Safety Seat Belts & Car Accidents

"Car accidents are the leading cause of death, as well as loss of work time."

Wearing seat belts will reduce injuries and save lives. It can also save millions of dollars for American businesses. In 1984, car crashes left about 4,200 workers with lost jobs. It also affects the lost of productivity, insurance, and medical costs to those individuals that do not wear their seat belt. The second leading cause of death is heart attacks. It accounts for twelve percent of death in the U.S. Traffic safety facts for 2001 stated that seventy-two percent of the people are wearing safety seat belts. It is up from sixty-seven percent in December 1999 and up from sixty two percent in May 1998. Each year, the number of people wearing seat belts increases and the rate of fatalities decreases. Those who don't buckle should understand the risks involved. Many people in vehicles, who do not use seat belts, end up in terrible fatalities, but those that have seat belts properly fastened have the improved ability to avoid fatalities. Because of the increasingly amount of drivers and passengers, they should always properly wear the seat belt.

Seat belts in automobiles are a very important safety feature. Over the past ten years, highway injuries and fatalities have dropped. The reason for the decline is because more and more people are wearing seat belts. Seat belts hold your body in place while in and stopped motion. When a traffic accident occurs, the car suddenly comes to a stop and the driver and passenger who are sitting in the front and who are not wearing seat belts keep moving forward towards the steering wheel, windshield, or other parts of the interior. It has been proven through many crash tests with dummies crashing into windshields and dashboards to convince people wearing a seat belt is a safe idea. The seat belt will prevent one from getting badly injured or death. Passengers in the back of a car who are unbelted will also endanger their safety, but they will also injury the people in the front seat because the unbelted rear passengers can hit the front seat hard enough to injure the people seated in them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says, "safety belts, when used, reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by forty-five percent. From 1975 through 1999, an estimated 123,213 lives were saved by safety belts." Seat belts also prevent one from being thrown from the car. In 1996 only one percent of restrained passenger car occupants were ejected as opposed to twenty percent of unrestrained passenger's occupants. In total crashes, nearly seventy three percent of the occupants were ejected from cars resulted in death from not being restrained. Imagine hearing your parents had been ejected out of the vehicle and is suffering in critical condition because they didn't have their seat belt on for a short trip to work. That's why seat belts should be worn at all times to prevent injuries or death.

The first seat belt law began in 1984, in the state of New York. It proved to have saved more lives from accidents. As of December 1999, forty nine states including the District of Columbia had used the seat belt law in effect. In 1999 thirty three states, police officers were permitted to write citations only after a car was stopped for some other traffic violation. There are currently sixteen states that have the primary enforcement, allowing police officers to write citations whenever they are seen not wearing a seat belt. In 1978, the state of Tennessee was the first state to impose the child safety restraint law. Not only is it important for adults to wear seat belts, but also children who are under the ages of six must have their own safety seat. The first mandatory use of child restrain went into effect in 1978 in the State of Tennessee. Children under the age of twelve must not sit in the front seat due to the air bags. The International Highway Traffic Safety Administration says, "From 1975 through 1999 an estimated 4,500 lives were saved by child restraints."
Adults who do not use seat belts are sending a deadly message to children. Parents are role models to children when growing up. They need to set examples of buckling themselves so children will also do the same. National crash shows it is more likely that if a driver is buckled up children riding in the same vehicle are buckled up ninety four percent of the time. However when the driver is unbuckled, children buckled up only thirty percent of the time. The adults really have to buckle up to make sure their children are buckled up so it would not lead to fatal injures or even lead to death.

Whether you are a child or an adult one must always wear safety seat belts while riding in a motor vehicle or on a bus no matter how short or long the ride might be. Many people believe that if they are going to die in a crash, safety seat belts will not affect the crash outcome. Unfortunately, the threat of seriously being injured or dying is not enough to persuade some people to always buckle up. They only proven way to get these high-risk people to use seat belt is to issue tickets and fine to them. We need to let them know that they are not only hurting themselves but they are financially harming everyone else around them. It is important to know that accidents resulting in being unbuckled raise the cost of our health premiums and taxes. However, the risk of getting into an accident on a short trip is just as great if not greater than on a longer drive away from home. I know it is hassle to have to put your safety belt on for a short distance drive like going to a friend's house. We know that at least seventy percent of serious accidents occur within twenty five miles away from home. Some people claim that wearing seat belts are uncomfortable and cause wrinkles in their clothing. It would be worth the trouble to try to adjust the seat belt to one likely and to take the wrinkled clothes to the cleaners than to risk the chance of a severe injury or possible death. Many people don't realize that they are affecting many others such as taxpayers whose taxes that are being raised each year. It also raises the cost of health care. We could save billions of dollars on medical and employment issues. The money saved could have been used for other important issues. So BUCKLE UP, it could be your own life!!!


This post has been edited by OpaQue: Sep 22 2006, 06:48 AM

Thanks, like we haven't heard this lecture a hundred times in school, on television, in magazines, etc.I think that everyone knows the benefits of seat belts and why one should wear them, they're just too stupid to heed the warnings and do so.

the governement conveniently likes to forget that traffic fatalities increase drasticaly (i think 400%) when seat belts became standard issue in cars and the first round of "modern" safety legislation went through. this made cars have crumple zones to decrease forces exerted on the passangers.

also if you have a family history of heart defects or have heart disease wearing a seatbelt in a potentially fatal accident will most likely kill you much more painfully than going through the windsheild.

I do not agree that belts are needed in every case, here is an example from my real life.....

My grandfather is dead thanks to SAFETY belts... Here is what happend:

He was a policeman... He was driving, about 90-100km/h, in his police car, and then one people in tractor came on road from right, my grandfather presses the brake, and then crashes into a tractor... The SAFETY belt was break his rebe's and died from heart damaging...

Or this, my friend is deat thanks to Safety belt... Here is what happend:

He was driving, and somewhere between two cities other car was going around a broken car parked with two wheels on the road. My friend was I supose must to turn right, and bam, he was of the road. Car was roling on the field for a while, and than it stoped. The reason of his death is same like my grandfather. Broken rebe's was damaged the heart...

I can't say, in some cases peoples dies with or without belts, so, i think, the belts might be useful, but with a little changes in desing...

@berakd
Seat belts do stop you going through the windscreen, but they do wreck your ribs/chest, and if you are going fast enough, as you said, you can die. If they hadn't been wearing a seat belt, they still would have died, as they would have gone through the windscreen.

My grandfather was in a car accident (Another car came round a corner to fast and hit them) and his ribs were heavily bruised. But he is still alive.

If you are going fast enough when you are hit to die because of a seat belt, you would probably be dead either way.

you can't really say that because if the belts weren't there, they both might have even got into much worse damage. But both case, the impact was so strong that even safety belts are no help.

And for those cases where safety belts actually killed peope, those people are most likely to put the belts on incorrectly; therefore, causes more harms than good.

Good point. But i have heard this alot. It kinda feels uncomftable riding\driving without one on.

I hered this for example:

One guy was entered curve with a very high speed, and get of the road... He did not use the safety belt, and he was while auto was tumbling on the field, he fell of the car. Car was wrecked, and he is alive now.

I am not trying to say how safety belts are bad, I am just saying that sometimes they are useful, and sometimes not...

I for example always drive with safety belt, more from economical reasons than from safety reasons.

And I'd like to say something what is maybe more important than belts: It is not matter if we are using them or not, we, peoples must drive responsible and safe. When I make an accident, I don't make a bad thing just for me, I imperil somebody else! That is very big problem!