in the back seat of the minivan, with the middle lap belt on, but stretched out lengthwise on the bench to sleep. Lord only knows what *that* would have done to me in an accident.

I'm a former EMT. Been on accident scenes, been in accidents. I walked away from the accidents I was in because I'm a fanatic about wearing seat belts.

One of the messiest scenes I ever responded to involved a car that went over an embankment and rolled. I didn't actually get a look at the patient; the paramedic declared her dead at scene and called for the medical examiner while I was getting the suction out of the ambulance. She'd been thrown out of the car and had her face smashed flat, or so I'm told. All in all, it was a lousy way to spend Christmas Eve.

Another time I was driving on a major highway, when a van going in the opposite direction attempted to cross the median and come over the guard rail at me. The guard rail held, amazingly, and the van bounced toward the center of the median and hit a sign pole. The driver took the windshield with him as he pitched out the front of the van. He was still conscious immediately after the crash, although not by the time the ambulance arrived (which took way too long). One of the joys of that incident was having to move a patient with a probable spine injury away from the potential asphyxiation/fire hazard of a ruptured gas tank. He was downhill from it, in a ditch. There weren't any good options there.

I will add that there's nothing like being unrestrained in the back of a moving ambulance to convince you that seat belts are a good thing even absent the accident victims. Unfortunately, it's not always possible to work the patient while restrained (CPR comes to mind).

We got our first seat belts in 1960 -- for the kid. She had just done a complete flip off the seat onto her head, at a very minor stop. We looked at each other and went directly to the automotive store. Where they had *no* seat belts for kids, only for adults. We finally found the Rose Safe-Hi Children's Safety Harness, and then we went looking for after-market belts for ourselves.

The Rose Safe-Hi was a full body harness that latched onto a belt around the seat back, or onto a conventional lap belt. A wonderful invention, and the kids loved them. They later proved to have a number of other safety-related uses.

My doctor goes through a standard list of risk-assessment questions with me every year when I visit for a check-up, and on that list, along with "Do you smoke?" and so forth, is the question, "Do you wear a seatbelt?" followed by "Even in taxis?"

The first time I went to this doctor, I was blazing through her risk list, feeling smug about giving all the right answers, until we hit this latter question.

"Uh . . ."

I don't take taxis very often (hell, I'm not in a car at all more than once a month), but until that day, whenever I had been in a cab, for some reason I'd felt that my usual seatbelt habit didn't apply. And my doctor was familiar enough with this absurd suspension of common sense that she had added it to the list of questions she poses to every patient.

Since that day, I've always buckled up, especially in taxis. So that I can chirp, "Yes!" when my doctor asks that question again at my next visit.

I wear seatbelts.

Unless I'm really depressed. When I'm really depressed, I cross streets without looking too. Drivers are supposed to yield to pedestrians, no matter what the light says, at least in New Jersey. Funny how being depressed makes me rely on the lawfulness of strangers.

I never thought, before seeing that video, of an unrestrained passenger as a ballistic object. Now I'll wear a seatbelt no matter how depressed I am.

I was sitting in the left-lane, foot on the brake, in stopped traffic on the I-10 Interstate, when after a period of about 15-30 seconds, I glanced into the rear-view mirror to see a full-sized Dodge 1500 at 70+ highway speed, and maybe at a distance of two car-lengths behind me, obviously oblivious to the fact that everyone in front of him was not moving, bearing down on me. As I lowered my eyes, and before I could make any decisions, I was hit, pushed into the median, and in about 4 seconds was sitting, sort-of reclined back in my seat. I hadn't heard any brakes squealing from his truck, and it seemed he made no effort to avoid me. Asleep at the wheel, I say.

In the impact, the back of my head had hit something, and when I came to a stop, I was feeling dazed and foggy, but realized I was OK. I turned off the car, opened my door, which creaked, realized my seat was nearly fully reclined, then stepped from the vehicle. Police arrived, ambulance, I was taken to a hospital, checked out, X-Rayed, released. Everything seemed OK, but I was told, "You'll feel it tomorrow."

Below are the pictures of what I observed when I visited my car the next day to get my personal items from the vehicle. The entire rear of the car, and all trunk contents were obliterated; Both back-doors were jammed closed. Looking around, I found what my head had hit. I knew it was not something hard, since it didn't hurt badly, as I described it to the doctors as it feeling like bonking my head on a carpeted floor laying back too fast. There, in the backseat, I found my hair stuck into the top of the back of the rear seat's leather. My head was just a few inches from solid steel. It was a close call, for sure.

I felt OK the next day, and I seem to have no lasting affects. The only lasting soreness, which cleared after about a week, was that my stomach muscles were sore, as if I'd done too may sit-ups.

Clearly my seatbelt saved me, as my head would have certainly impacted the truck and rear deck as it came forward and into the vehicle from the impact.

The truck that hit me, afterwards, hit the truck in front of me, it turns out. The police report revealed that He, the guy in front, saw the impact about to happen, and floored-it into the middle lane, but was hit anyway. At the time I had wondered how I didn't impact anyone else. That's why. Either way, without me trying, I was into the median, since he hit more towards the drivers side, knocking me in that direction, I guess.

I now make an effort to snug-up my belt after I'm seated, to be sure I'm held in place if the same were to happen again.

Thank you, full-sized American car, and thanks to myself for always remembering to buckle-up!

No thanks to the uninsured moron, asleep at the wheel, nor my insurance company for giving me 12k for a car with only 49k miles, like-new, all options, and an original cost of 32k!

http://members.cox.net/the_don3k/carcrash/

What proportion of US states have compulsory seatbelt legislation? Reading through this thread I keep shaking my head in amazement at the though of there being places where it's legal not to wear a seatbelt.

I think Americans - even those who wouldn't dream of describing themselves as 'libertarian' - put a stress on individual freedoms which can seem odd to people from other places, and that this may have something to do with it.

As for why people don't wear seatbelts - I've only just got around to signing up as an organ donor, and it took me ages to make myself sign the forms. The reason why was obvious to me only in retrospect - signing up as an organ donor means admitting to yourself that you really are mortal and that your life is not a special case. I suspect something like this is a factor with people who don't wear seatbelts.

And yeah, I always always wear one. Victoria was the first place in the world to make it compulsory, so yay us! Of course, I was seven years old and living in another state at the time, so I can't claim all of the credit.

Jim @25:

I don't particularly like the scary bloody films. It made me too terrified to drive for years and years, and most of the boys in my drivers ed class seemed to think they were funny and look for opportunities to prove to the teacher that they coiuld do that and not get hurt. (Not hurting other people didn't seem to be on their agenda anywhere.)

Signal 30 was the film was the one I was scarred by.

Oh, and: accident anecdotes are affected by what I call the "I'm here to tell you" factor. I first noticed this in the fourth quarter of 2001, when all sorts of people had stories like "wow, I'd've been there, but I missed my train" or "I overslept that morning" or "I stopped at the bookstore for no reason I can think of."

Well, that's fine. Guess why you don't hear "I caught the early train for once" or "I decided to go in early to catch up on some work" or "I skipped my stop at the coffee shop"? That's right, because those people aren't around to tell you their stories.

When people with these stories say "God was watching out for me," I want to hit them. Do they really think they're any better than the people who died when the tower collapsed? (Or before, obviously; I'm making a literary allusion.) What was God doing there, punishing them?

By the same token(s), you know people with stories about how they lived because they weren't wearing a seatbelt...but you don't know anyone with a story about how they died because they weren't wearing a seatbelt, because you never got to know them, and dead (wo)men tell no tales. But they're the silent majority (as opposed to the tale-telling minority).

Xopher #206: You've hit on the really unhealthy Stockholm-syndrome aspects of the creepy type of religion that makes me shudder. "My whole town and all my friends and family and everything I care about was just destroyed, but I lived! God was really watching out for me!"

More on topic: It's kind of funny to see Grindhouse and then come home to this post. And if anyone ever says that violent entertainment desensitizes me, I'll point out to them that earlier today I was laughing and smiling and clapping about body-destroying car accidents, and now I had to just skim through all of these, rather than really reading them, because I was becoming so horrified.

Seatbelt 100% of the time, here.

India @201: The taxi drivers here in SF are down right scary--they'll careen all over the road in inclement weather at top speeds. I ALWAYS buckle my belt and hunker down.

#2, Carrie V: It's really quite simple. You don't start the car up until everyone is buckled up, including reluctant backseat passengers. Like the guy in the movie "Repo Man" said, "Nobody rides with me unless they wear their seatbelt. It's one of my rules."

Maybe this comment thread needs a checklist: yes, I've had a car accident and walked away because I was wearing a seatbelt. Yes, I'm in a country where wearing a seatbelt is mandatory. Yes, I (nearly always) insist on wearing a seatbelt in the back of a cab, too, and I'm working on the "nearly". My question is about the fit of seatbelts and those of us who are, ahem, large. I know there are ways to adjust the seatbelt for safety/comfort/fit for those who are petite, but what about the obese? I sometimes have problems getting an inertia reel seatbelt to unreel enough for me to fasten it, and then the shoulder strap is usually up under my neck instead of across my chest. Is there anything I can do/should be doing (apart from losing the weight, d'uh)

Teresa @ 147 - I bought an SUV because I was tired of looking under the bumpers of everyone else's SUV. Since it handles like a truck, it's actually served to calm my driving. I mostly like it, except for the gas mileage.

Jim Macdonald @ 149 - I'd strengthen that. If your helmet has gotten bonked (in the American sense) replace it immediately. Don't think about it, do it. Bicycle or motorcycle. Also, foam ages. My undamaged (and expensive) motorcycle helmet is now 6, and due for a change.

FWIW, you can see my safety-orange helmet, high-viz armored jacket, armored overpants and other bike gear on my flickr photostream. Yes, I take pictures of just about everything.

I find your comments to be accurate and on target. It is a tragedy that Gov. Corzine suffered this accident. As president of the traffic Survival School of Pima County, here in Tucson, we require our instructors to stress seat belt use at all times. (It is a state law, but AZ lags behind other states in its enforcement.) As a former employee of the state and county governments, I was required to wear seatbelts, and to take defensive driving classes about every three years.

I, too suffered a near fatal collision in 1978. The seatbelt saved my life, and I came out of it with contusions and a broken nose.

The seat belt lesson has not as yet been effectivley inculcated among all drivers, despite massive education programs among governmental agencies, insurance companies, and the private sector.

I came across your site while doing some news search. Keep up your good work.

My mother-in-law was saved this winter by the seatbelt in a head on collision. Snow, S curve and a speeding driver crossing the center line. I've been in accidents in which the seatbelt made the difference between pacing in a pissed mood by the side of the road and an ambulance trip, same for husband and my parents. Damn simple tech that works.
But do set your headrest correctly or your neck will scream at you.

"I don't feel comfortable in a car until I'm buckled up."

Nor do I. As I've said on more than one occasion, I would no more get into a car without a seat belt than I would board a roller coaster without the safety bar engaged.

Great post and comments!

Hey there Jim,

I will post my comment and request, since I couldn't find an email address for you on your links.

I am an ER doc, and have worked in trauma centers most of my career. I am on the receiving end of you prehospital guys, and can vouch for seatbelts being a good thing. Given, seatbelts can cause injury, but I just have to laugh about people who argue against them. As you so rightly point out, Newton was right - f=ma, and you don't really want the f on your face.

I won't bore you with my many stories, but a typical interaction is:

Seatbelt: Man, that's a nasty bruise there, and you need a few stitches.

No Seatbelt: Meet Mr. Ventilator. Welcome to our friendly ICU. Or, even worse, the ever-popular Family Conference to ask about organ donation. My personal favorite part of the job.

Which brings me to my request: Can I use your post as a patient handout? Or, maybe to hand out at our local high schools? It says what needs to be said better than I could say it, and if more people see it, it may save some lives.

My dad was a California Highway Patrolman for 32 years. We wore seatbelts back farther than I can remember - I'm 44 now and I'm uncomfortable sitting in a parked car without a seatbelt.

When he'd been on the force about 20 years he started telling people he'd never unbuckled a dead body. It was still true when he retired.

Hi

I did not wear seat belt but now I am going to everyday. Your article is chillingly informative. It is posts like this that make surfing the web a meaningful activity.

wowmir

Randall, #4 - The exact quote is;
"He started it with a PULL; he thought he could stop it with a shove. They had to amputate both legs, but they saved his life."
From Robert A. Heinlein's "The Rolling Stones," said about a "green" spaceport worker and the effects of inertia.

DDB @57: Have you ever moved a boat around in dock? It's a pretty similar situation, I expect, to moving a massive object around in zero-g (except with one fewer dimension). The Heinlein quote rings very true. Our usual intuition is that an object's momentum is related to how hard you push it. But in the absence of friction, the momentum is force times time, even if the force is small. You can give the thing a moderate push over a five-second interval, walk to the other side, and using your friction-trained intuition, try stopping it when it's one second's travel from crushing you --- you'll get crushed. The basic safety rule is to never, never put any part of yourself between the boat and the wharf. (That's what fenders are for, and the nice crushable wooden wharf. Not your nice crushable legs.) Heinlein having been in the Navy, I wouldn't be surprised if he had had some of the same safety rules drilled into him.

On SUVs: They make me uneasy too, in a very monkey-brain way. I'm high up, on a wobbly, uncertain platform, in an eggshell-thin metal and glass balloon. I'd much rather be low to the ground, maneuverable, and in what feels like a much sturdier passenger compartment. (Even in a normal-height car, I can see several cars ahead in traffic.) Driving a truck is a little less uneasy-making: I'm still too exposed and can't dodge, but at least I'm inside a heavy object.

And on being "thrown clear": my mother is yet another of those people who'd be dead if she had been wearing a seatbelt. Instead of being impaled, she ended up in a snow bank, relatively unharmed. Regardless, she was insistent that I wear a seatbelt; I've never really considered not doing so, even when I was young and foolish in other ways. I suspect that as a nurse she, too, had a visceral understanding of the odds and the risks. (If your parents work ER or are EMTs, you get dinnertime stories of the people who were in accidents that day. I got dinnertime stories of people who were in accidents ten or twenty years ago and still couldn't feed themselves or recognize their family. If they were lucky enough to have family who still visited them.)

On the other hand, I suppose if I were forced to drive an old, no-safety-features car through a slalom course of fluffy pillows and balloons, I just might take the nonexistent seatbelt off. I'd wear a helmet though...

For most of my life my mother just never could get into the seatbelt habit.

On one trip out to visit, the rental agency gave me a Jeep Cherokee. My wife and I had one for the bulk of the '90s, so I was pretty accustomed to driving them. The day before I was going to get on the plane and go back home, I was driving my mom home in a light rain.

I pulled onto the freeway onramp at completely normal speed and the Jeep did a 180 spin into the ditch alongside the road. Momentum and the Jeep's lovely high center of gravity threw a party that I had no choice but to attend. I spent about 10 seconds watching the lip of the 15' embankment rising up to meet the passenger window and my unbuckled mother.

The car only managed to tilt about 36 degrees before falling back down on all four tires.

My mom got seatbelt religion.

Several months later a police officer died on that onramp when his patrol car skidded out of control and into the ditch I'd nearly gone into. Something was wrong with the asphalt. It oozed and became extra slippery in the rain.

I am so very, very happy to no longer have a Jeep.

#156 Perhaps the appropriate punishment for not wearing a seat belt is eight hours of community service, doing custodial care of someone who was severely disabled by not wearing a seat belt.

Because disabled people exist to serve as a warning to others?

... sorry, hit a twitch there ...

I think perhaps if it was a volunteer who chose to do that kind of education work then maybe, but in general people employ carers to get necessary help, not improve their understanding.

Nona, #194: As you observe, it's not necessary to be a mom (let alone a soccer mom) in order to do the blocking-arm thing. When I've had something large in the front passenger seat, I've been known to belt it in -- people who see this tend to think it's silly, but hey, that's what the seatbelt is FOR. But still, the "throwing out a restraining arm" reaction seems to be a deeply-ingrained reflex, in the same way that when something is coming at you, you'll throw your arm up to protect your face.

Oh, and yes, I'm here to write this because I was wearing my seatbelt the day I got T-boned by a pickup doing about 60 MPH. I spent a week in the ICU after the spleen removal, another 2 weeks in the hospital while the punctured lung recovered, a further 2 weeks in bed at home plus some 4 or 5 months walking with a cane due to pelvic fractures. If I hadn't been belted in, I'd have been thrown across the car and my skull crushed on the opposite door.

You'd better believe I wear a seatbelt.

Seeing as seat belts and motorbike helmets have been compulsory ever here for as long as I can remember (as long as I have been driving, certainly) my mouth is a little open at there still being a necessity to argue to the case.

Still, there are imbeciles everywhere - viz the BMW X5 driver turning a sharp corner out of our railway station on an icy road, one hand doing up his belt (hurrah) with the other holding his mobile phone to his ear. What was he steering with (and, no, X5 drivers don't have one; they wouldn't be driving X5s if they did...)

Then you have the parents on pushbikes surrounded by their little ones, all of whom have their helmets on, only the parent doesn't. Kid falls a couple of feet onto their still malleable skull and walk away laughing; parent falls a lot more feet onto their rigid skull and have to have their drool wiped away by their loved ones for the rest of their lives.

Any form of driver education should involve a visit to a casualty department and a High Dependency Unit.

Drive safely, one and all. You are important.

Without a seatbelt, you're just perched on a hurtling platform. With a seatbelt, you're melded, one with the car, symbiotic, feeling through it and extending your will outwards by it. You're one organism. You live on the road, instead of just inhabiting it.

On a different note that's been touched on some, when there's something coming at me I throw up my arm to defend my head by instinct. Way, way better, though, to be able to throw up 2000 pounds of crumple-zoned steel. Oh hell yes I want the car around me.

When I was hang gliding, the instructors were crystal clear: let the aluminum break. It's replaceable, you're not. When learning the sequence of falling from the sky under parachute, the last step as you approach the ground is to get up into the control frame and try to get as much aluminum as possible between yourself and the ground. Every joule of energy that goes into shattering aluminum is a joule that's not going into you... And they all go somewhere.

A seatbelt saved my life. When paramedics got to the scene, they yelped, "Who was in that green Honda?!" They couldn't believe it was me, the girl standing calmly on the curb with a few bumps and bruises. One said, "We're putting you in the next seatbelt commercial."

Xopher @202
Good. Because you will never recover from depression in a morgue, and some of us would rather have you around. Now can we talk about checking before you cross the road?

If only Diana had been wearing a seat belt, ......

And, in reference to the "trends in driving" comments earlier (do we drive less safely or more safely now than in the past?), I have some perspective.

I last drove in the US in November of 2004. I have just been to the same place (SF Bay Area) again, driving again. Having grown up there, I also have a 15 year old baseline of How It Usta Was.

Drivers do go slower because of greater traffic density. However, lane discipline has eroded - there is much more passing on the right. But when the road is clear, everyone speeds up further than they used to (as a mass - there have always been outliers) to make up for all that lost time.

Almost no one is keeping enough stopping distance between themselves and the cars behind them.

And sometimes it seems like everyone talks on their cell phone handset while driving.

Thanks for the article; it reminded me that I need to audit what is stored in the rear section of my station wagon. A brief, from memory inventory reveals a 4hp outboard engine, a 4 gallon sand blaster, metal rack legs, electric grinder tool at least 3 pounds, a scuba tank (80 cubic feet compressed to 3000psi) and several tool bags @5kg each). I always wear my seat belt, but obviously, this is only half of the safety equation.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever seen a belted passenger who's seat has been dislodged from its rails?

I'd like to agree with Phil at #43. Seatbelts undoubtedly save the lives of people wearing them in crashes. But it's not clear whether they save lives overall.

The John Adams paper looking at this issue is The Failure of Seat Belt Legislation. The key section is on pages 4–5:

By 1981 there was evidence available from thirteen countries that had passed seat belt laws. Figure 6.1 compares their road accident records with those of a “no-law” group of four countries that had not at that time passed a law. Together these 17 countries constituted an impressive sample; they contained over 80 per cent of the world’s car population. The bars on the “law” graph indicate the dates at which seat belt laws were implemented, beginning with Australia and ending with Denmark, West Germany and Switzerland in January 1976. Around this time all 17 countries with the exception of Australia and Spain, experienced marked decreases in their road accident death tolls. Collectively, the group of countries that had not passed seat belt laws experienced a greater decrease than the group that had passed laws.

Siddhartha@218: Thanks for confirming my memory -- I too thought it was "pull". Which makes sense when you think about it.

As far as collisions with streetcars ("trams" or "tramways") are concerned, you might enjoy this weird accident - no injuries, but the incurable stupidity of the driver is very well visible.

This happened in Europe, the Czech Republic, Prague. Prague has a very dense network of tramways, more than 100 miles of the tracks in the city. The driver has a Prague licence plate, so she probably can't claim the "I am a edneck-who-never-drove-through-a-city" excuse (ok, maybe she only borrowed that car).

The picture

(not graphic, work-safe).

Re: bicycle helmets-
Get a helmet that fits *properly*. I had to special order my helmet, since my head's a bit larger than the standard "one size fits all" models in most bike shops.

My biggest pet peeve w/r/t aggressive drivers would have to be when I'm trying to leave a Suitable Gap between myself and the car ahead, and someone chooses to slide in.... I wound up getting ticketed for failure to maintain clear distance ahead after a soccermom did that to me on a rainy day.

I'd love to hear more thoughts about kid seats. Specifically what the hell those of us who don't drive and therefore don't own a carseat of our own should do.

I mostly just don't get cars with my daughter, but sometimes it is unavoidable - like getting to and from airports that aren't on a train line. In the UK I tend to sit in the backwards facing seat with the baby strapped to me (I carry her in a sling anyway) but even that doesn't feel very safe. I'm going to Wiscon with her this year and I have no idea how we're going to get from the airport to the con hotel safely.

I also refuse pointblank to get between city coaches with her - the belts are a farce. I do get within city buses because the average speed is slower - once again I go for the backwards facing seats if possible. I also get the train.

I find it very difficult to find advice as most seems to start from the assumption you have some sort of car and are wondering what seat to buy.

And I doubt I'll ever forget the sensation of my baby becoming weightless in my arms during turbulance. The baby plane belts are a pain but I'd never dream of not using one.

"Perhaps the appropriate punishment for not wearing a seat belt is eight hours of community service, doing custodial care of someone who was severely disabled by not wearing a seat belt."

so if you're severely disabled you get out of doing the community service? Sweet!

On speed:
F= 1/2(Mv)² (Force equals half the square of Mass times velocity).
On a 200 mile trip, going 80 vs. 65 saves you a whole fricking 15 minutes. How much does it save you on a ten mile trip?
That extra 15mph yields 1.5 times the force of impact.
Life isn't a race, it's a survival course*.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. Frequently.

* Oh, OK, life is a whole bunch of other things, too.

Re #235: so if you're severely disabled you get out of doing the community service? Sweet!

If you're severely disabled from not wearing a seatbelt, you get condemned to care by untrained idiots who won't wear seatbelts.

109: One thing about British motorways Not Many People Know - they are never straight. Reason? The engineers who laid out the first ones at the end of the 50s studied the original Nazi version, and noticed that too much straightaway led drivers to lose attention. Hence, all ours were aligned with lots of long, sweeping curves to force the public to pay attention. Some of the older A-roads predate this (the A580 and A127 come to mind) and are gunbarrel straight...and more dangerous...

181: One of the investigation panel's recommendations in the SQ006 crash at CKS a few years back was that Singapore Airlines should stop making the stewardesses wear heels. Under management pressure to get away before a typhoon closed the field, poor design and aforesaid storm helped the crew turn onto the wrong one of two parallel runways, closed for repairs and littered with construction vehicles, holes, etc. All on board survived the crash, but the evacuation was badly botched, several doors never being opened. The airport fire brigade took an age to show up due to poor C2, and many of those aboard died of smoke inhalation.

More broadly: my dad was an early-adopter of seat belts, who specified them on his first car long before they became mandatory and fitted rear belts before they became mandatory. The result is that I've never been able to get into a car without grabbing behind my offside shoulder.

Regarding motorcycles and helmets, well, I'll have to disappoint Jim here...when I worked on ranches in Australia, I remember vividly that there were never enough to go round. I spent a lot of time on bikes protected only by a hat, which seems a lot scarier in hindsight. Of course, when you're 18 you're immortal and invincible.

What? It just felt that way? Shit..

One thing I always wondered, though, was if there is a standard for the structural integrity of the back of a pick-up's cab. As by definition you'll have a lot of heavy metal things, dogs, bricks etc there, it's only going to go one way in the event of a frontal collision, right?

Speaking of pickups, then there was the whole riding-in-the-back thing. Actually, looking back, I was regularly amazed by outback people's attitude to danger. I had the "Stop! No! Don't angle-grind that old gasoline barrel!" experience more than once, and I remember handing over the keys of a Land Cruiser to someone who later observed that the 6.5 litre diesel V8 seemed "sluggish". Inquiry revealed that he wasn't familiar with the quaint British custom of "applying the handbrake" and had been driving about all day with it on. I was also once sprayed with a pesticide whose container advised you to keep atropine injectors handy.

Lee @ 222

It's not just other people in the passenger seat that attract the "soccer-mom arm". I really dislike having to reach across to steady some package or loose item I've left in the passenger seat for convenience; it leaves me with only one hand on the wheel and a feeling of not being in control of the car or able to put all my attention to the road conditions*. So I've taken to belting stray items into the passenger seat, to keep them from sliding around. I get funny looks from people who see the takeout food packages belted in.

* It's not as bad as it might be: I have an automatic transmission on my current car. If I go back to manual in my next car, as I've been thinking, there's no way I'm going to put myself in the position of only having one hand available while driving.

Re #234:

Maybe look for a carseat that is lightweight and easy to carry with you, and take in and out of the car? Perhaps the sort that works as an infant carrier as well, so you can carry her in it if logistics so demand.

For a long flight, both of you will probably be more comfortable if she's sitting in an infant seat strapped into a seat separate from yours, rather than trying to hold her for hours. But that's an option that depends on finances, of course.

One time when I was flying, the woman seated next to me was traveling with her infant on her lap, and she had a little harness which the baby wore, that had a short strap with a loop on it, and the mother's seatbelt was threaded through the loop. This probably wouldn't provide the structural protection of sitting in a carseat designed to withstand some impact, but it might keep the baby from being thrown away from the mother, depending on the quality of the harness.

Nuala @234
Most car-rental places also rent car seats out. And despite the literature, most car seats can go in most cars.

So for Wiscon, I'd contact the airport car rental places and see how much for just the car seat? For the rest, I don't know - having kids coincided with giving up the carfreee lifestyle for us (it's the end of "carefree", so what's one more adjective? They're only letter different anyway.)

It would not be impossible to buy a car seat and own it without the car, but it wouldn't always be in the right place at the right time.

Also, note when your daughter is bigger that the more recent black taxis have a toddler booster in the middle of the back seat, folded into the seatback.

Ursula @240. Once you get used to cloth carriers the idea of carrying a 20lb+ kid in one of those bucket seats just makes you boggle. It can't be good for one's back. Regardless, paying for a plane seat plus a new car seat would make flying totally unaffordable. The baby's more deeply green dad sees that as a good thing but it's not his family that lives in the US.

abi @241. I should have been clearer I don't merely not drive. I can't drive. So I'll be using public transport of some sort (which includes taxis) from the airport, not a rental car. We do have one of the bucket type seats but she's outgrown it and the next size up seem much less transportable.

The sets of grandparents are all offering to buy seats for their cars which means one baby consuming 3 car seats, which just seems silly.

I'll keep an eye out for the toddler seat when she's big enough. I wish the black taxi company would just bite the bullet and come up with an infant protection system - they seem to cater for every other possible contingency. Though, as you say, for many families baby equals finally getting a car so us occasional hold outs are probably not worth catering for.

Anyway, I don't mean to spawn a whole subthread about trying to navigate through a car dominated world without a car, I was just wondering if anyone had any tips about how to balance the wish to protect one's baby when they occasionally do have to get into a car with the impracticality of carrying modern infant car seats around without a car.

Here's a nasty little secret the states don't want you to know:

You know all those metal guardrails lining the interstates, the ones that protect you from hitting big immobile objects like signs, bridge pilings or abutments, or flying off into the wild blue yonder?

They've only been tested in crashes where the vehicle was traveling no faster than 57mph.

That's right; 57mph. What's the speed limit on the interstate? 60mph? 65mph? 70mph? 75mph?

Now tell me, what speed do YOU travel on that interstate? If you're like everyone else, it's 5-10mph faster than the speed limit sign says.

I'm a highway design engineer; I've seen the FHWA crash test videos of vehicles hitting steel guardrail at 57mph (no I don't know why they didn't use 60mph). It looks like a bomb explosion; shrapnel goes everywhere, and in one video the front wheel was pulled off the truck when it caught a guardrail post. Ripped it right off the axle.

Those nifty looking cable barriers states are stretching up along the medians to keep drivers from crossing them? They were only tested to 60mph too. Hit them at 75mph and FHWA refuses to say what you can expect to happen.

Even the solid concrete median barriers are only tested to 60mph. Hitting one of them at 75mph will send your vehicle back into the lanes (along with a cloud of steel shrapnel) in an unknown direction.

Oh yes, almost forgot; guardrail was never tested with SUV's, minivans or the larger multipassenger vans. When FHWA did a crash test with an SUV the vehicle nearly every time vaulted the guardrail, or rolled over it. Imagine that happening at 75mph.

Yes, there are barriers that have been tested for higher speeds; they are the concrete bridge rails you see that are solid with a sloped face. There's also a really rigid steel barrier that has been tested for higher speeds (IIRC it's 65mph), but it's rarely used on anything but bridge rail retrofits due to its high cost.

So next time you're tempted to take the interstate at a really high speed, take a look at that guardrail next to you, and realize it won't even stop your vehicle at 80mph. You'll blow right through it and into whatever is behind it.

Re: Larry Brennan @ 211: Yes, replace your helmet--of whatever kind--any time it hits something, whether or not you see damage. Helmets are single-use safety devices.

Here's a quick layperson's explanation of why: The hard shell of the helmet is only half the protective element. The other half is the foam inside that collapses when your head moves toward the shell on impact. The foam serves to slow the impact of your brain against the inside of your skull. Already-collapsed foam is useless. There is no way for you to tell whether the foam is collapsed after an accident or not. Assume it is, and replace the helmet.

And fasten the bloody chin strap, for pity's sake. The helmet does you no good if it flies off your head.

This is also why it's fricking idiotic for horseback riders to wear English hardhats instead of helmets. (Don't get me started on disciplines that require headwear other than helmets for showing.)

I harp on this because everybody in the horse world knows at least one person who's dead or paralyzed because they weren't wearing a helmet--and a stunning number of riders still don't wear a damned helmet. It's a combination of ego and denial.

Fascinating. I was just reading this post that, among other things, explains why people tend to remember deviations from the norm far better than the norm itself, when I run across such a fine example of the process in action. Even many of the people whose posts were paens to the life-saving efficacy of seat-belts just had to mention that one time when being thrown clear saved their life.

According to schema theory, information that is relevant, but contrary to expectations tends to be remembered better than consistent or expected information. For example, you'll remember that time the waiter brought you the bill before the food far longer than you'll remember the thousand times it happened the usual order. You'll remember the 3-packs-a-day lived-to-be-90 smoker better than you'll remember the twelve who died from lung cancer at forty.

Really, it makes me wonder if anecdotal evidence isn't worse than no evidence at all.

Speaking of collisions with trams (streetcars):

I seem to remember, from my time in Holland, that the Dutch have a rule about trams: if you're in a accident with a tram, it's your fault - and that goes for pedestrians and bicycles as well as cars - because a moving tram always has priority and if you get in its way, you're wrong. (A tram can't run a red light because the safety system would stop it.)

Can anyone confirm or deny?

Another reason for not getting in front of anything on rails (apart from the fact that it will cream you) is that it's not fair.

If you hit something (or somebody) with a car, mostly it's a split-second thing - you only have time to think 'oh, shit' before the world is coming to bits around you. If you do have time, maybe you have a chance to steer to minimze the damage. A tram or train driver doesn't have that luxury. It's got lots of momentum and can't manoeuvre; the driver can only sit there looking at what she's about to hit.
It's worst with long freight trains, which can take hundreds of yards to stop. People commit suicide under those things; they know the train can't stop, so they get in place in plenty of time. The driver may have 15-20 seconds knowing what the train's about to do to the person on the line, and knowing that there's not a damn thing he can do about it. They go crazy after a few of those.

As an amendment to the above sentiment...

Please make sure your children's car seats are installed properly and they are also buckled up.

There's nothing more heart wrenching than walking up on a scene where one half of the car is in the road, the other fifty yards away, and the child in the back had no carseat and is lying somewhere in between.

Now go hug your kids.

152, Kathryn: Another cost of accidents is damage to the cars--it isn't always covered by insurance.

My father died in a truck accident 19 years ago. He'd have survived had he worn a seatbelt. The fatal injury was a broken neck from hitting the roof of his truck... he wasn't torn up otherwise. If he'd been stuck firmly to the seat, no fatal injury. He never wore seatbelts. I always wear them! My wife walked away from a 45 mph collision. She was in a Corolla. The woman who pulled out in front of her was also in a Corolla. The other woman was unbelted and ended up in the hospital. That "thrown clear" argument is bull@*^$... too much TV, I guess.

I'd read somewhere that you're five times more likely to be killed if you're ejected from a vehicle. I suppose this sort of statistic comes from counting the dead bodies lying in the road at the scenes of auto wrecks compared the living still inside the steel envelope of the car.

Porkov @ 195

The Smith System is alive and well and in use at major companies all over. Mine is one of them.

India (201), Pixelfish (208): I always try to wear a seatbelt in taxis. An awful lot of them don't have working belts in the back seat. And more often than not, the driver is offended that I want to wear a belt. "What, you don't trust my driving?" My standard reply is, "Sure, I do, I just don't trust all the other drivers."

Larry @ 211 said: I bought an SUV because I was tired of looking under the bumpers of everyone else's SUV. Since it handles like a truck, it's actually served to calm my driving. I mostly like it, except for the gas mileage.

This reminds me of some research I saw last year on the subject of SUVs. One of the perceptions that exists is that the SUV is safer for the SUV's occupants in an SUV-car collision, giving us the classic prisoner's dilemma. It's an ugly if understandable equation. "If my family is safer in the SUV, then I have a duty to put them in it, even if it makes your family less safe. I will only suggest an SUV for my sister, because SUV-SUV collisions are worse and I'd like to be one of the few on the road."

Turns out it's not true and the scale factor has to do mainly with mass and force. The dilemma is different when there's no upside to the uneven cases.

Wendy Bradley (210): I've seen seatbelt extenders in catalogs. They might help you.

Nuala: You might be able to rent just the carseat, even if you're not renting a car. Couldn't hurt to ask.

My boyfriend's little sister was in a car accident. She still suffers from survivor's guilt. She wore her seatbelt and her friend refused to as it would 'wrinkle her blouse'. I guess at least now she is buried in a nice pressed outfit. It's tragic, she was in high school and very young, but similar to so many stories before this one, she was the only one of the five or so kids in the car that was killed. The others didn't even suffer so much as a paper cut, all belted in.

I'm late to the party, but do have a dog in this hunt.

Thanks to Jim.
And, thanks for all the "smart people" stories above.

I worked for a major auto manufacturer in various areas of automotive safety for 31 years. Including crash testing, and field accident analysis, and other areas.
Actually, it was NOT automotive safety.
It was PASSENGER SAFETY.

I've pretty much seen "it all".
Everybody in my vehicles is ALWAYS belted.
Or, they find their own ride elsewhere.

Besides rollover ejections, intersection collision "ejections" are preventable with belts.

Nothing is as heart-rending as reviewing the autopsy pictures of a cute little 4 year old girl needlessly thrown out of a car in a "minor" intersection collision and killed.
NOTHING.

Except for how it affected the medical examiner.

ananymoustroll@229: I've been the passenger belted in when a seat comes off the rails. My head hit the "oh shit" bar in a 1974 Land Cruiser. 4 Stitches in my forehead, and a slight concussion. I shudder to think what may have been if I hadn't been wearing it. Then again, All 6 accidents I've been in I've walked away from. The worst Injury I've sustained is a disconnected muscle in my neck when a cab slammed into the back of my Neon doing about 45mph. I think they call that "whiplash". I no longer put my car into first or reverse unless all passengers are buckled.

No seatbelt?
Drive a Trebuchet!

You know, although it really should have, I don't think it occurred to me before watching that video just how much havoc an unrestrained passenger could do to other people. (I'd been aware that there was potential for related injuries, but it didn't really sink in how serious the injury could be.)

I am now having a discussing with my sweetie about his non-seatbelt-wearing friend with whom he goes driving a lot. I am insisting that he insist that said friend wears a seatbelt or they don't go anywhere. If his friend wants to gamble with his own life, that's his lookout, but he ain't gambling with my guy's life.

I hate wearing seatbelts because I'm significantly overweight -- unless the car maker took big folks into account, lap belts are typically uncomfortable (shoulder belts, I'm a good height for, thankfully). I wear them anyhow. You get used to it a lot quicker than you get used to, you know, no head.

Or, alternately, at least you have time to get used to it.

57 years old, seatbelt wearer for 40, engineer for 34. I no longer get involved with car accident investigations, but as Chief Family Car Buyer still do my best to find safe vehicles. A guy named Thomas Wenzel, P.E., has written on vehicle safety using US accident data. His conclusion was that SUVs are no safer at all than a well engineered mid sized car like a Ford500 or Toyota Camry. You might be better off getting t-boned in an SUV, but worse off in an accident that could be mitigated or avoided by maneuvering, where the SUV's well known propensity to ground loop is a definite liability. I've driven a few SUVs - at one extreme the Porsche Cayenne S was great, at the other extreme a Jeep Liberty felt like I'd imagine a Shriner's parade motorized barstool would.
My insurance company annually sends me a brochure rating vehicles by injury/repair cost/theft. It broadly agrees with Wenzel's findings. An insurance company's agenda is simple: take your money and keep as much as possible. So I think their ratings can be taken seriously. Here's a hoot - two of the top rated cars for injury are the Porsche Carrera and Chevy Corvette, possibly because the drivers who can afford them drive them infrequently, are paying attention to the act of driving and are old enough to know better about things like seat belts and situations that might lead to close calls or worse. No matter what safety features are built in, the most important things are simple proactive measures like wearing seatbelts, not yakking on cell phones, not looking at your nav system screen, etc.

I already posted earlier, but as synchronicity would have it I just heard that a coworker was in a serious bike accident. Several earlier posts mention bicycle helmets. This was three days ago, the group was doing some singletrac trails and jumps. My coworker took a big jump and something went wrong. After crashing to the ground 'like a bag of bricks' he couldn't feel his legs and was is significant pain in his chest. Long story short, he was helicoptered to a hospital after those with him were smart enough to keep him immobilized. He shattered a vertebra and has a huge bruise on his chest where his full face helmet hit. Had he not had the helmet on, his head would have gone the extra 2-3 inches forward and snapped his neck, most likely killed him. He's had one surgery of a few, putting pins to stabilize his spine, but he should 'fully recover' and be able to ride again. Helmets. Seatbelts. Good stuff. He's a neat guy, I'm glad we will keep him around.

As for seat belts in airplanes, the URL link in this post is to a photo of the wreck of a small plane. It hit at over 200 miles an hour. The engine is in the back, the pilot's feet are about 3 feet from the nose. As you can see, the nose pretty much disintegrated.

The pilot was wearing a 5 point harness. His legs were badly broken - and that was all.

Nuala, the "one baby consuming three car seats" caught my eye: it's either that, or one baby consuming up to a half-hour of adult time and effort, plus the danger of inadvertantly damaging some of the attachment points (and the even greater danger of damaging an adult back or shoulder) every time the seat changes cars. There's a point where worrying about consumption of physical resources obscures other matters. In this case: Will the child always be in a seat? Will the seat always be installed properly? Will the seatbelts, snap buckles, and other components of the system stay in good shape?

We've just graduated from a multi-seat use situation with The Nephew, who, at barely nine, is pushing five feet tall and a bit over a hundred pounds. His parents farm, so he had a permanent seat in the road car and one that got moved from one truck to another about twice a year; he also had a permanent seat in our minivan- during hay season, he was with us daily, and moving the seats around just got to be too much work, compared to the relatively small outlay for a new seat.

My parents were early seat-belt adopters; when my Mom got a Corvair she ordered them as an optional accessory.

I suppose Ralph Nader would consider that (Alanis-esque) ironic, but it was always her favorite car.

My car doesn't move until everyone is buckled up.

John @ #243,

Those figures are no news to me (my husband tends the server farm of a state DOT division and brings home a lot of professional hand-outs) and they are, indeed, one reason I've been carping for years about the necessity for highway design to be more mindful of the "monkey brain" factors which cause people to speed.

Especially matters pertaining to the psychological aspects of visual processing and the need to deal with signage and barriers according to the actual visual environment of specific locations. The interaction of human psychology and landscape at the I-5 US-101 junction in Olympia, from the Pacific exit to Trosper Road, for instance, would be a dandy PhD project for some enterprising young psychologist.

A few questions:

1) Is there a way to test seatbelts in older cars to see if they need replaced?

(My son was in an accident a few years ago, driving a 60's-era VW Bug he'd bought a few months before. The lap belt held him in his seat, but the shoulder belt didn't tighten on impact, letting him eat the steering wheel, with a broken jaw and major dental damage resulting.)

(A few months after that accident, he had a second almost-identical accident -- both involved other drivers pulling out of a side street without checking for traffic -- while driving the Volvo sedan I'd loaned him. Not only did the seat belt work properly -- no damage AT ALL to Chris -- but while the front end of the Volvo was almost folded in half, there was NO damage to the passenger compartment where he was seated. Thanks, Volvo!)

2) I hope some of the pro highway safety guys who've commented here can answer this one: I've always heard that posted speed limits are set 10 mph lower than the the top safe speed highways are actually designed for. I.e., a road posted for 45mph was actually designed to be driven safely up to 55mph.

Is this real, or just an urban legend? Since most people seem to drive 5-10mph faster than posted speed limits, it seems to be a common perception.

(Though there seems to be a *blip* in that perception around the 75mph mark. On freeways posted for 75mph, I've noticed that most people seem to only drive 77-78mph, and very few exceed 80mph.)

Pixelfish @ 208: I can only imagine, with those hills! I'm in New York, and I've had some truly dangerous cab drivers, even with my limited experience in taxis. I dunno--maybe I was thinking, "Well, they drive all day long. They must know what they're doing." Pffft. Like I said, it was an absurd lapse in common sense, but apparently it's a common lapse, since my doctor feels she needs to ask about it specifically.

It's scary how fast this Thread has grown, and how many of us have our own stories to tell. The current automotive Age: Unsafe at Any Speed (unless we wear our seatbelts).

Just ahd to chime in. I've been in one accident, that was seemingly "minor" but would have been much, much worse had I not been belted, and I'll explain.

I was driving to work one rainy morning, doing about 60mph down I-40 in Knoxville. At that time, there was construction, and there were concrete barriers along the outside lane, with no regard for drainage. Why I was in the outside lane I don't remember, but anyhow...

Suddenly the car rotated left. Best guess is that the passenger front tire popped; the car proceeded down the highway at speed (no braking, was trying to maintain control) when it snapped left and head-on directly into the concrete barriers.

Now; belted: car spins around 180 from the barrier, I floor it and take it directly off the highway into the construction area. My action end up totalling the car but I'm completely uninjured.

Scenario unbelted: I get flung away from the controls and creamed by a semi or two unable to haul down from 60mph on a rainy interstate.

That would have been unhappy. I'll gladly eat the $6,200 in damage I did to my poor car (2001 Daewoo Leganza) to avoid injury in an accident. That car was a picture of energy absorption; When it stopped off the highway it wasn't so much as leaking fluid and was still running... but the front end was completely mangled where the bumper shocks compressed, and all the "give joints" in the suspension collapsed. See, there was this three and a half foot drop off the highway, and I was probably still doing 40mph when I went over...

Dr J 215: I've often thought Jim's safety posts should be printed up as pamphlets. Did you see his hypothermia post?

wowmir 217: I've learned a lot of stuff on this blog. Keep coming back and you will too.

Wim 219: I didn't know that about momentum. Where does the extra energy come from? It seems to build up momentum more energy would have to be added. I'm no physicist; could someone who is explain that?

DQ 221: I see your point about that. How about the Morgue Tour then?

abi 226: I have an even better traffic-safety tool than a seat belt: Lexapro™. No doubt the Nadrites will get it banned soon.

___ 228: I yell "hang up and drive!" at people I see holding cell phones to their heads while "driving." I do the same thing while walking, but walking is not a both-hands-required activity.

Marian 232: Or maybe rented it. Probably a tourist from New Jersey. And that picture...that's one of those things you probably couldn't do by trying.

Alex 238: too much straightaway led drivers to lose attention

A condition I believe is called "highway hypnosis" in the US. Lack of attention is one reason I never got a driver's license. Now that I'm on meds for my ADHD, I'm too old to learn a new trick—or at least one as dangerous as driving (I learned to spin fire poi just a couple of years ago, but some of that skill transferred from nunchaka).

Mary Aileen 253: "What, you don't trust my driving?" My standard reply is, "Sure, I do, I just don't trust all the other drivers."

My standard reply is "With my life? No."

Mary 256: They other kids are lucky she didn't bounce around the car and kill them.

Greg 259: More like "without seatbelts, you're the payload of of a trebuchet." Make a good seatbelt commercial actually (but they'd have to call it a catapult).

I heard of a guy during WWII, stuck in a burning bomber over Norway with his parachute shot to shreds, decided it was better to fall than to burn. So he jumped, fell for while, hit snow-covered fir branches and rolled down a steep slope also shrouded in snow, and walked away with just cracked ribs. So, don't try to tell me that you always need a parachute when jumping from a burning plane at 20,000 ft.

But it is the way to bet.

I really should proofread. Car rotated *right*, countersteer, snap left to median.

Xopher (271): Mary Aileen 253: "What, you don't trust my driving?" My standard reply is, "Sure, I do, I just don't trust all the other drivers."

My standard reply is "With my life? No."

Very true, but I try to avoid confrontation. My way, we usually end up bonding about all the idiots on the road.

Xopher, #271: You're right, but Wim's really talking about the Aristotlean physics we've got hard-wired into our brains, where five seconds of pull gives you five seconds of distance and then whatever-it-is stops because of friction. At most, the load will roll on a few feet more after you've stopped pulling. In a dock, at low speeds, a barge is essentially in a frictionless environment, and it will carry on moving for quite a while. You can unconsciously give a boat a longer pull than it needs, expecting it to lose momentum more rapidly than it does. Our land-dwelling brain tells us that you don't need as much shove to slow something down as you gave in the pull; in the water, this isn't true.

#242 ::: Nuala wondered:
Anyway, I don't mean to spawn a whole subthread about trying to navigate through a car dominated world without a car, I was just wondering if anyone had any tips about how to balance the wish to protect one's baby when they occasionally do have to get into a car with the impracticality of carrying modern infant car seats around without a car.

They've taken to making seats that have a carrier that can be snapped in and out of a stroller or a car seat base - perhaps that might be a reasonable option, if they'll sell the bases separately, since it's less paraphanalia to carry, and the stroller's likely useful wherever you're going.

JESR @264, fair point. I suspect I wouldn't be so resistant to the multiple seats if the grandparents lived closer. But each one is only likely to be used 3 or 4 times a year. And therefore they would be fitted for each visit anyway, introducing risk each time.

The more I think about it the more resistant I am to putting her in a car ever. The risks are just so difficult for me as a non-driver to quantify, especially given the cost if I get it wrong. I guess this is the other possible expression of the maternal instinct that usually gets expressed in the purchasing of a Volvo or other tank like vehicle.

Mary Aileen @255, good idea!

Hey Jim,

What's your feeling about the relative safety of cars vs. trucks vs. SUVs? Any particular make/model combinations where you were like 'wow, that is really safe?'

Wendy #210: "My question is about the fit of seatbelts and those of us who are, ahem, large. I know there are ways to adjust the seatbelt for safety/comfort/fit for those who are petite, but what about the obese? I sometimes have problems getting an inertia reel seatbelt to unreel enough for me to fasten it, and then the shoulder strap is usually up under my neck instead of across my chest. Is there anything I can do/should be doing (apart from losing the weight, d'uh)"

If you're large enough (extremely tall *and* very heavy), you can find belts that simply don't have sufficient length to fasten, especially in back seats. And, in smaller cars with consoles, there's often not enough space to shift right far enough to physically reach down to where the buckle receiver is, especially if you have very long arms that don't bend in the right places. For me, I find that it's physically impossible to fasten a seatbelt in about ten percent of the "guest" cars I get into.

Buckle extenders, it turns out, are not much of a solution, even if you were organized enough to always carry your own. (A woman with a purse could manage that, I think; it's a bit much for a pocket.) Trouble is, there's less standardization in seat belt buckles than you might think; the width of the tongue varies between manufacturers, making your extender often incompatible with the car you just got into.

All of which makes me rather uncomfortable with the pious "No car I'm driving ever moves until everyone is strapped in" statements in this thread. I wear a seatbelt when I can, but I'm also conscious that part of the risk function for driving is correlated to time on the road -- if you're unbelted for half of one percent of your total driving time, that's worse than 100%, but it's not *appreciably* worse in a way that matters a lot to a rational person. Smart people minimize their risk, but they don't disrupt their lives to eliminate the last tiny quantum of difficult-to-eliminate risks.

If a driver refused to transport me because my size made it impossible for me to wear a seatbelt in his or her vehicle, I'd consider it rude and a bit foolish. Similarly, I'd consider it rude and a bit foolish if I refused to *ride* under those circumstances, assuming we had any better reason for the trip than "just cruisin' around".

Minimizing risk is smart, and wearing seatbelts whenever you can is a smart and nearly costless way to do that. Accepting significant costs (the loss of utility of any specific short car trip worth making) to avoid an objectively minor risk (of an unsecured accident on that specific trip) is not so obviously smart and costless. It may be a defensible risk management decision, but it's not the no-brainer that "always wear your seatbelt when you have the option" is.

Michael @ 254 - Truth is, I never thought that SUVs were any safer, just that I was less likely to get pushed under one and have my head crushed by its tow hitch - my previous car was pretty low to the ground.

Right now, my SUV has about 120k (miles) on the clock, and I expect it to live for another 60k. By then, I'm hoping for more fuel-efficient trucks. And decent mass transit in the Puget Sound region. And a pony.

(BTW - decent transit = at least as fast as driving during rush hour)

The psychology of drivers and how the road design influences them is a new but fascinating field.

In the past highway engineering focused on making the road as safe as possible; eliminating roadside hazards, flattening slopes, building wide medians and shoulders, providing plenty of superelevation on curves, stopping sight distance, etc. The factors of safety for roads often are grossly excessive for whatever speed the engineer chose for his project.

IOW, a road that was designed (and signed) for a 70mph speed limit, for example, appeared to the motorist that it was safe to drive at 80mph, 90mph or even higher. This has led to many motorists claiming that roads are "underposted" for the design, and since they can drive faster on them it should be legal to allow them to do so.

It also, however, means that many motorists used to safely driving on an interstate well above the speed limit also act and drive the same way on congested urban roads, and two lane rural roads. It becomes habit to exceed the speed limit, and since they get away with it (no fines, no crashes) they feel justified in claiming it is a safe practice to continue doing it.

RE: SUV's. I've heard that the #1 purchaser of SUV's are women with children. They appear to buy into the "bigger is safer" line, and feel that if they are above the other traffic that too makes them feel safe. It doesn't matter that SUV's often have terrible stability problems in crashes or just avoiding an obstacle; to them their perception is what's important.

If I'd had any doubts to begin with, this would've swayed me.

Lydia, #205: I don't think the scare films persuade people who can't be persuaded by explanations. There is a response similar to that involved with horror movies: "What's on the screen is awful, but I'm sitting here and I'm fine." Maybe we can tell the young men that their hormones make them stupid. :-)

John, the thing is, the study of the interaction of transportation systems and human behavior is established science in fields other than traffic engineering ( psychology, anthropology, archaeology, human geography, hell, even landscape design), and the NHTSA and other oversight groups, as well as schools of engineering, have flatly refused to take those bodies of knowledge into account. I've heard state traffic engineers say flatly that considering the effects of highway design on subsequent land use, for instance, is "none of our business," even though the interaction of highway design and commercial development, for instance, quickly feeds back to traffic and accident patterns (see, I-5 junction with the north end of 205, Vancouver, WA; Washington I-5 exit 111, Sunnyside Rd interchange, Clackamas, OR and pretty much the entire length of OR 217). All too often, I've heard the same engineers describe their "business" as "getting cars and trucks from point a to point b with out running into each other" and then being confused when I mention that those vehicles are not self-guided.

Xopher#202: for what it's worth, the day I got into the car and thought, Aw hell, I won't buckle my seatbelt today, was the day I called and got an appointment to assess for depression. Lexapro is our friend (and I wear my seatbelts every day).

Opting to not wear a seat belt, driving fast, and dying in the eventual car wreck is what I consider a Darwinistic weeding out of morons.

I drive a 2005/6 Mazda Tribute [pic] (a rebadged Ford Escape). About 90 seconds after turning the key, if either of the two in front are unbelted, a loud beeping alert repeats over and over. I like this feature very much.

Question: per the aforementioned Seat Belt Injuries link, at what velocity do internal organ lacerations and related damage occur?

Thanks for the informative post. I'll be driving a bit better from now on, I think.

I'm a believer. I used to get California Highway Patrol magazine. The number of "would have survived wearing a seatbelt" far outnumbered the people who would have survived by not wearing one!

Just for the record, I ride a motorcycle. I carry gloves and a sharp knife in my jacket, just in case I encounter an accident involving someone who cannot get out of their car because their seatbelt is jammed. The latex gloves are in case you need first aid attention after I cut you free and extricate you from your flaming vehicle.

Chances are, if you weren't wearing a belt, the only thing that can be done for you is to cover you with something so as not to upset passing drivers who slow down to gawk.

Nuala, the WisCon web site has a discussion board. I would encourage you to ask if someone local with a baby seat could give you a ride from the airport. Also, the Concourse Hotel has a complimentary shuttle from the airport. It wouldn't hurt to ask if they could have a baby seat on the shuttle. I would help you myself but I'm coming from out of town and won't have a car.

Scott H #278

Here's a link to relative safety of vehicles.

http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/teepa/pdf/LA-Times.pdf

Note that this study rates cars/trucks/SUVs AS THEY ARE ACTUALLY DRIVEN. Sorry to shout, but that is important. If you want your personal SUV to be safer than the numbers show for all the categories of cars that on average beat them in actual driving, here's how to do it. Step one, observe the travel speed of the nearby cars. Step two, go slower. You can make any vehicle in any classification safer by going slower, but I'd bet, based on engineering experience, it would pay larger dividends for SUVs. Same is true of light trucks - at speed, the height and extra mass are not your friends. That extra load carrying/towing capacity just compromises handling when, as is typical, you are neither carrying a load or towing one.

"I hope some of the pro highway safety guys who've commented here can answer this one: I've always heard that posted speed limits are set 10 mph lower than the the top safe speed highways are actually designed for. I.e., a road posted for 45mph was actually designed to be driven safely up to 55mph.

Is this real, or just an urban legend?"

No, it's the truth. The 'design speed' of a highway is typically 5mph higher than the posted speed, yet another case of engineers trying to build in even more safety factors in the geometrics of the road. Most rural interstates, for example, had design speeds ranging from 65-75mph, with posted speeds from 60-75mph. There were few, if any rural interstates designed for 80mph, however.

However, this is not a hard and fast rule. In many cases the 'design speed' and the posted speed are one and the same, especially when there are serious design constraints that limit how the road can be laid out. When I designed I-26 in Western North Carolina, for example, I used a 60mph design speed and that is what it is currently posted at.

As for engineers not factoring in the human and societal environment during highway design, I suspect it's because my fellow highway engineers aren't real comfortable with anything that can't be easily quantifiable. Humans were always in the equation, but only as definable values such as Perception/Reaction time, average height, etc. The decision making process hasn't really been considered until fairly recently, although it has been recognized as something "to take into account".

John @#291: When I designed I-26 in Western North Carolina...

Yet another example of why Making Light is the coolest party on the internet.

I used to think that a sure-fire nuclear weapon to drop at gross-out contests was a detailed description of uterine eversion; however, on further reflection, I think the sheer variety and volume of available material on traffic accidents effectively trumps that.

John@291 - The old chunk or the new chunk? I've driven the old part, which I treat as pretty much any road in the mountains - with caution. I don't know how much of the new part is open yet.

FWIW, I hate the part of I-26 in South Carolina. The rolling hills are truly annoying. I'd rather go around them than over them.

Angela @ 286: The problem is that such morons tend not to Darwinize only themselves; they often take other people with them, one way or another, and/or cause other lasting damage.

Smashing piece James, thank you. I've C&Ped to show to my daughter ten years or so from now. :-0

Carrie V - if they won't belt up in back, tell them to f***ing walk!

In my Physics classes, I point out that old-timers talk about the safety of "being thrown clear of the wreck" because cars from the 20s, 30s, 40s were total deathtraps, whose doors often wouldn't stay latched, but since there was too much glass, pointed objects and things like non-collapsing steering columns, you really DIDN'T want to remain inside in many accidents. Since the 1960s, cars have gained seatbelts, shoulder belts, airbags, steel beams in doors, interior padding, headrests, roll cages, crumple zones -- to say nothing of using all that safety glass, better tires and ABS anti-lock brakes. In other words, the car is designed to die to save your butt.

Getting thrown from the wreck was never a good plan, but it "saved" lives in the dark ages because car safety mostly didn't exist.

Dr. Phil

I ride a motorcycle and I know that in an accident I will be "thrown clear" of my vehicle every time. I wear leathers and a helmet every time I ride and I know I might still be killed if I hit the pavement fast enough. Anyone who thinks being thrown from a car is a good idea, especially given they aren't wearing any protective gear, is an idiot.

Richard@263: holy crap. there's no damage to the trees anywhere around that airplane. Did he drop straight down? you mention 5-point harness, and the plane looks like it could be acrobatic, so that might actually be a possibility.

When I flew helicopters, I always wore my seatbelt, especially if it was a hot summer day and I flew with the doors off to get some fresh air. Getting "thrown free" isn't an option.

xopher @271: Yeah, I was going for a short, bumper-sticker motto, geared especially towards those who don't wear a seatbelt because they'd rather be "thrown free".

No Seatbelt? Drive a trebuchet!

was as short as I could get. Apparently, it didn't translate as well as I'd hoped.

I think someone ought to have "Mythbusters" demonstrate, with verve and vigor, what being "thrown free" at 50 miles an hour looks like to Buster. And they could simulate it a bunch of different ways: drop Buster from a 5 story building. launch Buster in a good sized trebuchet, etc.

It would be a public safety announcement combined with good entertainment, all in one.

For some time now I've wondered whatever happened to seat belt technology between now and the 23rd century. I mean, they have neither seat belts nor air bags on the Enterprise, do they?

John @291: IIRC, pre-1974 British motorways had no upper speed limit (like the autobahns) and were designed with a maximum safe speed of 100mph in mind. (This is vague memory.) With 1974, a 70mph blanket national speed limit was brought in, and I suspect the 100mph design speed may have been reduced for newer motorways ... and as most of the network has been built since 1974, there'd be a slight obstacle to going back to unlimited. (Not to mention that your average car today has the performance of a pretty hot sports car in 1974, and better road-holding and handling all round, so assuming a blanket unrestricted limit would mean a de-facto 100mph traffic speed is a bit of a dodgy assumption.)

I have, in my youth, been a passenger (with seat belt!) in a car that drove the entire length of the M1 from London to Leeds -- 204 miles -- in one hour and fifty eight minutes. The road didn't frighten me half as much as the other drivers.

Xopher @271: Momentum is force times time (or mass times speed). Energy is force times distance (which works out to be proportional to mass times the square of speed). They're *both* conserved; it takes more work to apply a given force to a moving object than to a stationary/slow-moving object.

If you're pushing a big slow object around with muscle power, the immediate limiting factor is probably "how hard can I push this?", that is, how strong you are, how much force you can apply. I'm guessing that energy corresponds more to endurance than strength. But if you've only got two seconds before the cargo crate crushes you against the bulkhead, that's a test of strength, not endurance.

Joshua Keroes, @287: The number I've heard is 30 MPH, for a sudden body-into-a-wall stop (no crumple zones, etc.). Perhaps the professionals can supply the real number.

Great article! I loved the style and the wit. Thanks.

Larry @ 280 - Truth is, I never thought that SUVs were any safer, just that I was less likely to get pushed under one and have my head crushed by its tow hitch - my previous car was pretty low to the ground.

Your comment had reminded me of a study I'd seen, and gave me a chance to bring up the prisoner's dilemma. More of a "that reminds me of something!" than a specific comment on your choice.

However, (if you don't mind my asking), if you didn't think it was safer, why did you switch? It was just that you didn't like the kinds of fatal accident you thought you could get into? Different fatal accidents bothered you less? I'm trying to understand what the advantage was.

Bicycle helmet laws aren't really comparable to seat belt laws. There's evidence seat belt laws haven't done much good overall (other people have already mentioned John Adam's work (another link), but while it's not clear that bicycle helmets do any overall good, it is fairly clear that making them compulsary is a bad thing. http://www.cyclehelmets.org.
(And yes, some of the idiocy posted in favour of them is depressing, but I expect most posters here have more sense, so I'm not too worried about helmet wars coming here.)

I've been away for a while, so it's time for a grand multi-post reply.

==========

#156 ::: Randolph Fritz:

Charlie, #28. "Is it legal in your country to sell vehicles that don't have collapsible steering columns?"

It is not. Well, not passenger cars; I'm not sure about all motor vehicles.

While the first automobile-related traffic fatality in the US (1899) was a pedestrian v. automobile collision, I seem to recall that the first fatality in the US by a person in an automobile was an impalement on a steering column. In those days the steering column was a single steel rod starting low down in the front of the car and angling back and up to a point just in front of the driver's chest. That piece of barstock was topped with a large acorn nut that held the steering wheel in place.

#158 ::: adamsj

Was Elizabeth Moon in Dayton, Ohio when that happened?

I'd have to ask Elizabeth, but I believe she was an EMT in Texas.

#162 ::: Andy

Jim, do you see more accidents on Deadman's Curve from people going southbound?

The typical accident at Dead Man's Curve involves a southbound vehicle that's going a little too fast (even if you're just coasting it's easy to get going too fast downhill there) coming around the corner, not being able to make the corner and veering into the northbound lane, where it hits head-on into a northbound vehicle. Then we get to go extract people. With nothing for shoulders to park in, no good places to turn the rigs around, and the road totally blocked by the wreckage.

#204 ::: Steve Taylor

What proportion of US states have compulsory seatbelt legislation?

20 states (out of fifty possible) and the District of Columbia have primary seatbelt laws. 29 have secondary seatbelt laws. One (New Hampshire, where I live) has no seatbelt law. All your questions are answered here .

#210 ::: Wendy Bradley

My question is about the fit of seatbelts and those of us who are, ahem, large.

Pick up a seatbelt extender. They're a length of nylon webbing with a male fitting at one end and a female fitting at the other.

#212 ::: William Stead

The seat belt lesson has not as yet been effectivley inculcated among all drivers, despite massive education programs among governmental agencies, insurance companies, and the private sector.

"I'm rich and powerful. Therefore I can ignore the laws."

"Would that include the laws of physics, governor?"

#215 ::: Dr. J

Which brings me to my request: Can I use your post as a patient handout? Or, maybe to hand out at our local high schools?

Certainly! Please put the following notice on the handout: Copyright 2007 by James D. Macdonald, NREMT-I. Used by permission. http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008845.html

#217 ::: wowmir

I did not wear seat belt but now I am going to everyday.

Thank you. You made my day.

#229 ::: anonymoustroll

Just out of curiosity, have you ever seen a belted passenger who's seat has been dislodged from its rails?

Yeah. The energy involved in doing that much structural damage was energy that didn't go into squishing the patient, so it all worked out.

#238 ::: Alex

Speaking of pickups, then there was the whole riding-in-the-back thing.

It isn't just in the Outback. Did I ever tell you about the roll-over I went to with six teenagers, two in the cab and four in the bed? More through good luck than good judgment they managed to land in a swamp and there were no serious injuries. (As I've seen more than once, they were speeding to get one of the young ladies home before her curfew. Curfews Kill Teens....) That was one of my first Multiple Casualty Events. (See Triage For Fun and Profit for more on those things.)

#257 ::: Dan Pursel

Except for how it affected the medical examiner.

The EMTs, cops, and firefighters aren't terribly happy either. All things being equal I'd rather not go to a fatal.

It'd be true, but misleading, for me to say that I've never unbuckled a corpse. I've seen dead folks with their seatbelts still properly buckled. For example, a human body is approximately eight inches thick, front to back. I recall one scene where the dashboard was approximately one inch from the front seat's back, leaving minus-seven inches for the person who was still sitting there. (Sedan vs. 18-wheeler, head-on.) I didn't unbuckle that person. The firefighters did after the Medical Examiner had been by.

We know that 60% of fatals involve unbelted individuals. That implies that around 40% are belted.

Still, belts are the way to go.

It's as if I were teaching someone to play Blackjack, and I were to say, "Always split aces, always split eights, never split tens." Now it happens that even if you split a pair of eights, you may not win. And it's possible that any number of folks who didn't split a pair of aces (or did split tens) did win that bet. But still, the advice is good, and you should follow it. I follow it. That's the way the odds run.

(When people ask me "Am I going to die?" I tend to reply, "No one's ever died in the back of my ambulance." That too is true, but misleading. I can't pronounce anyone dead. The doctor in the ER has to do it. The patient may not be breathing, and his heart may not be beating, but he isn't "dead" until a licensed physician says he is.)

#272 ::: NelC

I heard of a guy during WWII, stuck in a burning bomber over Norway with his parachute shot to shreds, decided it was better to fall than to burn.

I heard the same. This sort of thing has happened more than once: See the Free Fall Research Page. (I still split aces and never split tens, and I don't recommend skydiving without a parachute.)

#278 ::: Scott H

What's your feeling about the relative safety of cars vs. trucks vs. SUVs? Any particular make/model combinations where you were like 'wow, that is really safe?'

No opinion. I've seen people survive/uninjured and not-survive/be injured in many different kinds of vehicles.

There's a real correlation between serious injury/non-survival and non-use of seatbelts. I've already noted that this state doesn't mandate seatbelts for adults. It's my impression that around 70% of drivers do anyway, which is right around the compliance level in states that do mandate seatbelts (like in Vermont, just across the river, where I also run).

One thing that hasn't been listed, in addition to roll cages, crumple zones, airbags, and all the rest, for improving survival rates in serious accidents: an innovation (since 1972 and always improving) has been fast and efficient EMS. EMS was first designed to deal with road traffic accidents -- that's why we're part of the Department of Transportation.

#291 ::: John

As for engineers not factoring in the human and societal environment during highway design, I suspect it's because my fellow highway engineers aren't real comfortable with anything that can't be easily quantifiable.

May I suggest y'all get in touch with the folks at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie-Mellon? Those are the folks who study how to make videogame players do exactly what the game designers want them to do, while giving the illusion of total freedom of action. (Also: crowds at amusement parks -- get them in, get them to move where you want them to move in a predictable and designed way, all without letting them suspect that they're being manipulated.)

2003 I graduated from highschool, and so did my long time friend Laura. A few months later, it was the middle of the afternoon, about 4 or 5, Laura's brother was driving her around so she could make Avon deliveries. Crossing an intersection, they were hit by a drunk driver who failed to notice a stop sign, on a road that he traveled along daily to get home. Both Laura and her brother were seatbelted before the accident, but Laura's seatbelt failed during the accident, she was thrown from the truck and died instantly from the impact alone, just the overall shock to her internal organs, not a broken skull or spine, not from bleeding. her family had been told that even had the seatbelt not failed, because of how small a person she was, the impact from the accident would have killed her anyway. Her brother survived with some minor injuries, so did the drunk driver, who was pulled over less then a year later for driving under the influence....
Every accident happens with its own different Circumstances, you can die with or without a seatbelt, of course it doesnt take a genious to want to better there chance of survival and wrap one on. I wear one everyday, no matter the length of the drive, even if im just moving my car about in the driveway, I feel uncomfortable without one. I try to make habit out of telling anyone that rides with me to put one on and when I notice that they havent I make a huge fuss and refuse to move.

If I hadn't already had the seatbelt habit well-ingrained, I would have after what happened when my brother drove us to school on Halloween of what I believe was his senior year of highschool. He being at that time a relatively new driver, a teenage male and therefore just a bit of an idiot, he drove into the back of a stationary car at about forty miles per hour (which mysteriously became five miles per hour by the time our father asked for the details, except not for long as our father isn't stupid). Worst injuries? A small scratch on my hand and, if I remember correctly, a small bump on his forehead (I also had the breath literally knocked out of me; couldn't get air into my lungs for what was undoubtedly a much shorter time than it seemed). We'd pretty certainly have been dead without the belts, though I must give credit to Peugeot for making a car that didn't allow us to be squashed.
I can't drive any distance, not even a foot, in a car without the belt on. It feels like leaning over a cliff to be in a car at all without a belt on.

Dealt with an accident once. Driver ran a red light at 30MPH. Got T-Boned and submarined into the passenger foot well, over the top of a gearshift lever with interesting results. Funny how the seatbelt would have prevented that.

I mean, they have neither seat belts nor air bags on the Enterprise, do they?

The set designer for the original show was once asked, at a Trek convention Q&A, why none of the seats on the Enterprise had belts. Without missing a beat, he responded "If they did, then people couldn't get thrown out of them."

It's the same reason that every bridge computer station (in all SF movies and TVs, seemingly) comes with a half-pound of C4 wired on a hair trigger, and all ceilings are rigged to drop rocks and jagged metal debris when the ship is jostled. Otherwise they would have had to find a more expensive way to show that something was happening, or else be stuck with a much less visually interesting show.

Charlie Stross #301: Pre-1967.

mk (153), unless you're working with those long-shanked narrow-gauge steel needles, circular needles with hard plastic tips can't be worse than pens or pencils. If you're worried about crochet hooks, get some that are made of plastic or wood. But socks or gloves on dpns? Much as I hate to admit it, those are not safe in moving vehicles.

Kathryn (159), Xopher (206), I've been thinking some more (see #122) about the erroneous perception that being thrown from a car is safer than being belted in. Lots of commenters have cited friends or relatives who were "thrown clear" of accidents; and yet we have Mistercalm's word (#251) that you're five times likelier to die in an accident if you're thrown from a car.

Xopher's right. How many people, when told about a friend or relative who's been maimed or killed in an auto accident, ask about the mechanism of injury?

In my experience, when everyone's in the painful early stages of bereavement, they don't want to talk about how Uncle Ethan exited his car through the windshield and hit a concrete piling head-first, or how Janey Palmer was gruesomely dismembered when she got stuck halfway out the door of a car that then rolled down an embankment.

Nobody asks for details at a closed-coffin funeral.

"You die, and it isn't just the first responders and the few hundred drivers who drove by before the road was closed who have to see your brains on the windshield. ... It's also the investigators and expert witnesses and 12 jurors for the civil case (even if there isn't a criminal case). You don't want to wear a seatbelt, so some poor guy has to be on jury duty for a few weeks. Nice of you, that."

Julia Jones (160):

"I've been on a plane on a night when a passenger on another plane in the area died from not being buckled in, and several people on different planes were injured badly enough to be hospitalised. There's a reason why the cabin crew do regular seatbelt patrols nowadays. Wear your seatbelt on the plane."

PixelFish (161):

"My special form of shock seems to be that I go all girl-scout and regurgitate everything I can remember about broken bones. Which is not a bad thing, I guess, since you wouldn't believe the number of people who wanted to help me get up and move around."

Anent the discussion of waterfalls on the Bay Bridge: another temporary zero-visibility situation I've seen is when there's been a recent snowfall, and there's a hardened crust of snow on top of cars and trucks. When the owner then drives the car or truck onto a highway, the roof of the vehicle starts to warm up, and the high-speed airflow can get under the ice crust and lift it off in a single layer. It goes flying up in the air, then comes down and frags on the windshield of the car behind them.

The last time I was approaching Boston on the Mass Turnpike, I swear I saw one of those every ten or fifteen minutes. SUVs were major offenders, since they have flat tops that are hard to reach.

Trucks are worse. A few years back, a semi on the New Jersey Turnpike sloughed off a layer of hardened ice so massive that it smashed the windshield of the following car and injured the front-seat passengers. As far as anyone could tell, the semi didn't even notice what happened. I suspect a lot of those drivers on the MassPike also failed to notice that they'd just blinded the following cars.

File that one under "varieties of negligence I'm surprised aren't illegal."

Remus Shepherd (169), this one's for you.

Mad (177), talk about inappropriately projecting one's issues onto one's children ...

Alan (120), how do Teva sandals hold up?

Tye (182), Lydy (205), count me among those on whom safety films made a deep impression. I didn't get a license until I absolutely had to. The reason Jim warns me not to watch certain public service ads is that I've always had a good imagination for what would happen in a serious auto accident. My mother wasn't the world's most reassuring driver. (Sorry, Mom.) I remember one day when I was a kid, and we were sitting stopped in traffic, when I looked around and realized that all those other cars were big powerful motorized hunks of metal whose drivers were, for all I knew, no safer or more reliable than my mother. In fact, they might be considerably less safe. I was a nervous passenger for years after that.

High School Driver's Ed. films were designed to punch through unmindful seventeen-year-olds' assumptions of immortality. I was already inclined to err in the opposite direction. For me, it wasn't a helpful experience.

The ones I really liked explained how and why good driving habits work. There was a pretty good one about how highway engineers make their design decisions, but I think the best one was about a study of a 50- or 100-mile car trip made by two cars under middling-congested conditions. One car observed the standard rules of the road, and moved with the rest of the traffic. The other wove in and out, speeding up and slowing down, trying to get ahead of the other cars. IIRC, the difference in their travel times was all of ten or twenty minutes. In the meantime, the more aggressive driver had constantly ignored the driving laws, and created numerous unsafe situations that could have turned into accidents. As the film observed, even a minor accident will eat up a lot more than ten or twenty minutes of your travel time.

Jenny Islander (184):

"Speaking of American things that go vroom vroom beep beep, O non-US readers, wanna hear something really scary? I mean, really scary?

There are no seat belts on school buses."

Does anyone here know why buses don't have seatbelts?

Debra Doyle (189):

"can I take a moment to cast some opprobium in the general direction of drivers of silver-grey late-model Lexuses or Infinitis? It's not just their "I've got more money and better lawyers than God" style of moving through traffic, it's the way their vehicles are just the right color to blend into falling rain, or a fog bank, or the landscape at twilight (and they don't turn their lights on in daytime any more than they signal when they change lanes.)"

I once saw a motorcyclist's bumpersticker that said "LOUD MUFFLERS SAVE LIVES." It instantly turned my thinking around. Motorcyclists suffer from natural invisibility.

(You know that giddy first day of spring when everyone's a little exuberant? Near the Hell's Angels' territory on the Lower East Side I saw a Harley rider with an extremely loud bike cruise slowly down a narrow street, creating enough vibration to set off the car alarms in every vehicle parked on that block. He was grinning like a little kid.)

JanetM (191), thanks for the details, such as they are. I have to assume the semi was misbehaving somehow.

DON3k (203), I'm glad you survived that, and boo hiss on your insurance company for not paying up, the welshers. My only quibble is that there are non-American cars out there that would have taken the hit too. For instance, ome of our newer auto-safety design features came from Scandinavia.

Can I ask who insured you? I want to make sure I never buy a policy from them.

Larry Brennan (211), my sense as a driver was that the first wave of SUVs were bought by aggressive drivers, but a good many later ones were bought by drivers who were tired of being bullied by other SUVs.

William Stead (212): Thanks for the comments. Must be interesting teaching Traffic Survival School in Tucson. New Yorkers may cherish the belief that seatbelts aren't required in taxicabs, but Pima County is where I first ran into the theory that you don't have to wear seatbelts if you aren't doing any in-city driving.

If you don't mind my asking, is it still the rule that in heavy duststorms you pull over and turn off your lights, or has thinking changed on that one? Naturally, I haven't been in a duststorm since I moved out here, but if it's raining hard enough to warrant pulling over, I still turn off my lights.

Wim (219), I understand the discomfort of being up in the air in a wobbly vehicle, but my own monkey brain thinks that if I can see trouble coming, I have a better chance of dodging it.

(*snif'*) I miss my '88 Honda DX Hatchback, which maneuvered like an inline skater. Its ability to dodge, swerve, corner, and stop on a dime (if the tires weren't bald) got me out of any number of tight spots.

Abi (228): I don't have a handle on trends in driving because I've moved around too much. What I know is that when I was a teenager in Arizona, I was taught to maintain an appropriate stopping distance. I didn't drive regularly when I lived in the Bay Area, Seattle, and Toronto, but when I did, the theory held.

Driving in the Northeast was something else again. If I left what I thought was an appropriate stopping distance, some other car would speed up and pull into that space. If I was doing ten miles over the speed limit in the passing lane, guys who wanted to do twenty-five miles over the speed limit would flash their headlights at me. If I slowed down for adverse conditions like heavy rain at night, the other cars would honk at me. And no matter what else was going on, idiots would sit so close on my tail that I could see the individual bugs on their bumpers.

It was nerve-wracking.

Now, when I drive, my following distance is calculated in terms of how much space I can leave without having another car pull in ahead of me. I know it sounds weird, but the strategy yields more following distance than I'd get by leaving the canonical amount and having other drivers pull into it.

I still signal lane changes, because it helps the people behind me avoid mishaps I might get caught up in. The only exception is when I can tell that the people in that lane will speed up to block me if they know I'm going to move over. If I really need to change lanes, I signal even if it means they'll move to block me, because I'm good at forcibly elbowing my way into a lane, and signaling first establishes more of a right to do so.

I used to sit half-in and half-out of the breakdown lane during the long waits for traffic lights on the Holland Tunnel approaches, because there'd always be jerks trying to jump the line by driving in the breakdown lane. Sitting between two lanes demonstrated that I wasn't trying to jump the line, and preserved my spot in my proper lane, but let me get out of the breakdown lane if an emergency vehicle was approaching. In the meantime, it kept the jerks from using that lane to jump the line. They were furious about being balked. They'd honk and wave their fists as though I were the one violating the law.

I used to also play chicken with cars (usually SUVs) that were trying to cut in at the head of the line to get onto the Brooklyn Bridge from the FDR. I kept a flat triangular piece of rough granite on my dashboard. When these guys were trying to force their way into the (very long) exit line, I'd roll down my window and casually stick my fist out with the piece of granite sticking out between my fingers where my third finger would be if I were flipping them the bird. The intended message was "How much is that paint job worth to you?" They pretty much got it.

Cellphones have been less of an issue since NY State passed a law saying you couldn't use a handset while driving. You still get idiots, of course. I've told the story elsewhere of the time I did significant damage to the side panel of a woman who was blocking a major intersection in both directions because she was yakking on her phone and couldn't be bothered to pull forward.

I know one person who got ticketed for failing to signal a lane change. Her relatives were astonished. They'd been unaware that you could get ticketed for that. And as I mentioned up the thread, jackrabbit left turns in advance of oncoming traffic when a light changes have become commonplace. I get honked at for not doing them, and the oncoming traffic visibly flinches as they try to figure out whether I'm going to dash out in front of them.

Here's the one that really bothers me: the police not observing the traffic laws. NYC's no right on red unless otherwise posted. When we were living on Staten Island, I started to see the police briefly stopping at red lights, then turning if there was no oncoming traffic. After a little while, civilians started doing it too.

My sense is that most drivers pay far more attention to what other drivers are doing and getting away with than they do to the traffic code, and that the only traffic laws that are being observed are the ones that are enforced. If the patrol cars ticket for traveling in the breakdown lane or trying to jump the line at slow-moving exit lanes, the incidence of that particular misbehavior drops. If they don't, it creeps up again. It feels like the whole region could use a refresher course in the rules of the road.

Gdr (230):

"Seatbelts undoubtedly save the lives of people wearing them in crashes. But it's not clear whether they save lives overall."

I'm not sure I give a damn about "the John Adams paper," whatever that is. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't. We've got every EMT, ER doctor and nurse, highway engineer, highway safety specialist, and driving instructor in this discussion stating emphatically that wearing seat belts saves lives.

The evidence you cite -- and I don't know its source, but I'll let that go for the moment -- dovetails with the observations elsewhere in this thread that law enforcement has been less effective than public information and changes in social attitudes in persuading people to wear their seatbelts. Even if I were to take your evidence at face value (which I'm not inclined to do), it wouldn't add up to the conclusion that seatbelts don't save lives. There's way too much evidence, over too much time, from too many diverse sources, that says they do.

Xopher (271):

"I've often thought Jim's safety posts should be printed up as pamphlets."

I drive a 2005/6 Mazda Tribute [pic] (a rebadged Ford Escape). About 90 seconds after turning the key, if either of the two in front are unbelted, a loud beeping alert repeats over and over. I like this feature very much.

So do I. Our Escape has a lot of neat safety features and you can do most of the important stuff (like turning on the rear wipers or adjusting the lights) completely by touch.

I think the Escape is just big enough for its size to do some good. We have to have a heavy vehicle with 4WD and good clearance to get out of our driveway in the winter, but we don't want to pay for the gas to haul superfluous cubage. The Escape fits into most parking spaces and can also go off the pavement. As SUVs go, it's more U than S.

BTW, after reading this thread, I plan to stuff the car emergency kit and crowbar down beneath the kids' feet instead of leaving them in the back cargo area . . .

I once saw a woman in near rush hour traffic (about 50mph but the traffic was getting near bumper/bumper density), holding a cellphone with her shoulder, a map folded over the steering wheel, writing notes on a pad fastened to the windshield, holding a coffee cup with the hand hanging onto the steering wheel, and smoking a cigarette.

I got as far away from her as I could, as fast as I could given the traffic. She was an accident waiting to happen.

Teresa (312):
another temporary zero-visibility situation I've seen is when there's been a recent snowfall, and there's a hardened crust of snow on top of cars and trucks. When the owner then drives the car or truck onto a highway, the roof of the vehicle starts to warm up, and the high-speed airflow can get under the ice crust and lift it off in a single layer. It goes flying up in the air, then comes down and frags on the windshield of the car behind them....

File that one under "varieties of negligence I'm surprised aren't illegal."

There was a recent resolution introduced on Long Island (Suffolk County, iirc) to make it illegal there. I don't know if the law went anywhere, though.

Does anyone here know why buses don't have seatbelts?

No, but I do know that some now do. I don't know how strongly they enforce the kids wearing them, though.

Wim 302: So if you shove something for a given amount of time at a given force level, it then travels at its new vector indefinitely (assuming zero g, zero friction), right? So if you shove on the opposite side of it at the same force level for the same amount of time, it should stop dead (that is, return to its old vector), because you've exactly canceled what you did before. Isn't that right?

Are you all just saying that if you got it moving with a 10-second shove (at your maximum strength), you can't stop it with a 2-second shove? That would make sense.

But if I use a little flick of my wrist (1 second) to start something moving, I can easily stop it with my whole body braced against the wall and using all my strength, no matter how big it is (after all, it took little strength to start it) and no matter how long it's been moving...it sounded like people were saying that the longer it's moving the more force it takes to stop it, and that doesn't sound right.

TNH said, among many other things at #312, Uncle Ethan exited his car through the windshield and hit a concrete piling head-first...

To which all I gots to say is, thank goodness I don't have any nephews yet.

Oh, and TNH also said, Here's the one that really bothers me: the police not observing the traffic laws.

I keep thinking about starting a blog that notes down times, locations, and plate numbers of police cars breaking traffic laws. I see it often enough (here in the rough-driving Northeast TNH mentioned) that I could probably have a new post for maybe every other time I leave my house.

File that one under "varieties of negligence I'm surprised aren't illegal."

Teresa: my last visit to the Boston Metro Area (tm) dovetailed very neatly with the storm that blew in March 16th; driving back down to Boston from Londonderry the next day (I got snowed in at my best friend's house -- no great hardship) the WBZ anchors were reminding drivers that they could be fined for not cleaning off the tops of their cars. I assumed that that meant that Massachusetts, at least, has made that particular variety illegal sometime in the last two years or so.

Teresa 312: A few years back, a semi on the New Jersey Turnpike sloughed off a layer of hardened ice so massive that it smashed the windshield of the following car and injured the front-seat passengers. As far as anyone could tell, the semi didn't even notice what happened.

Happened to my friend the shlemazl this past winter. Ice slid off the roof of the SUV ahead of him and smashed through his windshield—fortunately on the passenger side, and fortunately there was no passenger. He got a few cuts, nothing more. The SUV never stopped or, apparently, noticed.

If he keeps writing them, he'll eventually have a book.

Yes, and that would be great, but the pamphlets would be something you can hand out to strangers without making them pay you. The hypothermia one at the skating pond, for example.

John @ 291

Another example of a freeway with a top legal speed being at or near the design speed is the Pasadena Freeway. Legal speed is (and has never exceeded) 55 in most parts, with some of the curves posted as 40 or 45. My personal opinion is that the legal speed is about 10mph too high, given there's no center escape space, no right shoulder, and the onramps are 0-to-whatever in about 100 feet (most of the exits aren't much better, but you don't have to come to a dead stop at the end of the offramp). Drive in the middle of the three lanes, if you possibly can.

Driving it on a rainy night (or in either one of those conditions separately) should entitle you to a diploma from the Han Solo School of Asteroid Belt Navigation.

Regarding seat-belts on school buses.

My Mom was a school bus driver and was horrified at the thought of installing seatbelts on her bus: there would be nothing she could do to prevent the small minority of vicious thugs from using the buckles as weapons.

I was bullied on school buses (and the drivers, who were my Mom's friends and co-workers, were able to do very little) so I tend to share her feelings, even though I always wear seatbelts in any vehicle that provides them.

Regarding laced shoes in airplanes: someone should tell that to the people who keep providing more and more incentives against wearing laced shoes through airports.

Re: schoolbusses and seatbelts. Not only did the schoolbusses I remember riding in not have seatbelts, in most cases there were not even enough seats for the passengers; the aisles were filled with kids standing. That was years ago, but I imagine it is still common.

In regards to school buses, I seem to recall watching a program on automotive safety (on the Discovery Channel) several years ago that explained as school buses are generally built like tanks, except with more padding and seats.

In fact, nosing around, it seems that school buses rely on compartmentalization for safety, and that adding seat belts does not improve things compared to other methods of improving bus safety.

Perhaps some of the more automative/crash experienced posters could sum things up better?

The schoolbuses I rode in (early to mid-90s) had seatbelts but they were almost universally disregarded and ISTR that no one in authority made a big deal out of the matter.

There were articles a year or two ago about seat belts on school buses; if I remember correctly, the conclusion was that seat belts might actually introduce a new risk, while the high seats are meant to provide some of the protection as belts. There's one write-up here. Google provides other related results.

Clearing snow from vehicles is supposedly required in Massachusetts, I think as an "obvious" component of another regulation. Most people appear stunned at the suggestion if it is called to their attention. When I raised the topic, one coworker of mine snickered to another that I just didn't understand how hard it was to reach the top of vehicles like her ginormous pickup (which she drove because she might one day ever haul a horse trailer) or the other coworker's Subaru Outback w/ rack. My response is that if you can can't make your vehicle road-safe, you have no business operating it. Yes, that includes tractor-trailer rigs; I will always yield to a big truck, but I won't forgive one for shattering my windshield or blinding me with loose snow blown down from his roof.

I would love the ability to force a citation upon any driver who failed to clear all snow from his or her vehicle before starting to drive (as well as any vehicle with an obscured or otherwise difficult to discern license plate, for that matter).

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has this to say about seat belts on large school buses:

"...school buses are different by design and use a different kind of safety restraint system that works extremely well.

Large school buses are heavier and distribute crash forces differently than do passenger cars and light trucks. Because of these differences, the crash forces experienced by occupants of buses are much less than that experienced by occupants of passenger cars, light trucks or vans. NHTSA decided that the best way to provide crash protection to passengers of large school buses is through a concept called “compartmentalization.” This requires that the interior of large buses provide occupant protection such that children are protected without the need to buckle-up. Through compartmentalization, occupant crash protection is provided by a protective envelope consisting of strong, closely-spaced seats that have energy-absorbing seat backs.

...

...States should take into consideration the increased capital costs, reduced seating capacities, and other unintended consequences associated with seat belts that could result in more children seeking alternative means of traveling to and from school or school-related events. These alternative modes of travel could put children at greater risk because they are not nearly as safe as school buses.

...

School buses are approximately seven times safer than passenger cars or light trucks. The school bus occupant fatality rate of 0.2 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is considerably lower than the fatality rates for passenger cars or light trucks (1.44 per 100 million VMT). The relative safety of school buses was addressed in 2002 by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in “The Relative Risks of School Travel: A National Perspective and Guidance for Local Community Risk Assessment.”[5] It found that there are about 815 fatalities related to school transportation per year. Only 2 percent are associated with official school transportation, compared to 22 percent due to walking/bicycling to or from school, and 75 percent from passenger car transportation to or from school."

That's the government line, for what it's worth.

SUVs vs pickups--

I'll take a pickup over an SUV any day, except for my Subaru Outback (which apparently is classified as a Compact SUV). Here's why:

SUVs have a narrower wheelbase than the comparable pickup model frame they're built on. I had this graphically illustrated for me one time when we rented a Ford Exploder and it was parked next to a Ford F-150 pickup. The F-150 was wider and had a lower roof.

Plain and simple.

We cuss and discuss the SUV vs Pickup discussion over in rec.equestrian quite frequently, when someone asks about hauling a horse trailer with a SUV. Bad idea. Wheelbase and height does not compare.

Additionally, if I wanna be tall and bad-looking, I'll take a pickup over the SUV. Must be the rural redneck girl in me. I grew up driving pickups and like the way they handle better. Even a Ford F-350 with a camper on the back is easier to handle than an SUV, in my opinion.

Plus, I've been t-boned in a pickup. My Mazda B2000 1989 crew cab. The at-the-time 8 year old son in the passenger seat. The car clobbering us must have been doing pretty dang fast, but it was a hit and run.

Son and I both were wearing seatbelts. We walked away with mild bruises and a little bit of shock. The frame on the Mazda was not bent at all--it was straight (as the body shop owner marveled at it).

We still own it.

Speed limits are perhaps are worse situation than many of you realize. There is very little engineering that goes into a regulatory (black on white) speed limit. While designers use a "design speed" that speed is only used to determine the minimum conditions for the worst situation. E.G. the tightest curve possible at the design speed. According the the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) the official way to set a speed limit is described as "When a speed limit is to be posted, it should be within 10 km/h or 5 mph of the 85th-percentile speed of free-flowing traffic."

A speed study determines the 85th-percentile speed. This is done by sitting on the side of the road and measuring how fast motorists are moving when no other motorist is limiting their speed (i.e. not held up by other traffic). The result is the highest speed at which 85 percent of the traffic is moving rounded to the nearest 5 mph increment. (Some agencies may also always round down or up). So in other words, you the driver set the speed limit. The only engineering reason the speed is set lower is to allow for road conditions (steep grade, deadman's curve), roadside development (shopping district, residential), or similar as listed in the MUTCD. There are also political reasons for setting speed limits. They vary as one might expect.

It is not all bad that speed limits are set this way. It is almost impossible to enforce a speed limit that is low, as drivers subconsciously feel comfortable at a higher speed. A straight road has a theoretical infinite speed limit since the geometry imposes no risks. Since the construction quality, ride, power, and handeling of vehicles has increased, all drivers feel more confident and comfortable at higher speeds. Unfortunately operator skills have likely not improved at the same pace.

As another post noted the black on yellow curve warning speed limits are set by Engineers as well. Those actually consider physics and the geometry of the road. However, they are the safe speed for ALL vehicles so a passenger car is usually able to "take" the curve much faster than a loaded semi truck would. All speed limits assume dry, clear conditions and a vehicle in good condition.

A few other quick thoughts. 1) I wouldn't recommend sewing or otherwise modifying a seat belt. You run the risk of compromising the belt. Use a "positioner" of some sort. The belts are designed for an "average" driver and therefore don't work by default for many of us. 2) The fact that roadside barriers are not "designed" for many vehicles on the road is not a conspiracy, it is just the result of setting a minimum standard and the ever changing nature of cars and trucks. 3) I don't doubt that congestion helps the fatal crash rate some but I doubt the total crash rate is affected. My agency (State DOT) sees the biggest number of fatal crashes in the single vehicle run off the road crash. Driver impairment typically plays a big role in these crashes. While alcohol is the impairment most people think off, drowsy driving is a huge issue. Being tired is as bad as being drunk.

Do please buckle up. You WILL stand a better change of surviving the unexpected.

Teresa 312: And as I mentioned up the thread, jackrabbit left turns in advance of oncoming traffic when a light changes have become commonplace.

I'm sorry to hear that this practice has spread beyond Massachusetts, which was the only place in the US (as far as I know) it existed only a few decades ago.

I recall on my first business trip to California, I went to the rental car desk and the nice lady behind the counter asked for my driver's license. When she saw it was from MA, she said, very seriously and with a slight note of terror in her voice: "That thing you do there, you can't do that here! That left turn thing, you will get killed!"

Boston drivers are still, I think, the worst in the US, but now there is much more competition.

Rob 323: If you're a boomer, maybe not.

OK, I'm assuming being t-boned means the other car hits you center section, going directly from your right to your left (or left to right). I never heard it before this conversation, believe me or scoff, but I thought I'd just check.

Haven't read through all of the thread, but relating to the physics – far as I can tell (mechanical engineering, college senior), the place to look is the impulse equation:

F_avg = (m*v)/t

Energy is the same in all cases – you're going as fast as you're going, and E = (1/2)*m*v^2. Likewise mass. However, wearing the seat belt, you have (a) the inertia of the car (large m means larger t, thus smaller F_avg), (b) the crumple zones of the car (meaning larger distance, distance = v*t, v constant, therefore t larger, F_avg smaller), and (c) the elasticity of the belt (again, longer distance, but also puts a limit on F_max – there's a reason I had the "avg" in there) working in your favor.

Also, re. Laura at #225: that would be an excellent series of ads. Bruised but standing (or sitting) passenger/driver on one side of the frame, totaled car on the other. (Perhaps black-and-white for extra effect.) Maximum size font, two words above and below: "SEAT BELTS", "SAVE LIVES". Small block of text for anecdote. Vary layout for increased effect.

I wonder who we could call?

Yeah, Xopher, that's what it means.

A t-bone is a nasty situation, and seatbelt or no seatbelt can result in your classic hangman's fracture (the body moves rapidly sideways, the head stays stationary due to inertia, and Bad Outcomes Ensue).

Next interesting trivia fact: in a collision, your body tends to move toward the point of maximum engagement between your vehicle and the other vehicle.

Earl (293) eversion is a squicky word, but listening to Jim's EMT stories has given me a real respect for degloving, telescoping, and debris field.

Dr. Phil (297), on old cars being death traps: Amen to that. I can personally testify that if you put your knee through the dashboard of an old-fashioned Rambler Sedan, it's not the dashboard itself that gets you; it's the knobs. Quaint old features like woody wagons and rumble seats are best appreciated at car shows, not on the road.

Greg (299), I liked "No Seatbelt? Drive a Trebuchet!" as a bumpersticker slogan. I'd buy one.

Alan Braggins (305), I don't consider any of those assertions to have been substantiated yet

Martinelli (309), that's a small masterpiece of compressed exposition.

Ethan (317): Sorry about that. It started out as Great-Uncle Floyd, but then I remembered that we have a Floyd in that generation, so I switched it to a name I knew we haven't had in the family for a long time.

(318) I like the idea of a blog that collects reports of police breaking the driving laws. After a while, it would get hard to ignore.

Once, while driving in a snowstorm, I was rear-ended by an off-duty NYC police officer. He got out of his car and yelled at me -- deliberate intimidation. When he demanded to know why I'd stopped at the light, I said, "Because it turned red."

Bex (319), I am amazed. Given conditions on the Mass Pike that day, I would never have guessed it was illegal.

P J Evans (321), I think I've driven on that thing. It's an old freeway, right? From when they were still working out the design principles? If it's the one I remember, it's way too exciting.

Elyse (322), that's depressing: no seatbelts on school buses because bullies would use them as weapons. On the other hand, everyone seems to be agreeing that they aren't especially helpful, so I guess it's no loss.

Michelel72 (326), I'm in full sympathy. Americans take it for granted that we have a right to drive unless proven otherwise. People who can't clear the snow off the top of their cars either need to get smaller cars, or take mass transit.

Joyce (328), I love pickups, but in NYC you'd have to secure the cargo compartment to keep people from moving into it.

Engineer (329), interesting observations.

"I wouldn't recommend sewing or otherwise modifying a seat belt. You run the risk of compromising the belt."

"My agency (State DOT) sees the biggest number of fatal crashes in the single vehicle run off the road crash. Driver impairment typically plays a big role in these crashes. While alcohol is the impairment most people think off, drowsy driving is a huge issue. Being tired is as bad as being drunk."

DaveL (330), so the jackrabbit left turn is Boston's fault? It figures. People normally think drivers in their area are worse than average, but I'll freely admit that Boston is the hands-down winner of the bad drivers sweepstakes. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: NYC drivers will pull creative or aggressive moves if it'll get them something. Boston drivers are aggressive out of pure habit. They'll drive like jerks when it gets them nothing at all.

Jim (334):

"In a collision, your body tends to move toward the point of maximum engagement between your vehicle and the other vehicle."

I have to say that the times I've been to Boston (for Boskone and Worldcon) at least once I left finger impressons in a part of the car that should not have them (I think the driver's seat top) because of his insistence that there was really a third lane in a street with two lanes enforced by buildings on either side.... I had braced myself for impact. I think it was the first Boskone I went to, the year of Snow-kone, I arrived by myself later than Jim and Margene because of work.

I rolled a very lightweight car (a Ford Aspire hatchback) off a highway in Texas once. It skidded and the wind was high; the speed limit was higher than I should have been driving in that c ar, in that wind. The car somehow tumbled down a slope in such a manner as to come out right-side-up on the other (separated) side of the road, facing the opposite direction. A whole corner of the roof crumpled in. Thank all powers that be, no one plowed into me. My hat left the vehicle and was completely unfindable.

Injuries: some cuts on the back of my hand, which did not bleed very much. A light bonk on the head; I've had worse from falling down skating. A slight, short-duration backache which did not actually amount to anything.

Seatbelt? Why, yes.

I echo the person above who mentioned the driver's ed movie. When I saw the films I swore I'd always wear my safety belt, and I do. I figure it takes maybe 5 seconds to buckle up. No problem.

Now, if people don't want to wear safety belts, it's their right. What I would like to see is accountability for that. If you aren't wearing a safety belt and someone hits you, you're injuries aren't covered. Things like that.

Joyce@328 "The frame on the Mazda was not bent at all..." The only frame I care about being unbent is my own (and those of the other vehicle occupants).

James@334 Any personal experience database with effectiveness of side air curtains in T-bones? It would be nice if the premium I paid for a car with them made sense.

I completely agree with Teresa's thoughts on driving (#312). Driving and maneuvering is all about using space. In traffic, a lot of it is negotiating with other drivers for space that you or they want. Drivers' negotiating strategies seek a local maximum in the number of cars on the road and how fast they can go. Drivers who try to maintain extra clear space around their cars for safety have a tough time because other drivers see that space as usable for transportation. It's an interesting experiment to measure how safely you can drive without getting an unsafe response from other drivers. (When you do this, you still need to go with the flow. If the flow seems too fast, move over. If you're already all the way over to the right, it's your lane, they can pass you.) The one thing Teresa mentions that I really wouldn't do is block other drivers who are trying to pull an illegal move. I strongly believe that it is wrong to block other drivers in any way might make them think I did it on purpose. I do think it is a good idea for merging cars to pace the lane of traffic they are merging into. A good merge works like a zipper. It's also good to use all the space provided for the merge. Don't race by other cars on the right, and don't suddenly merge into the lane early, surprising the other drivers.

Given conditions on the Mass Pike that day, I would never have guessed it was illegal.

Since when has legality (or not) affected the behavior of Boston drivers? *g* I didn't notice many drivers who were listening either, but it was all over the radio the whole time I was driving. Very, very carefully, I might add -- that was the first snow I'd seen in three winters!

(It's possible that the law was in effect back when I actually lived in the area, but I got into the habit early on of clearing the snow off my car as soon as it had stopped falling, even when I had no intention of actually braving the roads -- because the Somerville police only enforced the "move it at least every three days or it gets towed" law when snow made it easy, and it was a busy week if I took the car out once.)

Two accidents happened in July 2004.

I flipped my car off the freeway at about 65 mph, rolled it once or maybe twice. It was stopped by a clump of trees before it could continue in the direction it was heading, which would have landed it on top of an on-ramp.

The CHP officer who saw the wreck took several minutes to process what I was telling him, which was that I had been the driver. He couldn't believe I was standing on the shoulder with no visible injuries given the state of the car and the mechanism of the crash.

It turned out that I had cracked a vertebra and had chronic back pain for several years and possibly forever, though it's gotten a lot better recently. Still, I'm OK most of the time, my mobility isn't impaired, and I'm not, you know, dead. I had an airbag but it didn't go off. I was wearing my seatbelt, of course.

Later that month the 20-year-old son of some family friends was riding his bicycle when he got hit by a car at, apparently, a fairly slow speed. He was knocked down, broke his ankle, and hit his head. He can't walk. He can't talk. He can't eat solid food. He can't write. He's been making great progress in terms of answering questions by pointing to words on a page, though.

He was not wearing a helmet. I still cringe when I see helmetless bike riders.

I used to see lots of accidents when I lived in India, at a time when no car I ever encountered had a working seatbelt. I can tell you first-hand that one of the things that can happen if you get "thrown clear" is that your head and body will be thrown clear separately.

As has been alluded to in some posts, but is worth repeating:

I'll quote an aquaintance:
"If you have an accident of any consequence or roll your car, every damn thing in the car will hit you in the head, probably several times."

Think about that next you think: "I really ought to clean that crap out of my car's back seat. Tomorrow."

Personally, I would agree with the anecdotal evidence that Boston drivers are at least among the most insanely dangerous in the country. However, apparently a recent study by Men's Life magazine disagrees, placing Boston as the 34th safest city to drive in, in the US. Here's their explanation of methodology:

To calculate our rankings, we included the rate of fatal accidents, as well as the deaths caused specifically by speeding, both from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). In addition, we pulled city statistics on accident frequency from Allstate Insurance. And then we used statewide numbers on speeding from the Governors Highway Safety Association, plus NHTSA state data on seatbelt use. (Going without may be a sign of recklessness.)

May be a sign of recklessness? It would have been nice to see more definite language there. Not to mention something stronger than "recklessness." But hey, it's their dime.

(BTW:

96. Cheyenne, WY
97. Jackson, MS
98. Greensboro, NC
99. St. Louis, MO
100. Columbia, SC

...

5. San Francisco, CA
4. Yonkers, NY
3. New York, NY
2. Jersey City, NJ
1. Des Moines, IA)

Teresa @ 335

Almost certainly. Given that it was designed in the late '30s as an expressway (or 'parkway' as I've see the Santa Ana freeway labelled on some of our company maps), it's probably intended for much slower vehicles than we're playing with now. Fotunately it's short. Driving on it is, for me, an exercise in how much concentration I can produce for the fifteen or so minutes I might have to be on it (which, any more, is not often, and I don't miss it one bit).

I have these to keep the seatbelt from cutting my neck. I bought them from a catalog, but I don't remember which.

When I was 11 (1966), my family was driving a station wagon north on I-5 from Olympia to Edmonds, WA late at night. A drunk driver going south crossed the grassy median and t-boned us. We circled across the median, all four south-bound lanes, back across the median, and came back to rest in the right of four north-bound lanes. We were lucky -- my father had some bruises, my mother had scars from her lapbelt, I have a scar on the inside of my lip where I bit it, and my brother had a piece of glass near the top of his head. Rick and I didn't have lapbelts -- I slid from one side of the seat to the other - and Rick was in the wayback.

So when I drive my car, everybody is belted up before I shift into drive. It's not so easy in other people's cars, though. The only other car/taxi/shuttle I've been in that has a seatbelt that fits my large self is a Honda Odyssey. The problem with seat belt extenders of the type Jim described is that they tend to be car-specific, and not all cars have extenders made for them.

I've been hit in my 20-year-old minivan four times. Three of the times I was hit in the rear end by people who hadn't noticed the cars in front of them had stopped. No damage to my van and its steel step bumper, small damage to their cars.

The fourth time, I was hit in the right rear wheel well by a Toyota that was totaled. Nothing was wrong with my van or me. The motorcycle officer that had been in the shopping center the Toyota driver was trying to leave while I was driving by on the road and heard the accident refused to believe my minivan was the car she hit until we both (and two observers who stopped) told him so. I stayed with the Toyota driver until her husband got there -- she was afraid he'd kill her. It was her second totaled car in a year, both times her fault.

Teresa@312:
(I tried italicizing and it only lasted for one paragraph. I don't know if that's more wrong than me, or more correct.)
- - -
another temporary zero-visibility situation I've seen is when there's been a recent snowfall, and there's a hardened crust of snow on top of cars and trucks. When the owner then drives the car or truck onto a highway, the roof of the vehicle starts to warm up, and the high-speed airflow can get under the ice crust and lift it off in a single layer. It goes flying up in the air, then comes down and frags on the windshield of the car behind them.

The last time I was approaching Boston on the Mass Turnpike, I swear I saw one of those every ten or fifteen minutes. SUVs were major offenders, since they have flat tops that are hard to reach.

Trucks are worse. A few years back, a semi on the New Jersey Turnpike sloughed off a layer of hardened ice so massive that it smashed the windshield of the following car and injured the front-seat passengers. As far as anyone could tell, the semi didn't even notice what happened. I suspect a lot of those drivers on the MassPike also failed to notice that they'd just blinded the following cars.

File that one under "varieties of negligence I'm surprised aren't illegal."

- - -

In New Jersey I have heard that it is illegal to not clean the snow off your car, because a cop got his windshield taken out, or died, or both. This may be an urban-legend version of the story you mention.

( Total tangent: Someone explained to me once that police officers tailgate with bright headlights, on small roads late at night, so they can read your license plate. I still think it's a bad idea, and I still think police officers tailgate too much in too many situations. I will admit to not having done any real research on whether there are valid reasons.)

@335:
I'll freely admit that Boston is the hands-down winner of the bad drivers sweepstakes.

My theory (which I love to repeat; sorry if it's repeated here) is that every part of the country has a different type of bad driver, and the worst problems come when you take a bad driver out of their element. Some local cliches I personally know:

Floridians don't understand that some roads curve; Montrealers start before the light turns green and (as a result) stop on yellow; Boston drivers will pull across four lanes of traffic and not think twice, because that's how the roads work there; Texans measure the distance from one place to another in beers.

To get the full list, you'd have to ask each state about their neighbors, of course.

A t-bone is a nasty situation,

Also the only type of accident to date that someone I know has died in*. Her fiancé ended up in a wheelchair -- we don't know for how long, as he dropped out of our lives after the funeral, but it was sounding like it'd be quite a while.

They were wearing seatbelts. They were driving safely -- the fiancé was a really smart, responsible guy, and weather was poor. As far as anyone knew, the other guy was driving safely... I was told the guy hit a patch of ice and couldn't stop. They weren't even going that fast. It was one of those awful, genuine accidents where all the factors just came out totally wrong.

If they'd gone through a few seconds earlier or later, they probably would've been clipped front or rear and had nothing worse than some bruising and possible concussion, presumably -- presumption based on having been in that type of accident myself. (Big bruise on my arm, bump on head and worry about concussion for the driver, everything else but the back end of the car fine.)

I think 'nasty' may not be a strong enough word. 'Horrific' comes to mind.

[*Not that a lot of people I know have been in bad accidents -- my friends and family alike are generally safe drivers, thankfully -- but I did know someone who managed to get into a really nasty motorcycle accident, in which the motorcycle was totalled and he nearly was, too. And if he hadn't been wearing a helmet, likely he would've died. He was in the hospital and subsequent physical therapy for 6 months. I believe the word used when describing his legs was 'smashed'.]

I caused an accident about eight months ago. (Sun glare on wet road combined with crest of a hill and stopped traffic on major highway meets speeding driver...I am much less impatient now.) Everyone involved was wearing a seatbelt and no one involved was seriously injured.

However, half an hour later, I was sitting unbuckled in my vehicle waiting for the tow driver to be ready. Thirty seconds after I exited my vehicle and climbed into his truck (I hadn't yet closed the door on the truck cab) a car slammed into the rear of my vehicle. Had I still been sitting there unbuckled, I'm sure I'd have been thrown into, or through, the windshield at the impact.

Wearing your seatbelt in a parked car can save your life.

Greg @ 259:

No seatbelt?
Drive a Trebuchet!

OK, I want that on a bumper sticker. (Hm. Contact the folx at Instant Attitudes?)

Daniel Boone @ 279:

If a driver refused to transport me because my size made it impossible for me to wear a seatbelt in his or her vehicle, I'd consider it rude and a bit foolish. Similarly, I'd consider it rude and a bit foolish if I refused to *ride* under those circumstances, assuming we had any better reason for the trip than "just cruisin' around".

One of my friends is very large; she's in the passenger seat of my '90 Camry about three times a month. I am so glad the seat belt and shoulder belt are both long enough for her to use - I truly don't know what I'd do if they weren't. (Those in the '93 Geo were also long enough.)

Regarding the blog on bad police driving, I love that idea.

I once got in a heated discussion with a traffic policeman driving one of those three-wheeled go-carts. I approached a crosswalk on foot at the same time as he approached it going about thirty five miles per hour (about five over the urban speed limit in effect). I'd say he was still half a block away when I reached the curb.

I stepped off the curb.

Rather than yielding to the pedestrian in the crosswalk as required by law, he accelerated and veered slightly to his left to go around me (far too close for my comfort).

I yelled "Pedestrians have the right of way!" in my largest outdoor yelling voice (very large).

He screeched to an immediate halt, and parked. Jumped out and demanded that I stop and show him some identification. Which I did. He then began to lecture me sternly that it is never appropriate to yell at a policeman.

Whereupon I began to lecture him sternly that it is never appropriate (policeman or not) to fail to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

His rejoinder (all very hostile and in police command voice): "A pedestrian must yield to traffic if it's going too fast to stop safely when the pedestrian reaches the curb."

I pointed out that (a) he stopped safely enough once he had a bone to pick with me and (b) he should not have been going too fast to yield to pedestrians in an urban environment.

At that point he began to get extremely hostile. So I suggested that I'd be delighted to make an appointment with the local police chief in order to continue the conversation about his unsafe driving in the presence of his command authority. (It was a small town, this could have been easily arranged.)

At that point he decided he had more urgent business, admonished me once again not to yell at policemen, and got hastily back on his power trike and zoomed away.

I really don't like cops who think they are above the law.

I might have missed a posting, but this is in response to (Wendy was it?) whoever commented about large people, and then the person who added that you should use a seat belt extender. I just started reading up on it, and seat belt extenders for larger folk are apparently a very controversial issue. Not only is it tough to find them for all attachment types (and almost every car manufacturer uses a different one), but many of the car manufacturers won't offer them because they aren't safe (for a number of reasons, most involving where the load bearing crosses the body).

As a large person myself, I rarely wear seatbelts. I've been in a couple of accidents over the course of my life, and I wasn't seriously injured (I know that was lucky, trust me). I'd like to wear a seatbelt, but it's so damned uncomfortable I find that I only wear it when the weather or visibility is bad, and then I feel constrained in my range of motion enough that I wonder if I'm worse off.

Anyway, interesting thread. Oh, and #344? Boston might have aggressive drivers, but Massachusetts has the fewest fatalities http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/TSFAnn/TSF2004.pdf (p. 164) in the country. At least in 2004.

Daniel Boone: What you do is take the twine that's left over from modifying the driver's shoulder belt, double it several times, and tie the belts together. It's not a perfect solution, but it'll eat up some joules if you have an accident.

Please don't try to tell me it's silly. I've done it when I've ridden in vehicles with malfunctioning belts. Simple low-tech solutions are us.

Correction: it wasn't twine, but I can't remember just now what I did use. I think the first time, I used the leather belt I was wearing.

I'll chime in with the wear-your-seat-belt crowd.

When one of my older sisters was coming home after her prom night, the driver (who was legally blind in one eye, so I've no idea why he was allowed to drive a car) slammed into a tree at a fairly high speed. I forget the exact number, but I think it was about 55 mph. The other three people in the car were wearing seatbelts, but my sister, with parents who were resentful of seat belt laws, was not wearing hers. The other three people had bruises. My sister survived only because one of the other three knew how to do CPR. Her skull was fractured above her left ear--the surgeons spent hours picking bits of bone out of her brain--and if I remember correctly, both legs were fractured in multiple places when she slid under the front seat in front of her. She didn't wake up for days, and when she did, she had massive memory loss and personality changes. She went from being a bright, well-liked, and bubbly student to a sullen and rebellious girl who moved out of the house when she was 17--classic symptoms of frontal cortex trauma. She also had some mental health problems a few years after that, spent some time in a psychiatric hospital, and after that became an alcoholic. I am quite sure that her life would have turned out very differently if she had been wearing her seat belt that night.

On a happier note, she stopped drinking a few years ago (the accident happened in 1991 or 1992) and is happily married, with a personality approaching what she was like before the accident.

My dad, however, still refuses to wear a seat belt, and my mom will only wear the lap belt, even when in the front seat. My other sister and I are the only people in the family (out of 7 kids total) who will wear our seat belts every time we're sitting in a car, and it's because of that accident.

Rebecca, one-eyed people are allowed to drive.

I've rolled a Hyndai four and a half times and wound up pointed back the way I was coming from with the roof on the passenger's side pushed down below the dash (no passenger, thank ghod). I undid both seat belts and crawled out the (broken) driver's side window. Total injuries, seat belt burns on the chest and shoulder, scalp burns from bouncing off the roof, road rash on the left arm from where it kept going out the left window as the car rolled. Comment from the county sheriff, "We usually have to call for the body bag and M.E. when we see a car like this. It's a good thing you like wearing your seat belt."

To the Adams Report (#230;#312):

Adams himself admits (page 7, emphasis his):

I do not dispute Evans’ evidence concerning the life-saving benefits of seat belts if one is in a crash. The evidence that the use of a seat belt improves a car occupant’s chances of surviving a crash is convincing. That a person travelling at speed inside a hard metal shell will stand a better chance of surviving a crash if he is restrained from rattling about inside the shell is both intuitively obvious and supported by an impressive body of empirical evidence. Evans has calculated that wearing a belt reduces one’s chances of being killed, if in a crash, by 41%.

It's well Adams admits this, or we would assume that he is demented. What I should point out is that the entire thrust of this post, and the comments following it, has been about the effects and efficiency of seatbelts if in a crash.

It's both intuitively obvious and trivial that seatbelts have no effect on motorists' survival at any moment in which one is not hitting a tree, braking sharply, being rammed by a truck, or otherwise in a crash.

The argument here is not that seatbelt laws* save lives (a matter on which I have no opinion), it's that seatbelts save lives. Which they clearly do, and which Adams admits.

-------------
* Although the governor of a state, as the head of that state's executive branch and responsible for the enforcement of all state laws, should either obey the law or obey it while attempting to bring about its repeal.

Georgina #352: I can't argue with statistics. I do know that the style of driving in Boston scares the bodily fluids from me; my peripheral vision is even worse since I started wearing progressive lenses, and left turns across my lane from two lanes to the right could have me hitting someone, a situation I've not been in for over twenty years, and one I hope to avoid for several more twenties.

To those who refuse to buckle up:

If you're happy to gamble with death and eager to provide EMTs with anecdotes, think of those who will mourn you.

Even if you died with your seat belt on, the grief never stops. Changes, yes. But every holiday, every wedding, every birth reminds your friends and family that you're not there.

If you weren't wearing it, the grief and anger never stop.

Bruce #359: I drive here every day, and I have to say it's indeed sadly common. Don't know why we die less. After driving a few times in the Beltway around D.C., however, I don't know why Boston still has the reputation as the worst drivers. That's somewhere *I* thought was crazy...

Mostly we Boston drivers worry about what's in front of us. What's going on behind us is someone else's problem. So peripheral vision isn't as much of an issue unless someone speeds UP to cut you off...otherwise you'll probably see it coming. Maybe.

lv th SV bshng n hr. xmpl: "Physcs wrks. SV drvrs ftn thnk t dsn't. M, drv vry smll ffcnt cr. wrry bt thm nt sng m whl thy'r hvng cmplctd phn cnvrstns nd rnnng m dwn."

wsn't wr tht nly SV wnrs hv phn cnvrstns whl drvng.

M, drv n cnbx. Bt dn't gz t vry pssng SV nd lk fr bd bhvr s cn pt t n my ntbk. Wht *hv* ntcd s tht hndcppd drvrs ftn drv lk thy'r hndcppd: slw nd/r slppy ngh t b rl mnc n th rd. Bt t's nt pltclly crrct t bsh hndcppd ppl, nd t *s* PC t bsh SV drvrs. Hnc, ll th ppl cncdntlly bshng wht t's fshnbl t bsh. M.

About the Prius: Yes, I as a pedestrian use my ears as much as my eyes when I walk near traffic. Not being an owner of a hybrid or knowing a person who does, It took until this year until I realized that not every car is audible nowadays (fortunately I learned by reading, not by experience). I'm trying to train myself to only depend on the eyes, but it's rather a difficult habit to break. Maybe electrics should have a beeper when backing up?

I've had one accident - my own fault, going too fast around a curve and hit loose gravel - bounced off my side's guardrail after an overcorrect, riccocheted over to the opposite side, which was a 45 degree incline, last thing I remember was being upside down... and regained consciousness in the other lane, facing the opposite direction.

I was belted, but somehow broke my nose anyway (shoulder belt didn't catch?). Not much damage - some torn muscles in my right arm, which maintained a deathgrip on the wheel. Had I been unbelted - possibly ejected or thrown into the windshield - that would have been one heck of a different story.

Something I'd like to share is: even if you think you are fine after a significant crash... GO TO THE HOSPITAL. I almost didn't until a family member insisted, and only after the x-rays discovered that the elbow might have been fractured (it turned out to be only strained and chipped, but I wouldn't have known until I did some damage to it by using it).

Nuala, regarding reasonable solutions for the carless -- if your child is big enough to ride facing forward (at least 1 year old and at least 20 pounds), you might consider buying one of these.

I wouldn't recommend one of these for someone with a car; a regular carseat will provide somewhat better protection, as you can get them in more snugly, and they have the extended padded shell. However, for someone who relies on public transportation and doesn't find it practical to lug around a convertible carseat (and they really are impractical to lug around), it's a pretty good solution.

I've been for some insane reason slacking off about wearing my belt in cabs lately. Thank you for reminding me to mend my ways.

Also, on the topic of both PSA's and funny youtube videos:

A timely reminder about breast self-examination; they're your breasts. you do it.

On "soccer mom arm" - my high school boyfriend delivered pizzas. He would do this to me occasionally, commenting after, "I forgot you weren't a pizza."

School buses - Whenever possible, I get my daughter to ride in one of the private cars going along on field trips. It scares me to death that they have no seat belts, or when they do, they are basic lap belts.

Taxis - Rarely take 'em, but the other day piled into one with my boyfriend. Taxi whipped a u-turn before I'd even had a chance to reach for my belt. I ended up on the other side of the car, crushing the poster my boyfriend was holding. Not deadly, but scary.

Trams/streetcars - if you've ever been on a streetcar that stopped abruptly to avoid a car, you'll wish they had seatbelts, too. Flying halfway down the length of a Muni car was not my idea of fun.

Finally, crashes. My ex should never be allowed to drive, having crashed my car (lightly) about 4 times and totaling two of his own since, none of which I or my daughter was present for. I went to retrieve belongings from one, where our Saturn Wagon has been rear-ended by a semi. The entire back had crumpled, right up to where my daughter's car seat was installed. The car seat was unharmed, my ex walked away with some PT for misc. soft tissue injuries - had my daughter been there unbuckled or had he been unrestrained, he would have been, as the kids say, road pizza.

Seatbelts good. Happy for all that have lived to tell the tale, and sad for those who can't pass on the warning they surely would.

I was sufficiently indoctrinated about seat belts in childhood that I always feel uneasy about sitting in a car unbelted, even if it's parked or the key isn't even in the ignition. Nevertheless, my mom always did the "soccer mom arm" in front of me at stops if I was sitting next to her, I suppose ingrained from previous cars without shoulder belts.

Meanwhile, California (and apparently other) state regulations have been gradually increasing the upper age/weight limit for keeping kids in child seats in the back. If some of the more stringent ones had been in place when I was growing up, I probably would've been stuck in the back until I was 12 or 13, because I don't think I cracked 80 lbs until then.

For what it's worth (2.99, apparently), the No seatbelt? Drive a Trebuchet! bumpersticker is now available.

;)

There are billboards around here speaking of a law that children must ride in booster seats until they're 4'9" tall. (Which is weird, because looking it up, I now see that it's a WA law... but who knows?) The billboards don't mention the age cap, which in the WA law is eight. Seeing this made me wonder if grown women were being told they were too small to legally ride in cars.

Elyse Grasso (322): I switched to Velcro-flap shoes. Easier to take off and put back on, but also easy to make sure they're tightly fastened before landing. (Which I do as part of my own "pre-landing checklist".)

Teresa (335): "Boston is the hands-down winner of the bad drivers sweepstakes."

My father has driven in all sorts of places, including Seoul, which is apparently fairly bad for driving. He says Boston's the worst he's seen.

To Wendy at 210, and everyone else who has commented on seatbelt extenders: They do help make seatbelts reach, they do fasten securely, and so--in my opinion at least--they would probably be better than wearing no belt at all. (Part of the controversy seems to come from the fact that Honda refuses to make extenders, claiming that they "aren't safe." I'm not sure how far to take that, given other car companies' attitudes--see below.)

Extenders can be tricky to purchase, since (as has been mentioned) they are different for every make of car. You might try to get a universal one, but I'm not sure how "universal" it really would be. The manufacturers that do offer seatbelt extenders will often (in my experience) do so free of charge; just call the service department and ask for one that fits your car. That might be a good way to try one out. Why do they offer extenders free of charge? Partly under the Americans with Disabilities Act, I gather--one of the uses of extenders is for handicapped individuals using adaptive vehicles, drivers or passengers who have limited or no use of one arm or hand . . . every try to snap a seatbelt buckle one-handed? Not easy.

As someone said further up the thread, in Australia, seatbelt use is compulsory. All cars have seatbelts, and have had for as long as I can remember (so since at least the early 1970s). For me, putting on the seatbelt is just automatic - get into the car, buckle your seatbelt. I tend to assume my passengers have the same mental routine well hammered into them.

The car I'm currently driving has seatbelts on all five seats, as well as an airbag on the steering wheel, and possibly one on the passenger side of the dashboard (although I'm not too sure about this last). It's also got a warning light that comes on reminding you to buckle up, as well as an anti-theft ignition isolation device (this is compulsory in my state, due to a nasty epidemic of car thefts about ten years back). I think it has ABS, although I'm not certain - I try to avoid getting into situations where I'll find out. I'm one of these annoying drivers who tends to figure that if there's a speed limit on the road, it's there for a reason, which really irritates just about everyone stuck behind me (I believe the informal Aussie consensus is that all speed limits are approximately 10km/h too low).

I've been in one crash which could have seriously injured me (and got out of it with nary a scratch). I was driving home from a party at a friend's farm out in Dandaragan (Western Australia, about 2 hours out of Perth) at something like 2 or 3 in the morning. This was stupid, but I was twenty-odd and immortal (or so I thought at the time) and I was perfectly alert, honest. So was the kangaroo who came bounding out across the road. He was a big bull boomer, and I had about 50m of warning before I hit him at 100km/h (having slowed down from 110 km/h in that 50m). He bounced off the front bumper, rolled up the bonnet into the windscreen, and then I think fell off the front of the car when all forward momentum had ceased. I survived, and I think he did too - the next drivers down the way (about twenty minutes later - country roads in Western Australia aren't overly populated at the best of times, and 3am is definitely *not* the best of times) couldn't see any sign of him when they pulled over. The car's radiator had been pushed right up against the engine, and it wasn't going anywhere.

I got a right going-over from my parents (both of them) for scaring them so much, and for costing them $450 in excess on their no-claim bonus. I think if I asked them tomorrow, they'd say it was still better than the alternative. I also learned why wearing a seatbelt is a good idea even if there's no other beggar on the road - you know you're safe, but the local wildlife may not.

Oh, and had I not been wearing a seatbelt, I would have gone not only through the front windscreen, but also straight into the (rather long and vicious) claws of the hind legs of a full-grown male Western Grey kangaroo, before hitting the road. I probably would have been able to be buried in a jam jar.

PS: Australia has its own varieties of terrible drivers - and an apparent national problem with obtaining those little orange bulbs in the turn indicators.

When I was a dumb kid in high school I used to have even dumber friends. One day, I was driving through the neighborhood to a friend's house instead of walking, and I noticed the girl I was giving a ride to wasn't using her seatbelt. "Put your seatbelt on," I said, slowing down. She gave me a look and told me it was only two blocks, what could happen? So, I tapped the brakes a bit harder than I normally would, and she was dumped forward into the dashboard. The chick in the back who had also unclipped her seatbelt and was lying down rolled forward into the seats ahead of her. It was only a little stop, so there were no injuries, but both girs had large bruises along thier sides. "What if I had stood on the brakes instead?" I asked. "What if that toddler had rushed out in front of the car after his ball, and I had swerved and hit a tree?" They weren't actually convinced, but at least it made them wear their belts while I was driving.

In Japan, only the people in the front must wear seatbelts. Children habitually stand up and play in the back seat. It drives me nuts, and I can't convince anyone to change it, because "I'm a good driver. I won't get in an accident."

This is turning into a marvellous archive of anecdotes to balance out the reporting bias of the general chatter about traffic accidents. So I'll add my reasons for wearing a seatbelt:

1. I understand some elementary physics and risk statistics, duh!

2. When I was a teenager we split the family to travel to a con. I arrived there with my dad, but my mother, grandmother and siblings didn't. But when we got the phone call that there had been an accident, Mum gave the news herself, and it was infinitely less bad news than the news someone else would have had to break. She'd hit a slippery patch on a motorway, turned the car over and into a ditch, and totalled it when it hit a fence post after rolling. My family were wearing their seatbelts, and they were fine.

3. A couple of years later, a girl in my class was killed. She was a passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend, she hadn't bothered with a belt as it was only a few minutes' drive. The boyfriend was an inexperienced but not criminally stupid driver: he tried to break in a skid, turned the car over and we were told she died instantly from a broken neck.

4. I spent a month (yes, you read that right) hanging around a neuro-critical ICU. And came to realize that my brother, the one who spent a month in a very scary situation and came out of it quadriplegic, was lucky that he only had a broken neck (C4/5, a couple of mm higher would have killed him). Lucky compared to all the traffic accident victims who came in in a steady stream. You got talking to their families, and the majority were, guess what, not wearing seatbelts when their cars got into accidents. (The minority were motorcycle accidents, where seatbelt isn't an option and everybody is thrown clear, or horseriding. As others have said, riding helmets are also a good idea.)

Fascinating discussion by interesting people is why I love Making Light.

One factor which hasn't been mentioned is when and how you drive. Once upon a time, in a particularly foolish career move, I learned to drive an 18-wheeler. The only good that came of it was that I got religion about defensive driving and turned into a decent car driver after several months of being a lousy truck driver.

The thing that really stuck with me from my training was that truckers have a lower rate of vehicle accidents than the general population, but if they do get killed, it is most likely to happen in a single vehicle accident sometime between 2-5 a.m.

The lower overall accident rate is because trucks generally drive on divided highways, which, despite their high speeds, are some of the safest roads because all the traffic is going in the same direction at roughly the same speed.

The single-vehicle accident rate in the wee hours is entirely due to driver fatigue. If you drive while wobbly due to lack of sleep the effects are similar to driving drunk.

Speaking of which, accident rates rise throughout the week, with peaks from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m Friday evening and on Saturday evening/early Sunday morning (at least in the U.S. I can't speak for other countries) when the drunk- and sleep-deprived drivers start to come out. After 2 a.m., however, not only do you have the drunks, but you also have the people who suffer from terminal "gethomeitis" which peaks at 4 a.m. This is typically when sleep-depped truckers go to the big honky-tonk in the sky. Sadly, they sometimes take out another vehicle when they go, and the truck always wins, even if the driver doesn't.*

There was, a few years ago, some talk of forcing all truckers to stop driving from 4-5 a.m. to prevent accidents caused by badly fatigued drivers. But horror stories about forged log books and sleepless drivers keeping themselves awake for days on stimulants aside, good truck drivers pull over and sleep if they're slap-happy due to lack of rest.

#105: Not to disparage the dead, or to cast aspersions on the living, but I suspect that in the accident which killed Sir Osis (King of Eoldormere) driver fatigue was a contributory cause. (That, plus the unconscionable decision by the Province of Ontario to put soft, narrow, sandy shoulders along the 401, the main highway from Montreal to Toronto to Windsor/Detroit.)

When I played in the SCA, if given the choice between day-tripping and coming home in the small hours of the morning or staying the night at an event, I always choose the overnighter. If I get really sleepy when I'm driving, I pull into a rest stop (or better yet, a truck stop, close to the building and in sight of the front doors) and take a nap.

304. James: One (New Hampshire, where I live) has no seatbelt law.

Which adds an entirely too morbid twist to the state motto.

*Obligatory ex-trucker rant: Don't tailgate the damned trailer. Even if you can stop faster than the truck, you can't see around it, so if the truck stops you will go into the safety bar at the back of the trailer. Even if you are in an up-armored Cattle-lack Ecocide you will lose the fight with the real truck. Not only will you mess up your toy, and possibly yourself, but you will cause no end of grief for the trucker by making him waste precious time dealing with the ensuing accident; time which he could otherwise be spending asleep or driving around lost.

Also, don't cut in front of the tractor. The space directly in front of the giant bumper is not meant for your car/SUV but is there so that the driver can brake safely. It takes a truck 8 seconds to slow from 60 mph to a stop, but only 5 seconds for a car to do the same. This means the poor dumb trucker has three extra seconds to lose his safe driver bonus, minus the time he doesn't brake because he can't see your brake lights from the cab, when you swerve in front of him and slam on the brakes. While you might not give a rat's about the driver's safety bonus or the grief the ensuing accident will cause him, the point is moot because you'll probably be beyond caring.

Along with seatbelts, around accidents drive particularly alertly.

I contracted at an office above I-90 in Bellevue next to an on-ramp for two months one. One afternoon, from about 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM the pod spent the afternoon going over to the window to watch the aftermath of the latest accident - always caused by someone slowing down to gawk at the previous one, according to the guys with the window seats.

The last accident of the afternoon provided extra fun when one of the car's wheels came off and rolled all the way down the on ramp.

I don't think anyone was badly hurt; no aid cars or ambulances stopped. But there were plenty of flashing lights.

Thomas @374,

That reminds me... Atchoafe wigthats, there were downsides (that dinner conversation, those photos) but plenty of upsides, including going to forensics conferences.*

I met a forensics psychiatrist** at one conference (this around 1990) who'd just finished a study on truck drivers. They monitored a large group of truckers as they trucked:

10% of truckers were technically asleep at any given time

Now, not all of this was enfolded in the warm purple cloak of slumber sleep. Some was the "your brain thinks you're not needed to make decisions and turns You-The-Conscious-observer off" sleep. i.e. zombie drivers: sentient but non-conscious, there's no driver in the brain's driver seat.***

10%. I wouldn't doubt that the number of car drivers approaches this number too, although the mix of "full sleep" vs "awake but no there there" changed by the hour and the boringness of the drive.
____
* I've said it before: if you're a writer, you should go to a regional multi-field (not just medicine) forensics conference. The material you're hear will last for years. So will the visuals. But the material will be worth it.

** studies questions like "what factors make a driver keep driving when he knows his hydraulic lines are on fire?"

*** No, not a gratuitous reference. You don't have to be sleepy to go to sleep. Your brain really does possess the ability to turn 'you' off. Ever walk along an empty, boring path and suddenly you're 200 meters further along? 'You' weren't needed to make decisions, so your brain stopped running 'you.'

It's like the state of flow, but you didn't decide to go into it. Problem is, if you are needed to make a sudden decision, your brain can't instantly boot you up. So, if you're on a long boring empty stretch of road, put something dreadful onto the radio so that you keep arguing with it/ yourself.

Re: Angela, #286:

Opting to not wear a seat belt, driving fast, and dying in the eventual car wreck is what I consider a Darwinistic weeding out of morons.

Don't do that. Please. Seriously.

I don't mean to pick on you. I'm sure you were being flippant with the best of intentions. But this attitude, which is admittedly easy to cultivate, obscures the true nature of accidents.

The trouble with morons is that morons have family, friends, co-workers, and dependents. A vehicle accident is never solely about the person or persons that cause it. Morons have a distressing tendency to strike other vehicles, or pedestrians, or even buildings, at those moments when their stupidity reaches critical mass. Last year, for example, a drunk driver broad-sided a tour bus full of senior citizens about a mile from my house, seriously injuring nearly half of them. Deserve's got nothing to do with what happened to them.

A vehicle accident will also elicit an emergency response. In my county, for a 1-2 vehicle accident, that will mean anywhere from one to three dozen people in all sorts of uniforms carrying out duties on the scene. Those people are all roused out of whatever they were doing, at any hour, and sent out in any weather to dick around on scenes that are crawling with all manner of hazards. It's easy to point and scoff and say, "Oh, ha ha, that dumbass deserved what was coming to him!" Fine and dandy, but what did we, since I happen to be one of them, do to deserve getting called out to pick up the bloody, jagged pieces in South Shrimpdick, Middle-of-Nowhere at three in the morning?

I'm not an EMT. Thanks to the wonders of politics, my city's public safety department is firmly split into the three inviolate kingdoms of EMS/Rescue/Fire. I'm Fire, and my job at accident scenes is to either assist resuce/EMS (moving stretchers with or without victims) or provide scene safety (traffic control, standby fire hose, etc.). I don't do what Jim does, but in the past two years I've seen (and heard, and smelled) all sorts of disquieting things at fatals and non-fatals alike, from an average vantage point of 5-10 feet from the swearing and screaming.

A vehicle accident reaches out to involve family and community, like ripples spreading from a heavy weight thrown into water. The whole "Bah, serves the idiot right" line of thinking conceals the truth of these events behind the self-congratulatory illusion that Unvirtuous Drivers are just getting what's coming to them and that the going-smoosh process is smooth, fair, and efficient. It ain't.

#358 It's both intuitively obvious and trivial that seatbelts have no effect on motorists' survival at any moment in which one is not ... in a crash.

Of course it is. It's also intuitively obvious and trivial that seatbelts have no effect on pedestrian and cyclist survival on being hit by a motor vehicle.

What is not intuitively obvious and trivial is that, statistically, crash rates, especially those involving pedestrians and cyclists, go up in a correlated manner with seatbelt wearing.
(If anyone feels the need to explain to me that correlation isn't causation, I will take it as further evidence that they haven't actually read the linked material and are arguing from prejudice (cf. #312 and the suggestion that seatbelts not curing diabetes might be relevent).)

"The Engineer":

It's not a conspiracy, it's just not something that state DOT's or FHWA tells people, that the guardrails won't protect you in the event of a very high speed crash. Sure it's cost, but IMPO putting up lots of guardrail on high speed roads is worse than leaving the point source danger unprotected at all, especially when the standards call for over 300' of guardrail just to protect one typical sign post that is only 2' across.

That's a lot of vehicles that will hit that guardrail that wouldn't have hit the signpost in the first place. It's also why I prefer moving obstacles like that out of the clear recovery zone (typically 30'-40' from the travel lane) rather than putting guardrail around them.

Alan Braggins (378), are you asserting the existence of a causal relationship between automobile drivers' wearing seatbelts, and them getting into accidents involving pedestrians or cyclists?

That's getting up into the range of an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary proof.

THIS JUST HAPPENED SATURDAY 4/14/2007

My 2 friends and I were driving (rather quickly) up Boulder Canyon in Colorado when he lost control of our car on a sandy turn going about 70mph.

Our 2002 Subaru WRX went into a 320ft spin, off the canyon, and ROLLED 3+ TIMES down onto its side on boulders and downed trees along Boulder Creek's edge 40ft below the road.

I was riding in the back seat behind my driving friend, and my other friend was riding shotgun up front.

All three of us were wearing seatbelts and immediately climbed out of the totaled car without a SINGLE scratch on our bodies!

During the crash:

-After the skid, when I first felt the car start to roll, I remember pressing my hands desperately against the roof

-The experience was RELENTLESSLY VIOLENT and felt like an eternity

-All the glass window panes flew out whole (thank you safety glass)

-I saw everything flying around me before it all catapulted out of the car

-The loud crunching and scraping sounds of metal against rock were deafening, and not reassuring

-Rolling over in a car feels like riding a mechanical bull/roller coaster through a gauntlet

Onlookers were in disbelief to see all three of us quickly scramble out of the back windshield completely unscathed.

I immediately started taking pictures of the car and its location with my phone; everyone I show still can't believe we don't have a mark on our bodies.
The Subaru WRX was smashed front to back, with immense structural damage to the roof, pillars and doors. Overall though, the frame held.

When the EMTs arrived with us standing around looking down at the car from the road above, they at first didn't believe that we were the passengers from the car.

The EMTs said they see cars skid off this canyon every other week, mostly resulting in fatalities. Had we not been wearing our seatbelts, we probably would have been ejected out of the car (like everything else not bolted down was) onto the surrounding sharp rocks and downed tree trunks, if not crushed by the car.

There are four factors that I credit to our survival (let alone not having a bruise):

1. we all wore our seatbelts
2. Subaru WRXs, although small and light, have extremely strong frames
3. all three of us are strong 22yr old males
4. *we were lucky*

When all was said and done, one of the EMTs jokingly commented "people pay good money for a ride like that!" We all laughed.

As exciting as it was, no thank you.

I LIKE SEATBELTS!

Re #380: Maybe it would help if you looked at the evidence you had been pointed at instead of declaring you were pretty sure you didn't give a damn about it.

P.S. And no, I'm saying there is some evidence of a link, and some reason to believe that it may be causal.

Alan Braggins wrote at #382:

> Re #380: Maybe it would help if you looked at the evidence you had been pointed at instead of declaring you were pretty sure you didn't give a damn about it.

Let me predict the future:

- if you engage in polite conversation with the people here, they will talk back, even when they don't agree with you. Everyone will end up happier.

- if you snap at people, they will ignore you or snap back. Everyone will end up sadder.

Now I know you've posted a URL - but what's to stop you from talking about the contents of it? I've got to go and do the dishes, and then God help me, I've got to do a couple of hours of overtime. Maybe I'll find something interesting here when I come back?

P.J. Evans, #138: We had a few such curves, however due to the nature of the surroundings they were called something like "the farmer's tip jar." Perfectly flat land, no trees, muddy, loamy fields or meadows on both sides of the road. The only way to get a car out again was to walk to the next farmhouse and ask to be dragged out with a tractor. A 4 wheel drive SUV might have got out on its own, though, if it didn't land on its roof (which these cars seem to do easily). The curve where people got killed was the much easier one with trees and ditches.

Tereas @135: The big bumpers are there to say, "If we have an accident, you'll take a lot more damage than I will."

An old, battered car can be amazingly effective into getting new luxury cars out of the way. They are thinking about the repair bills for that extra-shiny finish.

Also (strictly anecdotal), angle of collsion seems to be more relevant to car damage than the weight of the cars. My compact/station wagon got rear-ended by a Mercedes some months ago. My car needed a new rear bumper, a new coat of paint on the rear door and a new rear door lock. The Mercedes owner needed a new car.

Alan #382:

I've read the article, and I feel it is, well, full of it.

Nearly all of Adams' sources of information (citing yourself as a reference isn't very fair) are two decades old, he continually mentions total fatalities as the measuring stick without taking into account increased miles travelled (fatalities/million miles travelled is the traditional yardstick for traffic fatalities), does not mention which countries he compares Australia, etc, to on his charts of "those with seat belt laws vs those without" (for all I know he was cherry picking 3rd world nations with few paved roads vs modern, paved road nations), and does not account for other factors that may have caused this lack of decrease in fatalities. I didn't see anything about seat belts causing an increase in pedestrian/cyclist fatalities either, which you have implied are linked. In fact, by his comments, you'd think that Volvo drivers should be some of the worst drivers on the road, and be disproportionally represented in crash data.

Personally, although it's been a while, when I did drive a non-belted vehicle my habits weren't any different than they are now. The wearing of seat belts (or not) doesn't make me more reckless behind the wheel, and I doubt it really does for anyone else either.

If we are to believe the Adams Paper, in order to reduce fatalities we should immediately do the following things:

Remove all safety features along all roadsides

Remove all paint stripes and speed limit signs

Begin building vehicles to the same safety specs as those made prior to say, 1965. No seat belts, no collapsing steering columns, no air bags, no crumple zones, no ABS, no side door panels, etc. That way all drivers, realizing any crash at all will probably be very hazardous, will be much more courteous and careful vehicular operators.

All that article is is the attempted linking of two marginally related statistics (seat belt wearing and total fatalities) by a disgruntled personal rights advocate, who dislikes being told what to do by the government.

I've seen the text string "Atchoafe wigthats" in a couple of Kathryn from Sunnyvale's comments, but can't decode it. Help?

TNH #335 (the bit responding to me), Daniel Boone #351: I love those stories! I have many similar ones, as well as countless less confrontational "Did that cop just make a left turn on red into oncoming traffic?" ones.

I'm gonna try the experiment: policepolice.blogspot.com. There's nothing there yet, but let's keep our eyes open.

Thomas #374: Also, don't cut in front of the tractor. The space directly in front of the giant bumper is not meant for your car/SUV but is there so that the driver can brake safely. It takes a truck 8 seconds to slow from 60 mph to a stop, but only 5 seconds for a car to do the same.

Early on in my driving life, I did cut in front of a big truck, and almost at that very instant the traffic on the highway came to a sudden stop. I'm extremely lucky that the truck driver was very talented and very aware of his surroundings, and that there happened to be a large open space one lane over. The truck swerved into it and came to a stop fully in front of me. I wanted to get out and apologize and thank him for saving my life from my own idiocy, but obviously couldn't. Moral of the story: I've never done that again.

Would anyone here who is still arguing that seatbelt use should be up to the individual care to address the often-mentioned fact that in a crash, you, the unsecured passenger, become a safety risk to other people as you turn into a projectile?

John@386: Strange as it may seem, that stuff about eliminating lines from the road, street signs etc etc is exactly what the Dutch town planners have been doing.

I'm seeing a lot of scepticism about risk compensation in this thread. I've got a longer response planned to try and address some of the points made; I'll see if I have time to put it together tonight.

There are really three subtly different questions here:
(1) Would you, personally, be safer if you wore a seatbelt (everything else being the same)?
(2) Are we all safer when everyone is compelled to wear seatbelts?
(3) If compulsion makes us safer, is the trade-off a good one?
I think the answer to (1) is "yes, almost certainly" (and indeed I always wear a seatbelt). But I'm much less sure about the answers to (2) and (3).

The reasons for doubting (2) are set out in the John Adams paper I cited: countries that introduced a seatbelt law did not experience any improvement in road safety, when compared to countries that didn't introduce a law. (More detailed, but older, discussion here.) Another line of evidence comes from Smeed's Law, an empirical relationship between rate of car ownership and accidents per vehicle, discussed here. Smeed's law suggests that road deaths are largely independent of particular safety measures.

This line of thinking is not an argument for not wearing a seatbelt: the evidence that you'll be safer if you do is very strong, so long as you manage to avoid the temptation to take more risks. But it's a caution against compulsion, because it suggests the cost-benefit argument is not one-sided.

Teresa@312: Alan (120), how do Teva sandals hold up?

Guessing you meant me @181, I asked Joe and he thinks they're an improvement in the not-falling-off category, but not so much in the covering-your-feet category.

[S]andals are bad because they cover less of your feet -- but Tevas look like they'd probably at least stay on your feet in an impact, unlike slip-on shoes. So it could be worse, but it could be better, I guess.

Keep in mind that what we're talking about is survivability in a limited type of crash: the kind where the main cause of death is inability to get out of a wrecked plane quickly. Then again, that's also the only kind where you can do anything to affect your chances.

Cowboy boots or steel toes boots would be better, but more difficult to get on the plane, I guess. I'll be wearing my Teva-like gym shoes that cover my toes when I fly.

Jenny Islander @164: Schoolbusses are IME the only vehicles where damage to the riders regulary happens on straight roads at a constant speed of 70 kmh. Adding seat belts would only give kids a tool to strangle each other with.

John@386: there's discussion about displacement of risk onto pedestrians and cyclists is on page 6, based on evidence from Australia, and again on page 13, based on evidence from the UK.

I logged off yesterday to watch the Bahrain Grand Prix. Drivers who are not only better than us, but better than we can imagine being (unless you're a 20 year old male and into wearing your cap backwards) Drivers who drive, routinely, faster than us and faster than we can imagine about an inch from someone else who wants to get past them, no matter what. They all wear 5 point harnesses and crash helmets. Do you think they wouldn't save that weight if they could?

After the car racing I watched some superbike racing. All the above comments about skill and speed apply in spades 'cos they're bike racers and, by definition, crazy. Every rider in leathers and full face helmets.

I spent 5 years living on the Isle of Man where they race bikes on the public roads. Not a one of these dare devils hasn't worn a helmet in longer than anyone can recall.

I'll happily say that any 'evidence' 'proving' that helmets don't improve outcomes is spurious, and Ben Roethlisberger was an idiot before he fell off his Harley.

As for how you drive. I'm a diabetic. The second hypo I suffered - the second, so I didn't yet recognise the symptoms ('cos I'm an idiot, probably) was while I was driving. I was lucky. My daughter recognised what was happening and told me to 'Pull over, Daddy, like NOW!' Needless to say, I keep a close eye on how I'm feeling now.

As I said above, drive safe everybody - you don't know what's going on behind the other driver's eyes.

Phil #390:

Yes, traffic calming measures such as no stripes, etc, are understood to be good ideas on low speed roads where there is a need to slow down traffic due to conflicts with non-vehicular traffic, and movement of vehicles is not considered a primary concern (such as in dense urban settings, or residential areas). I think removing such items on an interstate, though, would not result in any safety benefits.

GDR #394: I was hoping for more than just a throwing out of facts to make someone's case in this matter. Again, no mention was made of the increase in VMT (vehicular miles travelled) vs crashes involving non-motorists (pedestrians/cyclists), and certainly the claim that the above have "withdrawn from the roads" has been refuted rather solidly. On my projects I am getting more and more requests for pedestrian/bike considerations, not less, and US statistics show that more and more people are using both modes of transportation for more than recreation.

John@386:"The wearing of seat belts (or not) doesn't make me more reckless behind the wheel, and I doubt it really does for anyone else either."

That's nice for you, but not everyone behaves the same way, or has such accurate introspection. I know I am prepared to attempt much more dangerous rock climbs when I'm protected by safety equipment than when I'm not. I don't see why something similar wouldn't be true of driving, though it's hard for me to tell because driving manoeuvres aren't graded in the way that rock climbs are. Janssen's 1991 study (see Adams, pages 8–9) supports this.

Re #355-356, my dad has one eye, drives, had an accident where his life was probably saved by his seatbelt (leaving a quite extraordinary diagonal bruise across his chest). In the accident, when he was stopped by his seatbelt, his false eye wasn't, leading it to bounce all around the car. Neither the police nor my Dad could find it that night, but when we went to the garage the next morning, the mechanic had found it in the passenger door pocket (and refused to touch it).

[While searching for the eye, the policeman told a story of how he'd turned up to an accident, and there was what had looked like the end of a dog's tail sticking up between two cars. 'Ah,' he thought 'a dog ran out and the cars crashed trying to avoid it.' Going over, he looks and sees that, under the cars, there's no dog. Thinking 'All this, AND now there's an injured dog somewhere out there' he went to inspect the tail, and then realised that it was a toupee.]

I just want to mention an accident I was in with a station wagon. I was rear ended by a young girl with her friends and involved in a 4 car accident (that caused a couple other accidents behind us to happen as everyone stopped fast on a crowded highway). We had our seatbelts on and would likely have gone at least into the windshield. the passenger in the car behind us was not wearing a seatbelt and smacked her head on their windshield, she was the only one taken away in an ambulance (the driver wanted to drive their car home, it was already held together by bungee cords).

But that's not what I wanted to mention... I had a cinder block in the back trunk area. The impact caused the back of my car to bend in and down (she was the only driver attempting to do 80 mph when everyone else was doing 45). The cinder block was projected out the back window. I don't know if I would've been liable for that hitting the girl behind me, but she's lucky it didn't. It was in a hundred pieces on the road afterward. I know I was lucky it didn't fly forward (although it was up against the back seat, so it would've just hit the seat and not gone anywhere). The moral of the story: don't drive around with loose heavy objects randomly sitting in your car... and wear a seatbelt.

Gdr @ 391, as you've provided a good example of what I was talking about in #389, would you care to address how having a restrained body (alive or dead) not flying around causing damage and presenting a safety hazard, either inside or outside the car ("being thrown clear"), is not advantageous?

Do the statistics on people who died while wearing seatbelts take into account the number who were wearing them who died because someone else in the car--or outside it--wasn't?

As a result of this discussion, I'm going to purchase both seatbelt extenders for the very large and seatbelt adaptors for the petite passengers that I may have in my car in the future. I'll keep 'em in the glove box.

And also, I'll keep the cruft in the back to a minimum, and the cargo "shade" pulled into place. It would at least slow any potential missles.

Thanks for a great discussion.

I wonder how many people have been seriously injured/killed from items within the car striking them during a crash, and if this is possible to determine.

Obviously if a bowling ball is lodged in someone's chest cavity that's kind of apparent, but what about something more generic such as a briefcase, laptop computer, insulated drinking cup, or even an umbrella?

John D. Macdonald wrote: The argument here is not that seatbelt laws* save lives (a matter on which I have no opinion), it's that seatbelts save lives.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article for the New Yorker (Wrong Turn) which is mostly about airbags versus seatbelts (i.e., passive protection versus active). He says seatbelt laws and awareness campaigns have brought belt usage to over 70% in the US. So, if belts save lives, and laws create more belt usage, then the laws save lives.

#397 not everyone behaves the same way, or has such accurate introspection

As shown by the fact that 74% of drivers consider themselves to be safer than most other motorists.

#391 ::: Gdr

The reasons for doubting (2) are set out in the John Adams paper I cited: countries that introduced a seatbelt law did not experience any improvement in road safety, when compared to countries that didn't introduce a law.

While Adams doesn't mention which countries didn't introduce a law, I'm going to presume that he means the USA since (1) his data is from the 1970s when the USA didn't have seatbelt laws, and (2) the USA has a huge number of cars and drivers which provide a large statistical mass when averaged in with other countries.

Other things that happened in the USA aside from seatbelt/non-seatbelt use during that period include the roll-out of modern EMS (the Star of Life was copyrighted in 1972), the invention of the Jaws of Life, the deployment of 911 as a national emergency number, and the nation-wide 55 MPH speedlimit.

A question that isn't addressed (or even considered) by Adams is whether the gas crisis during that time led to a larger than normal number of inexperienced/first time pedestrians and bicyclists.

His paper is a regular farrago of question-begging and ground-shifting, nor does he give enough references for someone to come behind and check his numbers. Revisiting the question and doing a historical project might be a good thing for some grad student in statistics to do.

The basic argument seems to be that the Invisible Hand of the Market creates a constant number of traffic deaths, so if they don't come from vehicular passengers getting thrown through the windscreen they must come from busses hitting jaywalkers. Given the data presented by Adams, the best we can get is on the low side of Not Proved.

In the meantime, I certainly hope that Adams personally wears his seatbelt.

Aconite@400:

It looks to me as though you're phrasing this as a question of morality, so I'll answer it in that vein. (If I've mistaken you, and you're actually asking about public policy, then say so.)

I think people have a moral duty to reasonably reduce the risks they impose on other people. But the same reasoning should make us reluctant to drive motor vehicles unless absolutely necessary, because of the hazards we present to other road users: half a ton of metal can cause much more damage than 70 kg of unrestrained driver or passenger.

If the freedom to drive at all is an acceptable balance between convenience to ourselves and risk to others, then I don't why driving without a seatbelt is on other the unacceptable side of that balance.

James@405:"Given the data presented by Adams, the best we can get is on the low side of Not Proved."

I'm not disagreeing with you here, the evidence is suggestive but by no means compelling. But a verdict of "not proved" normally means that the accused goes free. I think the standard for justice ought to be just as high when it comes to criminalizing people in the name of their own safety.

Gdr,

Since an unrestrained body in MY car constitutes a threat to me and anyone else in there in the event of a crash, everyone buckles up or they don't ride with me.

Whether you choose to endanger YOUR passengers by not buckling is your own decision, as is their decision to ride/not ride with you as well.

It's unacceptable because the risk is preventable by the simple act of buckling your seat belt.

Teresa (#312): If you don't mind my asking, is it still the rule that in heavy duststorms you pull over and turn off your lights, or has thinking changed on that one?

The Phoenix area had a bad duststorm last week (when AZ had heavy winds all over), and their local news station gave that same advice. I never heard any later stories about wrecks, so I guess it worked.

Re #403. Belt laws undoubtedly create more usage. An (unavoidable) problem with the population studies is that the only way you can compare more or less the same drivers with more or less the same cars in more or less the same conditions but with sudden markedly higher seat belt wearing is to make seat belts compulsary.

(Similarly observing that doubling cycle helmet use (from 43% to 92%) in New Zealand didn't produce a reduction in cyclist head injury rates tells us things that comparing the low helmet and injury rates in the Netherlands with the high rates in the USA can't.)

But that comparison only tells you about the people who wear a seat belt when it is legally required and weren't already wearing one anyway. But, given the evidence that seat belt wearing encourages overconfidence among some drivers, warning of the dangers of overconfidence makes more sense than ignoring the evidence because it might not apply to everyone.

(Again, cycle helmets aren't directly equivalent - I know of no suggestion that other drivers treat belted drivers differently (how often can you even see another driver is wearing a belt?). But there is evidence that drivers treat helmeted drivers differently. So even a cyclist whose introspection is completely accurate may be affected by risk compensation by others.

There are also mechanisms whereby helmets might increase certain types of injuries even if no risk compensation does take place - risk compensation is merely one possible explanation for the observed population statistics, and disbelieving in it doesn't change the statistics.)

#396, John the highway engineer:
For the record, thank you for showing up here and sharing your insider's perspective.

Also, can you give us some engineering journal citations for further reading? I'd even go for the really abstruse stuff, particularly on traffic calming measures on low speed streets. I had read recently (but cannot cite) that putting in vertical elements (trees, bollards, signs) right next to the traffic lane (instead of parallel parking) caused people to slow down in residential areas, because they provided visual cues for how fast they were going.

Anyway, do you guys blog? (Do you have your own scobleizer, doctrow, etc?)

Thomas @374: When I played in the SCA, if given the choice between day-tripping and coming home in the small hours of the morning or staying the night at an event, I always choose the overnighter.

One of the reasons I drive a station wagon: I could get a decent night's sleep at SCA event in the (dry and silent) car. Before that, driving home the same night was safer, as I wouldn't get any sleep on-site anyway.

This has been a fascinating discussion. Thank you, Jim, for your excellent entry, and thanks to everyone for contributing. I'm a seatbelt user as are almost all of my occasional passengers but from now on I'll insist that all passengers buckle up. I'll also make sure that there are no objects that could become dangerous missiles in the cab.

My scariest driving incident was doing a 360 on a slight upgrade on a snowy Pennsylvania turnpike in the early seventies. I've been in no collisions that caused any damage during the 40+ years I've been driving. I've usually driven less than 5000 miles a year and I'm sure I've been extremely lucky.

I'm now driving a 2006 Subaru Imprezza with ABS brakes and front and side airbags. I marvel at how much safer this car is than my previous cars (1974 and 1987 Toyota Tercels) (and I think it's similar in body to the WRX that protected its passengers while tumbling down the Colorado mountainside) but I'm sure not changing my defensive driving style as a consequence of these improvements in safety.

Thanks also for the tip that anchor points for shoulder belts can be lowered in new cars. Indeed they can--easily in the Subaru--and I'd missed that information in reading my owner's manual.

> ABS brakes ... I'm sure not changing my defensive driving style as a consequence of these improvements in safety

Good. But it's been shown that some other drivers do. "drivers of cabs with ABS ... proceeded at a shorter forward sight distance ... ABS taxis had more accidents under slippery driving condition"
(And More on seat belts from the same book.)

The discussion of Governor Corzine has tended to "what an idiot!" rather than "what a crook!"

Let me tell you a little story about the effect of laws.

One winter day we got called away to an automobile accident, car vs. tree.

On scene, we find a young man, unrestrained driver, who has gone off the snowy-slick road into a tree. The car's wrecked. Looking at it, the tires are bald -- the vehicle would have failed inspection for that alone. He's pretty much okay but wins a ride to the hospital anyway. He gets a ticket for driving without a license.

Exactly one week later, we get called to another automobile accident, single vehicle against tree. On scene we find the same young man driving a different car with equally bald tires. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt this time either. The cop tries to give him a ticket for driving without a license, and he becomes Very Very Upset: "What do you mean 'driving without a license'? I borrowed my girlfriend's license! See, here it is!"

There is a group of people who will always wear their seatbelt, regardless of any law. (Me, for example. The law doesn't compell me to wear a seatbelt, but I always do. Back when seatbelts were an option at added expense, my father (an engineer) had them installed and we always wore them.)

There's another group that will never wear seatbelts regardless of the law. That young man, I suspect, would be one of them.

I don't think that citing his case as an argument against requiring that drivers be licensed, or that annual safety inspections aren't an overall good, would fly. Nor is citing him (and people like him) as an argument against seatbelt laws a good argument.

The laws will actually affect a small percentage of people. What will affect them far more than the remote possibility of a small fine is the social pressure to Not Be An Idiot.

If Adams is correct about risk compensation in this case, then not only should seatbelt laws not be passed, but the public awareness campaigns should be discontinued. The risk compensation should occur regardless of the person's motive for buckling their seatbelt. The mere fact of wearing the seatbelt must be enough.

One of Adams' arguments seems to be that since seatbelt laws have no effect on total traffic deaths, and that philosophically it is better to have fewer laws than more laws, that seatbelt laws ought not to be passed.

I can't say that I disagree with the position that fewer laws are better than more laws, or that ineffective laws ought not to be passed. But if one is trying to prove that seatbelt laws have no effect on total traffic deaths then I think that requires strong proof, which hasn't been offered.

kathryn @ 376

Ah, 'autopilot mode' raises its head!

File that one under "varieties of negligence I'm surprised aren't illegal."

It may not be illegal per se, but in NJ, motorists are explicitly liable as a civil matter for any damage caused by snow or ice flying from their vehicle.

In the NJ Driver manual, under the heading "Snow and Ice":

Before driving in cold weather, let the vehicle warm up. Remove all snow and ice from the car, including from on the roof. In New Jersey, motorists are liable if ice flies from a vehicle and causes death, injury or property damage. Always make sure the vehicle has windshield wiper fluid.

Speaking of, why on earth did I have to brush slushy snow-like stuff off my car in central NJ today? I expect mid-April snow in Minnesota or maybe upstate New York, but this shouldn't be happening here.

gdr @ #407 But a verdict of "not proved" normally means that the accused goes free.

Innocent until proven guilty is a legal convention, not one of the laws of logic. It exists because of a desire to protect innocent people from wrong convictions, not because logic would dictate that something that can't be 100 percent proven must be false.

In many contexts aside from criminal trials, it makes more sense to go with what seems most likely.

Besides, James Macdonald meant that Adams' claims are not proven (and have very little to back them up).

Christopher Davis #369: Teresa (335): "Boston is the hands-down winner of the bad drivers sweepstakes."

My father has driven in all sorts of places, including Seoul, which is apparently fairly bad for driving. He says Boston's the worst he's seen.

The first time my husband took me to Boston, he said, "You know everything I've ever said about safe driving? Try and not believe it for the next few days, because it just doesn't apply here."

Kimiko #411:

Re: Engineering manuals related to traffic calming, safety, etc.

The one I'd start with from a non-engineer's perspective is "Flexibility in Highway Design", publication # FHWA-PD-97-062. It covers how engineers can (and should) design facilities for the surrounding environment, and covers the basics for traffic calming as well.

NCHRP Report 480, "A Guide to Best Practices for Achieving Context Sensitive Solutions". This one is a compilation of research papers on the subject and can be found at the Transportation Research Board's website, www.trb.org.

AASHTO's "A Guide for Achieving Flexibility in Highway Design", May 2004, ISBN: 1-56051-259-8

AASHTO's "A Guide for Transporation Landscape and Environmental Design", June 2001,
ISBN: 1-56051-009-0

While it doesn't cover traffic calming, the FHWA Roadside Design Guide, 2002 Edition, covers roadside barriers, slopes, and other protective devices that may be useful to you.

A couple of websites that may be helpful with respect to traffic calming:

http://www.ite.org/traffic/index.html
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/tcalm/index.htm

The City of Portland has an excellent website on traffic calming; the link is here:
http://www.portlandonline.com/transportation/index.cfm?c=32360
and do a search on "traffic calming".

As for vertical objects near the street helping to slow down traffic, yes, that's true. A line of trees between the sidewalk and curb, if high enough, will create a visual barrier to motorists and the result will be slower traffic operations.

I've seen the Adams study, and updates, cited in industrial safety discussions as an example of the need to take risk compensation into account when designing safety measures. However, the lesson drawn was not that it's pointless to insist on safety measures, but that you must think about what risk compensation behaviour is likely to happen, and prevent that as well. In the case of seatbelts, the answer is not to refrain from seatbelt laws -- it is to add other measures to improve the safety of cyclists and pedestrians. There are a lot of things that can be done with a) road design, b) requiring higher standards of driving, c) better enforcement of existing traffic regulations, with penalties stiff enough to make people think twice about indulging in behaviour that endangers others.

Re my comment at 413: I said I'd never been in a collision with damage but a repressed memory has surfaced and I must amend that claim. A certain aggresive stone wall on a narrow road in Wales scraped the side and broke the mirror of my rental car.

(And of course it should be fewer miles instead of less.)

As to guardrail safety, or lack thereof, one thing nobody seems to have taken into account when designing the things is what happens when the car's impact takes place right where the guardrail begins, such as the start of an exit ramp. I saw this on a local freeway a couple of weeks ago; the railing had rolled up, just like one of those key-operated sardine can tops. All the car detritus had been cleaned up, so I don't know what shape the offending auto was in, but it can't have been good.

Note that this was *not* the exit on the same freeway where the exit speed is clearly posted as 25 mph, complete with flashing warning lights, where the property owner at 30 degrees off the highway gets a new back fence on an average of every six months; this despite a guard rail and a rather large grass buffer. Flips, rolls, and no seatbelts combine to make regular headlines.

I've been in two accidents, both times I was very glad to be wearing a car. Both were in a 2-door 86 Cherokee. No airbags, built like a tank.

First one was a Dukes-of-hazzard style leap off an embankment when the other option was a head-on Jeep vs. dually-pulling-cabin-cruiser with both vehicles doing approximately 65mph. Oncoming dually might have been going faster; he was trying to pass other traffic.

Was left with a bruise, cuts and bruises from small flying objects and branches whipping through the open windows. I wasn't hurt, just sore. Had I not been wearing a seatbelt I likely would have been thrown out of the seat -- probably hitting my head on the roof -- and likely would have lost control. Jeep went airborn for a good fifteen feet. (I was able to drive the Jeep away and continue on my trip, BTW. It needed some front end work later, but was driveable.)

Second one was a Jeep-vs-dishwasher. Dishwasher fell off a truck in the next lane over and bounced in front of me. I was doing 75mph (on road rated for this). Had I been driving a shorter vehicle, it likely would have been Jeep-vs-dishwasher. Also drove the Jeep away, with significantly more damage -- the cops had to pull the fender out of the wheel well using a tow strap so I could drive it. Dishwasher was totaled. I had a nice diagonal bruise from the seatbelt on that one too, but since I did a 360 on the freeway after hitting it and the G's alone were enough to temporarily knock me out ... I came to sitting in the emergency lane with no real damage other than bruises ... probably a good thing I was wearing the seatbelt. Apparently I drove over to the emergency lane after spinning on autopilot, but have no memory of this.

On helmets -- worst wreck off a horse I've ever had was off a 13'2" hand mare. (That's a pony, for the nonhorsey folks. Her back was elbow high to me.) She came to a dead stop from a canter, I didn't, and launched over her head. I had my hand caught in the reins, and came down on the helmet. Smashed the helmet. The horse was a total robot to ride -- showed nationally when she ws a children as a child's hunter/jumper and in driving -- and she only stopped like that because another horse threw a bucking fit in front of her.

My helmet was in pieces. I was lucky to walk away with only a stiff neck (the same sort of hand-in-reins accident is what broke Christopher Reeve's neck, going at about the same speed) and a broken hand. When I got up, my pinky was on backwards ... my hand will never be the same, but hey, my skull was intact and I didn't break my neck, so I didn't have many complaints.

I also came off a race-bred thoroughbred (who had a few hundred thousand in race winnings to his name) who showed me just how fast a race-bred thoroughbred could run when he saw his first cow out in open country. When I tried to stop him, he shied/bucked or stumbled (not sure which) and I went off over his shoulder at 35-40mph. Resulted in another smashed helmet, possibly from a hoof. I walked away unhurt, except for a good case of the shakes. I think I was pretty lucky on that one ...

Joann #423:

Actually, the new guardrail end treatments are much safer than the older ones, which did nothing to keep energy from being transferred into the impacting vehicle.

The new ones have movable heads on the ends (they are big square plates of metal) that when hit, turn the guardrail into big strings of curly metal. All that energy doing that to the steel guardrail is energy that isn't tearing into your vehicle.

Regarding the mom arm, there is also, in the parental brain, a direct connection between the part of the brain that detects danger and the mouth, one without editing built in. This morning I was driving the kids back from dropping their father off at work (those of you from Massachusetts will have noted the rather bad weather, meaning that I was being cautious. Having read this thread last night, I was being especially cautious) when younger boy threw a fit and unbuckled himself, on the Mass Pike during rush hour, in a rainstorm with twenty-mile-per-hour-or-so winds. Pulled over. Hazards on. Younger boy unmercifully buckled in; me hastily rebuckled after doing so. Pulled back into traffic as smartly as possible and harangued child for several minutes as to the utter stupidity of what he had just done, ending with, "If the Pope, the president and Ray Bradbury were in this car, they would be wearing their seatbelts!"
And about a mile down the road said out loud, "Wait a minute - what the hell did I just say?"

I'd just like to add that people are going on and on about other drivers and how they impact our safety, but in my experience, seat belts have saved my life in accidents where no other drivers are involved -- but plenty of moose, deer, and other critters who have a very poor handle on traffic law!

Until the critters learn the rules of the road, everyone in my vehicle gets buckled up.

John #425:

Thanks for the info; it looked really bad. I think I feel better to hear it was a new design and meant that way. It looked just like it had been peeled off with a giant can-opener.

joann #428:

The damage done to the end treatment units is severe, but that's a small price to pay (each one of the units runs around $3000 to replace) compared to having the guardrail spear the vehicle's passenger compartment, which the older ones used to do.

I think the 'thrown clear' idea is quite a local one. I live in the Netherlands and have never heard it cited by anyone. Do British and Australian people talk about that, or is it a purely American thing?

Here I don't know anyone who is still grumbling about wearing a seat belt. Now if we could only eradicate cell phoning while driving, but also while cycling and walking - those people are all traffic hazards as far as I'm concerned.

On the other hand, I wonder about my own attitude to bike helmets. The are a couple of kids in my sons' classes who wear them, but only a few. They look weird and over-protective to me and probably to most Dutch parents, since so few of us use them. All people who would never take their kids out in their car without car seats and booster seats and seat belts. Are we still in denial? Overly reliant on out (admittedly great) system of separate bike lanes and the safety-in-numbers that comes with so many people on bikes? Must think some more on this...

John @425, I've noticed that there are apparently permanent farms of water-filled barrels at the ends of beam- type barriers in known heavy accident locations (one, strangely enough, was at the 1-90 interchange in Bellevue, mentioned above, but that has been replaced with New Jersey barriers). And there's also a lot of steel beam barrier ends which are curved down into the surface (notably just north of Kelso in the northbound lanes).

*Shakespearian aside: Do not fear for my driving record, what with noticing all these highway safety devices; I don't drive, thanks to what gets called "global reversals," among other things. I also know the location of every resident pair of Red Tail hawks between Seattle and Woodburn, OR.*

About pedestrian and bicycle vs car fatalities: the big error I'm seeing in the paper cited above is that they are being treated as if they occur in the same kind of environments as car vs car fatalities. In my observation (of car vs pedestrian, car vs bicycle accidents in this state over the past short time) Most of them occur in what is the safest car vs car environment: city streets and residential neighborhoods. The commonest scenerio amounts to "I didn't see him until it was too late-" cars making turns over pedestrians in crosswalks, pr pulling out of driveways or into four way stop intersections in the path of cyclists. The presence of a seatbelt seems external to such low-speed events.

Bruce @ 54: I think that's exactly right. No helmet = DNR.

Equestrians: We know the helmet is just as important when you are off the horse in any situation where the horse is not secured. Add another horse and frisky 'horseplay' can send a hoof to your head and dent it. A playful turn of its head can send you to the deck and knock you out.

JESR #431:

Those are attenuators (the water filled cylinders at the end of a concrete barrier). They work just fine unless they freeze, and are used where there's no room for the usual barrier end treatments. There're some other types that use dense foam in sequence to slow down the impacting vehicle; the water cylinders don't work all that well if a vehicle hits right at the corner between obstacle and attenuator.

As for the ones that curve downward into the ground at the end, I have two words for those:

Ski Jumps

Here in NC we often bury the end of guardrail in the back slope of a ditch if there's one handy, which keeps vehicles from leaping over the rail. But, just bending it down and into the ground is definitely not a good way to end a median barrier.

JESR # 431

I saw a near-accident with a skateboarder just last week. Guy came down the hill in the street, light turned red in front of him, he was going too fast to stop and went into the cross street. Fortunately there wasn't anyone going through in the right lane, or he'd have been a flat skateboarder. Also fortunately, the bus in the *next* lane was a bit farther back in traffic. I could just see explaining to the law enforcement folks who would have shown up that 'he ran the light'. (It's posted 'no right turn on red'. Not everyone waits.)

Tangentially, I just got diagnosed with a condition that can result from seatbelt injury: Meralgia paresthetica. Some people get it really bad, but in the worst case you can resect the nerve and have a numb thigh; the nerve is purely sensory.

Mine was probably from tight clothing and walking too hard, and it's mostly numbness with occasional pain, not bad enough to do anything more than watch out for behaviors that cause flareups. I might have waited until my next physical except that leg pain is possibly indicative of phlebitis. It's mostly an enjoyable but time-wasting experience--a semi-lame conversation topic and an opportunity to play doctor on Wikipedia.

Well, enough waste for now.

JanetM @387,
"as the child of a forensics engineer..." (sorry about that, using an acronym that has meaning to just one person. But for this thread it is weakly relevant.)

All, ObSF YASID * question:
Short story, no later than 1980, regarding a VR driving test? The person wanting to get licensed gets put into an immersive environment where he goes through a virtual car crash. Because the testee still wants a license even after the VR crash, the testee must be crazy and cruel and can't get a license (Catch-22).

--
* Yet another story id request

I got "seat-belt religion" several years ago...

It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, so in the interest of avoiding the crowd at the grocery store on Wednesday, my partner and I decide we'll go food shopping that night. To make things go a little faster, she takes me to work.

For those who may know Columbus, Ohio roads, we were southbound on Olentangy River Road on the divided portion, we had the green light at the Thomas Lane intersection (Riverside Hospital) when a sedan in the northbound lanes pulls an illegal left turn in front of us.

I was not wearing a seatbelt. I grabbed the chicken bar on the door and braced my right foot against the wheelwell. My partner managed to dump enough speed so that the airbags in the Voyager did not deploy. We nailed the rear of the sedan's trunk. The little sportscar in the next lane T-boned the sedan's passenger door.

My partner being a first responder, she asked if I was ok then went and checked everyone else. It turns out the lady who was driving the sedan was late for an appointment with her physician. The 3 college students who'd been in the sportscar loaned us their cellphones so we could call our offices and tell them we'd be late.

Hospital security was first on the scene, but no one had a scratch and declined their offer of a ride to the ER. (Yes everyone else had been wearing their seatbelts.)

The police were next on the scene -- we got a laugh out of the inch thick stack of photocopies that the cop had in his briefcase. They were all of this particular intersection...

Didn't really start hurting until about an hour after the crash. We ended up going to the chiropracter that evening before we went shopping.

X-rays for me showed all the cervical vertebrae which normally curve inward like this ) were bowed in an outward curve ( like that, and from mid-shoulder to waist the vertebrae were rotated 30 degrees off their normal axis.

It took several weeks of adjustments to get things back to normal.

I now wear the belt whenever I'm in the van.

Alan@410 - I assume you mean bicyclist, given the article you cite. I'll keep on wearing my bicycle helmet anyway - I know too many people who have been spared concussions courtesy of their helmet. The study talked only about motor vehicle/bicycle accidents, but said nothing about just plain falling, due to road hazards, random pedestrian antics or even simply being unable to unclip from a pedal in time.

Ledasmom @ 426 - Your young child knows who Ray Bradbury is! Wow. I'm not so sure that the president is bright enough to fasten his own seat belt, though.

Cynthia @ 427 - Amen! I've yet to hit a critter and have either of us sustain damage, but I've had close calls with moose, deer, geese, ducks, quail, turkeys and a stray alpaca. Personally, I'm convinced that one of these days, a chicken is going to come through my windshield.

drowsy @ 432 (And Bruce @ 54) - let's not say that out loud. Some bright boy or girl in some state legislature somewhere might hear and actually try that.

Just a quick note to say you've written an excellent post. I was on this bandwagon 20+ years ago, and I'm glad legislatures are finally seeing the light.

And for those who have been in a MVA where they'd "have been killed if wearing a seatbelt," start buckling up now. You've had your one incredibly lucky break--don't go wasting money on lottery tickets.

This is an interesting discussion.

I'm not sure about the risk balancing stuff overall, but (as I think Jim commented) it surely has to do with the risk perceptions of the drivers making decisions. My sense is that many 4WD drivers obviously do risk balancing with an incorrect assessment of their risks--basically, thinking they can safely drive much faster in bad conditions than they really can.

As far as the seatbelt laws go, to the extent you're talking about protecting an adult from his own decisions, I think you guys are using justifications that you would never accept in other situations. For example, driving your car for the next month without wearing a seatbelt is much less risky to you than climbing Mt Everest. We accept you deciding to climb Mt Everest, or go cave-diving, or whatever, because you're choosing your own acceptable level of risk. (The issue gets more complicated when there are multiple people in the car, of course.)

That said, I have to admit I find it bizarre that anyone doesn't regularly wear their seatbelt. I mean, I can kind of see it for helmets and bikes/motorcycles, since people do sometimes complain about the heat or discomfort or loss of visibility. I get why, once addicted to nicotine, you keep smoking. But the actual cost for wearing a seatbelt seems so amazingly small that it's surprising to me that it's much of an issue for anyone.

Thanks to this discussion, I'm never lowering the passenger seat for a nap again, and neither will my passengers.

re untethered children and unsafe police officers: Yep, yep, yep. My husband had seen loads of unsafe driving in a fairly short time (including a woman nursing a baby while driving), and thus yelled at a guy driving on a major road in Chicago at twilight with his unrestrained son on his lap "learning how to drive". The driver was in a late model car that certainly had airbags. Turns out the guy was an off-duty Chicago cop, and thus got my husband arrested for felony assault for yelling across 2 lanes of traffic. (The guy never showed up in court - he just wanted my husband to spend 6 hours in jail.)

Marrije @430 re: Bike helmets

Why do I always wear a helmet when biking, if there are any hard surfaces anywhere on the route (i.e. even bike paths)?

Because of a roommate I lost in college. Patrick didn't die, but he had to drop out of graduate school college because of his helmetless single-rider 12 kilometers/hour accident.

While biking home late at night (in a town where bikes outnumber residents: everyone bikes), he somehow fell. All the energy- 90 kilos of human at 12 k/hr- that should have been transfered to his helmet's plastic and foam went into his skull.

Patrick continued home. Another roommate- a medical student- noticed the signs of a concussion. We brought him to the hospital: other than the concussion Patrick seemed fine. No fractures, no stiches needed, not even a 'chiseled spam' road rash*.

Except he lost about 20 IQ points. His was a real Algernon moment. He could read newspapers but not his own notes. He could understand TV shows but not lectures.

His brother put law school on hold and flew out to California to help, but even with his brother shadowing him Patrick couldn't handle grad school. He dropped out and left for physical rehab in Colorado. He didn't return to school in the next 2 years. After that I lost track: I don't know if he ever went back to a grad school.

Wear a helmet. Knee and elbow pads- that can be excessively protective. Children can learn to love scars- it makes for a conversation opener. Children won't love not being able to hold an intelligent conversation.
---
* In retrospect Patrick should have wanted a broken arm and road rash- energy that could have been absorbed in his skin and arm bones went into his skull.

I can kind of see it for helmets and bikes/motorcycles, since people do sometimes complain about the heat or discomfort or loss of visibility

Roomie was out on his bike (ex-LAPD Honda 750) one morning in mid-June - this was in the early '80s. Came in at lunch, one leg of pants shredded, leg with road rash. He was on the Pasadena Freeway when traffic suddenly slowed ... and the bike chose that moment to blow the oil seal. Which is in front of the rear wheel. He went down, fortunately at about 20mph, and the total damage was the scraped leg, the ruined pants, his wallet (in pants pocket - went after the outside layer of fabric), his leather gloves, and the faceplate on the helmet (came off and went somewhere). Abrasion-resistant jacket, just scuffed.

He said that a few minutes he'd watched a kid go by on another bike in shorts, tennies, teeshirt, no helmet, and thought that while the kid might be more comfortable, he was also a lot more likely to get serious damage.

I used to never wear my seatbelt because I figured I would leave things up to fate--"if it's my time to go, it's my time to go." But then in 1998 my little brother died, not in anything car related, but now that I know from experience the hell and misery that my family would go through if I died, I wear my seatbelt for them.

Coming late to the discussion, but I want to add my two cents and have a comment or two that actually hasn't been mentioned prior to #422.

First I am at best an average drive and have had my share of accidents. I have made a concious decision not to wear my seatbelt 4-5 times over the last twelve months. In all of those cases it was to drive approximately 3 blocks between my local chinese takeout and home and I did drive slower and more paranoid to compensate.

In the accidents that I have had they have all been single vehicle accidents while I was wearing my seatbelt and with one exception have all been in icy conditions. The one exception happened on my way home from work in broad daylight with dry pavement. A suicidal deer came up out of deep ditch across the oncoming lane of traffic and basically cleared my hood wiping out my windshiled and the roofline of my car, totalling it out. It was an instant fatality for the deer and I developed a bruise on my arm like I had been hit with a baseball. Even though the only decelleration was due to my braking the contents of my car were thourghly scrambled and glass splinters were everywhere except in my underware. I don't think that wearing my seatbelt has had an effect one way or anther in the accident's I've been in, but since I can't tell the future I bet that wearing it is worth the tiny inconvenience.

Now the addition to the discussion. In certain situations ABS brakes can prevent the vehicle from stopping becasue the transmission doesn't disengage. Specifically on icy roads ABS brake wil preserve control at the espense of continuing at approximately 2-3 mph until you reach a patch with traction or manually put the vehicle in neutral. In almost all situations it is safer, but it has almost caused accidents for me where non-ABS brakes may have resulted in some skidding, but a shorter stopping distance.

Larry Brennan #438: As far as I know he doesn't know who Bradbury is, which is why I can't quite figure out why I phrased my safety warning in the form of a bad bar joke.

Albatross @ 440 - In my (not insignificant) experience, a motorcycle helmet affords not only protection from head injuries in an accident, but serves to generally improve rider comfort by blocking wind and rain, reducing noise (earplugs are good too) and providing protection from random bits of road debris. Yeah, they can be hot, but most modern helmets have vents and are much cooler at speed.

I also wear armored gear (both jacket and pants) when riding. Commuting, I look like Mr. Hi-Viz Cordura Geek, but even the leathers I wear on weekend rides are fully armored.

As far as the climbing Everest comparison goes, if Mr. or Ms. Mountaineer freezes to death, I don't have to worry about getting contact frostbite. I do have to worry about someone else's body flying around my car. The law gives me extra leverage to get the recalcitrant into their seat belts.

Joanne wrote (#419): The first time my husband took me to Boston, he said, "You know everything I've ever said about safe driving? Try and not believe it for the next few days, because it just doesn't apply here."

I don't think that's true, actually. Not to sound too much like a goody-goody, but just because the cultural norms allow you to do things like turn left in front of oncoming traffic doesn't mean you have to. I always wait for oncoming traffic before I turn left (most of the drivers will hesitate and then go, but sometimes I get an unambiguous signal, like a flash of lights, to turn), I always signal my lane changes (and if someone moves to not let me in, I let them go ahead - do I really want that T-fueled jerk on my bumper?), and I leave what I think is an appropriate amount of following space (2-3 sec), letting people move in to the spot and and drifting back as I need to.

To be fair, my incentive to drive this way is purely mercenary; I live in an urban area in MA, and I got my license mere months before I became the primary driver on my car, so my insurance rates are hellacious. I have a strong incentive to behave in a way that would let me point to the other driver if there's an incident. A small amount of annoyance on the part of other drivers beats explaining to a cop why I got t-boned while making a left and dealing with the hike in my premiums.

While I always wear my seatbelt, my truck is infamous for amount of stuff I shove into the passenger seat. I'm cleaning it out tonight.

#427 ::: Cynthia

Until the critters learn the rules of the road, everyone in my vehicle gets buckled up.

Moose vs. ambulance collision photos. (Safe for work, non-gory.)

That thing they do in Boston, they do in Pittsburgh too. Just warning anyone travelling that way... It's pretty much expected, and the folks going straight generally let the first (and only the first) person in the left turn lane go.

Someone way up thread said something about your safety bubble (what I learned as "the Smith System" in driver's ed) being seen as a space other drivers can squeeze into. Annoyingly true -- happens to me every single day on my commute into town. I've got my nice four-second gap between me and the guy in front, and some bozo invariably pulls out (on an uphill, natch) and I have to hit the brakes. I saw in our local paper that driver's ed is not required for kids in Oklahoma, and a very small percentage take it...it shows.

You know what I don't understand? Why there's all this angsty I-don't-hafta, you-can't-make-me, so-there! indignation about being required (not compelled, required) to wear seatbelts. Anyone who's driving a car in the developed world is constantly having to pay attention to rules and requirements: licensing, parking, insurance, registration, maintenance, road rules, emission standards, auto safety standards, accident liability, et cetera.

They're not free to drive when impaired, drive in an unsafe manner, drive an unsafe vehicle, or purchase a new vehicle that doesn't meet a stringent and constantly evolving set of safety standards. If they screw up on those, they can be fined, forbidden to take their car out on the road, and in severe cases have their driving privileges suspended or revoked.

And yet. And yet, we're supposed to believe that being required to fasten their seatbelts represents some kind of huge reduction in their personal freedom? What a crock. Buckling your seatbelt takes a few seconds. Wearing it is barely noticeable (unless you've got that problem with the shoulder belt sawing at the side of your neck, which none of them have mentioned having).

Not one of them has addressed the point, made again and again here, that an unsecured driver or passenger is a potentially lethal hazard to other people riding in the car. Neither have they addressed the point that they alone are extremely unlikely to bear the full costs of the kind of catastrophic injuries unsecured riders pick up in MVAs. I notice they're not even acknowledging John's very astute remarks in comment #386. And they've ignored all along the fact that every public safety professional in this thread is emphatically in favor of seatbelts.

Put up or shut up, guys. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to engage with the whole argument, not just the bits you think are favorable to you.

What we've gotten are assertions and statistics that reek like week-old fish. Wearing seatbelts increases the hazards to pedestrians and bikers? That's nonsensical -- the kind of argument that can only be believed by someone who started out wanting to believe it. And here's a hint: when the main authority you're citing solemnly argues that seatbelts do nothing to lower the general mortality rate aside from reducing injuries incurred during automobile accidents, it's time to either find a different authority, or change your opinion.

Yeah, driving a car is liberating. It's empowering. It's also a socially mediated, wholly cooperative, heavily regulated activity. You don't get to have the one without the other. You also don't get to pretend that that's not how things work. Understanding that point is a basic part of becoming a grownup. And if having to wear your seatbelt comes as an unwelcome reminder that you're still subject to laws and obligations -- well, tough.

debcha #448:

It wasn't that *he* was going to deliberately drive contrary to his own safety lectures, but more of a warning: most of the population would be driving in a less than optimal manner, and therefore not to be surprised either at what they did or if he felt it necessary to take extreme measures in response. And I don't mean by performing what we call a "pre-emptive left".

Gdr (407), you've failed to take Jim's politeness into account. "Given the data presented by Adams, the best we can get is on the low side of Not Proved" is a fairly heavy condemnation of Jim-speak.

Also, your assertion that "not proven" means the defendant goes free mixes several different levels of argument, the civil and criminal justice systems, and the Scottish legal system with everyone else's legal system.

I have two questions for you:

1. Do you always drive alone, or do you take passengers in your car?

2. Are the only car trips that you take ones where you're driving in your own car, or do you ever ride as a passenger in other people's cars?

442 Kathryn: Except he lost about 20 IQ points. His was a real Algernon moment. He could read newspapers but not his own notes. He could understand TV shows but not lectures.

He may have had an undiagnosed subdural hematoma (in English, bleeding in the brain). There are often no obvious symptoms from this except mental impairment.

(Not directly relevant to your story, but this is a common cause of "dementia" in older people, misdiagnosed as early stage Alzheimer's, but can be caused by something as simple as turning ones head too fast or bumping against a cabinet door, or of course, a fall.)

@ John 379

Yes. It is not an easy topic to clearly explain. I misread you as saying "won't tell" rather than "don't tell."

I agree the clear zone should be as clear as possible. It is true that for most errant drivers the single two foot wide "point" object is better than the 300 foot guardrail, but it is that odds thing again. More motorists will hit the guardrail but at typically less damage than they would see if they hit the point object. Those "point" objects usually will not move even when hit by the biggest vehicles and are almost guaranteed to result in fatalities.

Many designers need to actually "think" about what they are doing. Doing on-scene reviews of fatal crashes certainly focuses the mind on these issues. Something I no longer do since moving to a different area of DOT engineering.

PJ Evans@ 434, I've actually been in what was close to being a car vs bicycle collision in Seattle, in similar circumstances: we were making a left on to Lake Washington Blvd at the east end of the Washington Park Arboretum, and a helmetted and padded woman came down off the bit of Lake Washington Blvd east of (and up hill of) Madison and blew through a red light substantially above the automobile speed limit, then flipped us off as she cut around us and continued on her merry way.

I'm pretty sure she was no more law abiding and considerate than she would have been minus the helmet, though. Maybe it was the skull-and-bones on her cycling gloves that suggest that.

It rather ruined the happy post-plant sale glow.

Applause for Teresa's post at #452.

Hey. I used to be part of that "Why should the law make me wear a seatbelt/helmet?" crowd. I was profoundly irritated that the government was mandating my choices about safety, even though I generally chose the safe way anyhow. (I did spend a while not wearing a lapbelt when I first got fat enough that it was uncomfortable, but eventually I figured out how best to adjust seats so it worked for me.)

Until I figured out that actually, they were also mandating the safety of other people in the car. Likely there's a few other considerations, like costs of maintaining EMS and other financial issues, but the fact is that wearing a seatbelt isn't just about personal safety. Much like the rest of the laws involving driving.

How many of you still on this kick have viewed the video posted in #15?

I admit I'm still bothered by it having to be a law, but we (the collective national we, not me or most of the people in this thread) did it to ourselves by not choosing the safe path.

Thank you for a very informative article. I am going to clean out my back seat tonight.

Do any of the seat-belt modifiers in the thread have ideas about lap belts? I have times when even the slightest pressure on my stomach is fairly painful, which includes the lap belt in my car, which of course I wear religiously. Wrapping it around my knee instead or holding it with one hand both work, but I'm sure they're both unsafe. So are there any ways I can get the lap belt just half an inch away from my stomach while still driving safely?

Note: Jim's participation here may be limited for a while. They've lost power in Colebrook, and have been warned that it may take 48 hours to get it back.

Jim says the stuff in the jump bag is coming in handy.

> Why there's all this angsty I-don't-hafta, you-can't-make-me, so-there! indignation

It must be an American thing. I've never seen it here, and my understanding is that car airbags were developed largely because Americans rejected seatbelt laws.

Teresa@454:

I'm not really sure why you're asking this, but the answers are (1) no, yes (2) no, yes. Same as everyone else, I expect.

Agnes #459, it sounds like you'd be best off -- for at least significantly long trips -- to get something like one of those hernia belts that will fit snugly and offer some support.

Or.... how expensive would it be to get those 5-point "racing" seat belts installed in your usual car seat? I think they cross mid-chest.

In my travels this afternoon I picked up some seatbelt adapter devices at Target -- they were like $7.99. Now I'm all set for any smaller friends that I may be transporting in the future.

Agnes @ #459 -- that lap belt should be in your lap not across your stomach.

When you fasten the lap belt it should lay across the top of the thigh, just at the hip. If you are fastening so it crosses the lower abdomen, you're courting major internal injuries if/when you hit something.

> And here's a hint: when the main authority you're citing solemnly argues that seatbelts do nothing to lower the general mortality rate aside from reducing injuries incurred during automobile accidents

And here's another hint: when you are reduced to strawman arguments like "Seatbelts do nothing to combat cancer or heart disease. They don't do a thing for diabetes." it's time to consider arguing against the actual arguments being cited not a parody. Adam's argument is not that seat belts do not help aside from reducing injuries incurred during automobile accidents, but that the reduction in some injuries is balanced by increases in other injuries in automobile accidents.

marrije @ 430: Regarding bicycle helmets, something to consider is that they protect the rider's head in many situations, not only in the case of an auto-vs.-bike accident.

I promised myself to always wear my bike helmet after a friend wiped out when he hit a patch of gravel going around a corner. No other vehicles involved, nothing dramatically smashed into anything else — but the 2.5-inch piece of jagged metal which had been lying on the ground where he went down and which had embedded 2 inches of itself in his helmet made an impression on me. Not as much of an impression as it made on his helmet, of course...

Alan Braggins @ 465:

Here's another hint: Arguing with your hostess is likely to get you disemvowelled. Seatbelts won't protect you against that, either.

Since it's the flavor du jour, here's my would've-gotten-killed story:

Back when I was in high school, my mother picked me and my sister up early to go to the dentist. We were going down the FDR Drive at ~25 mph, it was raining heavily and traffic was pretty heavy too. We were about 1 1/2 car lengths behind a small moving van, when he hit his brakes gently. My mother did the same.

That's when we hydroplaned.

The front 3 feet of the car went under the van, and the metal step at the back accordioned the hood of the car. We were completely unharmed. Not a scratch, not a bruise, some minor hyperventilation. If any of us had been seat-belt-less, we would've gone through the windshield.

The car was also perfectly fine, once the hood was replaced. I'm convinced that the only reason we stopped (without the metal step going thru the windshield), was that the truck had exerted sufficient pressure on the front of the car to give us back our traction.

467: I beg to disagree. In the couple years I've been reading here, I don't believe I have ever seen Teresa disemvowel anyone for arguing with her, even heatedly. I have only seen it for abusive language, impoliteness, apparent "drive-by" argument-pastings, or rampant sock-puppetry.

There have been occasional times in the last two years where I have chosen not to argue a disagreement with Teresa or Patrick, but that was a personal choice in the interests of what I consider polite. I have never worried that they would disemvowel me for arguing with them. Indeed, the last time I disagreed vehemently with Patrick on something, he gave me ample space to express my disagreement, and we found we shared some points of agreement on the subject.

Teresa @ 452:

They're not free to drive when impaired, drive in an unsafe manner, drive an unsafe vehicle, or purchase a new vehicle that doesn't meet a stringent and constantly evolving set of safety standards. If they screw up on those, they can be fined, forbidden to take their car out on the road, and in severe cases have their driving privileges suspended or revoked.

A friend of mine answers letters for the Ministry of Transportation in my province, and from the stories she tells, a really astonishing number of people who write in believe they should be free to do all those things without penalty and the government is infringing on their freedom by not letting them. Makes her crazy.

(Usual cheers for the post, of course.)

Teresa @ 312

If I was doing ten miles over the speed limit in the passing lane, guys who wanted to do twenty-five miles over the speed limit would flash their headlights at me.

Last fall I went to Louisiana to visit my son and his wife; they'd just moved to Baton Rouge. Because my wife, Eva, had never been to New Orleans, we figured to fly into New Orleans, stay for a day, then drive to Baton Rouge, where we'd stay with the kids, and go on a couple of day trips back to New Orleans.

I'd been to New Orleans several times before, but never to Baton Rouge, and never farther west of the city than Metaire, an adjacent suburb. So I was not prepared for the way people drive on the interstate between cities there.

Now the two cities are connected by about 70-80 miles of I-70, which is two lanes each direction, mostly straight as a string, and mostly flat, because a lot of it is causeway over the swamps. It's zoned for 70 mph almost the whole way. I was doing 75 to 80 most of the time, and being passed by everyone. Most cars were doing over 80, and a significant percentage, not just a few outliers, were doing well over 90.

The funny part was that it was all very civil and orderly. Everyone I saw in the left lane who was overtaken from behind would move to the slow lane as soon as possible to let the overtaker pass. No fuss, no speeding up temporarily to match, and the overtaking cars never honked and only very rarely flashed their lights when they'd been behind for some time. There was some passing on the right, but not a lot of high-speed weaving.

On the other hand, the civility disappeared as soon as we got close enough to the city (at either end) for the road to expand out to more lanes.

Hi, Clifton!

It was more a warning, because he seemed to be wanting to start something. Mostly his tone of voice - if you can have one when you're writing! Besides, why shouldn't he have the fun of trying to read his own post minus vowels?