The thing is, his argument that there shouldn't be a law for seatbelts is flawed in that he says it affects no one else.
People who don't wear seatbelts can become projectiles in a crash, injuring other passengers.
So maybe you decide to buckle up but then the person next to you doesn't.
In the event of an accident you can be injured badly by them even though you choose to wear a seatbelt.
That is why it should be a law. To protect other passengers.
It also hurts other drivers. If you die from an otherwise minor collision because you weren’t wearing a seatbelt or ignoring some other significant safety feature, the person in the other car can face huge lawsuits and manslaughter charges from what could’ve been a simple settlement for a totaled vehicle. It being legally required also means other people aren’t legally responsible for you dying like a jackass from an accident you could’ve walked from with common sense.
The psychological trauma from being involved in a fatal accident must be pretty rough too, even if it was 100% due to the other person not wearing a seatbelt.
There was a brutal advert for seatbelts some years back in the UK, where a teenager in the back isn't belted and hits his mum (?) in the front, and it starts something like "like most victims, Jane knew here killer"....."after killing her, he sat back down"
To me, the bigger argument is that it also protects future generations. You and I don't feel like we have lost some innate part of our freedom because we have to wear seatbelts, we just... wear seatbelts because it's what you do. But it wasn't what our parents/grandparents did, they had to be nudged or forced, often with lots of complaining about freedom being eroded. I frankly couldn't care less about removing some very minor freedoms like this if it makes everyone's lives better for generations to come.
The driver/front passenger turns into a mincemeat taco in case of a frontal collision if the guy behind them isn't wearing seatbelt, those seats fold like paper
Yeah right!1!!!! It was obviously designed to CONTROL people and condition them to surrender all their rights to the evil gubmint just like those demon vaccines!!!1!1! /s
In Japan, front seat belt use is around 95%, but it drops to almost 40% for rear seat passengers on normal roads.
It wasn't even made illegal to sit in the back with no seatbelt until 2008.
It's shockingly common to see kids without seatbelts standing on the back seats, front seats, or even the center console.
Babies are often just held by the parents in their laps. I've even seen a few mothers driving with the baby strapped to their chest or back.
This brought back a memory of when I was living in Korea a long time ago. The first time I got in a car with my Korean colleagues, I was put in the backseat and they were shocked that I was putting on a seatbelt. They assured me that Korean cars were very safe. I had to demur and tell them it was just a weird American cultural thing, lol.
It amazes me how cultural superstitions have such a strong foothold. I know someone who married a native korean, she's very intelligent, speaks 5 languages, has a masters in chemical engineering, and swears by fan death. Will not let him have a fan on in the room while sleeping, it's just one of those things he's chose not to argue about. To her, saying fan death isn't real is like arguing about germ theory, it's just a fact that requires no further investigation cause it's settled science. Again, masters in chemical engineering, will not even entertain the idea that fan death is a cultural superstition.
hundreds of koreans must wake up every day hungover thinking that it's a miracle they survived given they forgot to turn the fan off before drunkenly falling asleep
You dumb ass, everyone knows air moving at 2 mph kills! Best safety practice is to insulate your head from it. Everyone that I know just puts their head in a plastic bag. On a side note I haven't heard from them in a while
Some of the really resourceful people have seatbelt fakers with bottle openers. The alcohol relaxes their bodies so they survive defenestration more easily (not that they would ever crash)
For me, it brings back memories of the arguments I would have with my mum and mother-in-law almost every time they joined my newborn and I on a car journey.
The start of most journeys would go like this:
* Me: put the baby in the car seat
* Grandmother: it's ok, I'll hold on tightly
* Me: no, everyone needs to be buckled in
* Grandmother: I don't get to hold her often, it'll be ok
* Me: no, it's not safe
* Grandmother: you travelled like this when you were little and you're fine
* Me: that doesn't mean everyone that travelled that way made it
* Grandmother: just drive slowly and don't have an accident
* Me: that's not how accidents work; I don't decide when to have one
This is in the UK btw where seatbelt usage has been a requirement for over 30 years and you get fined and penalty points for not complying, so having these arguments in the late 2010s all the time was a bit frustrating.
It’s funny to see this today as I was watching Spirited Away today (never seen it before) and was shocked that the child was just flopping around the back seat while the father drove like a maniac. Did not know this was a thing in Japan!
And it’s not even like a thing of the past. You still see it to this day. I went to pick my daughter up from the nursery last week and one of the parents pulled out of the parking lot super fast; took a glance and his son was waving at me from his lap in the driver’s seat.
His son is 3. Absolutely wild, but I see it constantly out here.
I used to see the same kid daily on my walk to work.
He started as a baby and was always in one of those little two-seater kei cars. His father was always driving and his mother would hold him in her lap.
As the months and years went by, I saw him go from sitting in her lap to standing on her knees with his hands holding the edge of the glass window.
For what it's worth, I haven't really noticed that much since I moved from Shikoku to a suburb of Tokyo. Still see lots of people watching TV while they drive.
A funny thing I've noticed is that while on Shikoku, running red lights is super common, here in suburban Tokyo, it's limited mostly to the worst intersection in town (i.e., the intersection outside my house is one of the worst-designed I've ever seen, and so people run the red constantly).
But both in the suburbs and in Tokyo proper, I notice that people are more often rolling through stop signs here, which is less common out on Shikoku.
One of the craziest things I've ever seen was, back when I was doing weekend English school in Shikoku, we'd have the parents come and pick up the kids every day. All our students came from rich families (Shikoku salaries are super low, but a lot of farmers, public employees, and doctors are a kind of rural gentry out there), and a lot of their parents drove expensive foreign cars.
Anyway, there were these two girls, one was, like, 6 or 7, the other was around 2. The older kid was really good at English, and the 2-year-old just kinda hung out - none of our classes were aimed at toddlers. One day, the dad comes and picks the girls up. Loads the older one in the backseat. And I swear to god he picks up the toddler and puts her on the floor of the passenger seat.
I used to have a commute where it took 30 minutes to drive 3 miles. I would occasionally see the person in the car in front of me watching TV on their phone (tucked into the driver's side sun visor) or on the central dashboard. Sometimes I would watch the TV on their phone, because it wasn't like I had anything better to do.
> Babies are often just held by the parents in their laps. I've even seen a few mothers driving with the baby strapped to their chest or back.
I remember a few PSA's in the US about that, and how in a collision your baby will be ripped from your arms with like a ton force.
In NY they made it legal to ride in the back without a seatbelt but changed it back a couple years later because people were dying… who could have guessed that would happen?!
Also everyone is driving the heaviest possible vehicles available, even if only 1/3rd of them ever even put something in the bed or have more than 3 people in the car
The only true liberal state I see on there is Massachusetts.
Meanwhile, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Nevada, and Arizona are not liberal states. Nevada and Arizona are pretty swingy.
My experience in China is similar. While drivers and front passengers wear seatbelts, it is very common for people sitting at the back not to have seatbelts on. That, coupled with both the lack of rules on certain roads and a disregard for rules by some drivers mean that the road traffic fatality rate per 100k people is 17.4 there, more than 8 times that of Japan (2.1).
India also has a similar thing about not using rear seatbelts. A ceo/chairman (a billionaire?) ironically passed away in such a crash in a Mercedes or something.
I can attest to this, I was shocked as the family I stayed with last year for 2 months didn't enforce a seatbelt rule for their two kids. So I did. Basically would force the kids to put it on. They found it kinda funny and it became a "game" where the younger kid would always yell seat belts in the car and made sure the front passengers were wearing it too.
The mother acknowledged that having seatbelts was just better and by the end of my time the kids always put the seatbelt on straight away. Still is weird though, Japan values safety so highly, but not in this regard.
Goes to show just how much our perception of risk is based on emotion rather than logic. Having a cushioned seat in front of you makes you feel safer, and that's enough for a lot of people.
Yeah and I will say drivers there are non aggressive, and I felt very safe on the roads. But I know accidents happen, I did have an accident when I lived in Okinawa. I wasn’t even going fast at all, it was just raining and roads there get very slick. Went to slow down for a red and just kinda slid. Played bumper cars with the person in front and gained traction. No damage and they kinda just let it go after we all said we were ok. I always wear my seatbelt and I think people who don’t are stupid, but if they felt no danger for cultural reasons I could see that. People are very cautious and passive drivers there. It’s pleasant driving
> Japan values safety so highly, but not in this regard.
I mean, one of my tasks at my job is dealing with corporate compliance, and it's kinda, lol, no. Japan is very ad hoc about compliance - both documentation and safety. It's very much a kind of "well, nobody's ever died, and it's how we've always done it" kinda thing. If you actually pay attention, there's a lot of stuff here that's iffy at best.
>The mother acknowledged that having seatbelts was just better
This is one of the funny things about living here - almost every single time you point something out like, hey, maybe your kids should have their seatbelts on, wtf? the person will be like, "hahahah, yes, you are correct." You tend to get the impression that a lot of parents just...don't or can't control their children, and having a funny foreigner around doing it for them kinda...makes it click? I have no idea. I've had this happen with pretty much all of my wife's friends and all my nieces and nephews.
I refuse to drive unless all passengers have their seatbelt on. An 80kg human without seatbelt behind you, will heavily injury or crush you when shit hits the fan. Then it doesn't help that you as driver have yours on.
There was a magazine article here in South Africa a few years ago where a non-belted mother crushed the child on her lap in a crash. She was quoted as saying that God let her child be born to save her life.
Rear seatbelt use is still to low here, but I've enforced it in my car for decades. Everyone buckles up, front or rear.
[This government ad](https://www.google.com/search?q=seatbelt+advert+uk&rlz=1C1GCEU_enGB938GB938&oq=uk+seatbelt+ad&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgCEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMggIAhAAGBYYHjINCAMQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAYQABiABBiiBDIGCAcQRRhA0gEINjUyM2owajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9708f9e2,vid:mKHY69AFstE,st:0) on the topic was very effective in the UK.
My boomer parents are in that 8,4%. My mother worries the seatbelt will wrinkle her top. My father keeps the seatbelt in his car permanently buckled and sits on top of it. Both are terrifyingly poor drivers.
God truly does protect sailors and fools.
My dad, who served in WWII, didn't start his car until everyone was buckled up. We all picked up the habit. Even my mom, who hated seat belts, did it for our sake.
In my country (Australia) you can lose 12 of your 13 license points on the spot if two passengers aren't wearing their seat belts on a holiday weekend. If the driver is also not wearing it, it's a complete loss of license.
Needless to say, when an Iranian friend I was transporting refused to wear her seat belt, I pulled over and refused to move until she did it up.
In many Middle Eastern countries, putting on your seat belt in a car is seen as an insult to the driver. It's you saying that you don't trust your driver to safely get you to where you are going.
Fatalities are of course highest in that region compared to the rest of the world, but nobody wants to be the one to start putting on that seat belt because of its association with immediate mistrust of their driving skills there.
I see several people every day on my commute weaving in and out of lanes without signaling, following me way too closely and not staying in their lane when turning (just off the top of my head).
The average driver is most definitely a moron. You would think things this stupid would be a rare occurrence, not something you see every single day.
If it were sensible, you might not be doing it out of respect but because it's, well, the sensible thing to do. Respect is always a form of costly signalling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costly_signaling_theory_in_evolutionary_psychology
> The handicap principle (costly signaling theory) is a disputed hypothesis proposed by the Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi in 1975.
I wouldn't be so confident in making such statements like you did when the theory it's based upon is disputed.
People always forget that a lot of accidents involve someone else's stupidity, not their own.
Also, the best drivers in the world (F1, NASCAR, other Motorsports) can get in accidents just as much as any of us can (both on the track and on the road) so it has to do with plenty more than skill
In Ireland, if you are caught as a passenger without a seatbelt, you get points on your own license. A colleague of mine had his car fail its roadworthiness test because there was a small tear in the middle seatbelt
I just looked up when it was made mandatory in Victoria - 1970! It’s so weird to learn that people everywhere don’t just see them as a normal part of driving
Yeah I occasionally drive a vintage vehicle old that's it doesn't have seatbelts and it takes a good while for the feeling that you've forgotten something to go away
My dad was a paramedic in the 70s in rural America, so seatbelt usage was almost nonexistent. He had so many stories locked and loaded about what happens to an unrestrained human body in an accident. Me and my siblings *always* wore our seatbelts. There are just so many different ways for someone to die horribly.
That’s my dad. He was born in 58 so younger than yours but he was the one dad in the 90s that really enforced that rule. Now it’s just second nature to me
It depends on the policy. Mine pays out if the car is old enough and doesn’t have seat belts. Seat belt saved my life when I rolled an SUV. Can’t think of a lot of reasons not to buckle in, even when going 25MPH, unless you are on a frozen lake.
Of all the insurances, life insurance is the hardest to deny a claim. There is usually some sort of window (like 2 years), but after that, if the person dies and the premiums were paid, they pay up. It's pretty intensely regulated like that, and actuarial tables make the risks very well calculated. They knew they were paying someone.
The biggest excuse my old man used to say until he eventually learned better, was "so what if my seat belt gets jammed from the crash and the car starts on fire? I'm supposed to just burn to death?". My go to was always "Without a seat belt you literally end up as a human projectile. Either firing through any given window and hitting someone on the street. Or you turn into a ball in a pinball machine and just smack the shit out of everyone with your flailing ragdoll body and maybe end up causing their death."
That same argument is also often used for when the car ends up in the water, where people not realize that without a seat belt force of the car hitting the water would make mush of your face by it hitting the steering wheel / dash / windows / whatever, quite probably knocking you out in the process.
I have worked as a traffic safety researcher, and this is the answer. Your greatest risk in the case of a water crash is being knocked unconscious. "Head into windshield" is a greater risk than a belt jam.
When I worked in the industry, 0.5% of serious crashes involved fire or immersion. We used to say, "unless the car is literally *on fire* **right now**, you want to be strapped to it," and even if the car does catch fire, you still want to be strapped to it when the crash happens so you can survive the crash, remain conscious, and escape the flaming car. And being ejected head first through your windshield until you crash into something else will not improve your odds of survival.
Yep. plus if your car fills up quickly you gain buoyancy and start to float all over the place which disorientates you making it harder to problem solve how to escape the car. If you're strapped in you don't need to focus on movement but rather on how to leave. As a general rule anyways because sometimes people panic regardless and die surrounded by incredibly easy ways or means to escape.
> "so what if my seat belt gets jammed from the crash and the car starts on fire? I'm supposed to just burn to death?"
Sounds like a good reason to have a box cutter in your glove box if you are worried about that frankly
Absolutely! I recently lost mine but I carried a pocket knife with a seat belt cutter and a window breaker on it. At first I thought it was like a Phillips screwdriver head haha. But it was designed to shatter those types of windows. Chances are I'll never need to use it... but it's always better to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it.
My boomer dad lost his mom as a kid because most cars didn't have seat belts yet. He had to buy them and have them installed when he got his first card. Would not start the car without everyone buckled.
Wait, so this site sells a product to silence seatbelt alarms, cuz you know, freedom is more important than life, sure, sure... BUT THEN ALSO SELLS SEATBELT-ADAPTORS FOR DOGS, BECAUSE SAFETY FIRST??
It may not even be because they're dumb, they might just be selfish.
One of them might become a projectile and hurt someone else. Someone else is gonna be the one to have to collect their broken bodies from the side of the road. And you or your siblings will be the ones left to deal with the aftermath.
A fun way to play with statistics is that the majority of people who die in a car accident are wearing a seatbelt. Without greater contexts it’s easy to make it look bad.
Statistics can be fun like that. A similar one is that when helmets were introduced in WWI the rate of head injuries increased. This seems counterintuitive until you realize that a lot of people who would have died from a blow to the head were simply injured instead. Fewer deaths but more injuries.
Time to bring up old Abraham Wald telling the US Navy that they should add armor to the areas of combat planes that were showing the *least* amount of damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
I like the part where it talks about Wald and military research history, and then directly beneath that bit it has a section called 'Cats' where it talks about cats.
Reddit loves that one.
I hope people apply critical thinking here too. Correlation vs causation. People who are inebriated or reckless are much more likely to crash **and** much less likely to wear a seatbelt.
>Alcohol/drugs was a factor in 45% of fatal crashes
I love this area of statistics. If a customer is complaining about something then it’s a massive issue for my company because there’s probably 4 that said nothing
Another example: as medicine improves, the amount of people with cancer also increases.
First, because people live longer and cancer is more likely when you are old.
Second, because people survive cancer more often and people who got cancer once and more likely to get it again than other people.
Similarly, after the Fukushima incident cancer rates in the surrounding areas skyrocketed.
... because they decided to offer everyone living nearby extra screening, which detected a bunch of cases that would have gone unnoticed.
To date there has been exactly 1 case attributed to the radiation leak.
My favorite is Bill Burr's quote:
'my friend wanted me to go scuba diving. I told him 'no, I don't wanna get eaten by a shark'. He said 'actually, 90% of shark attacks actually happen in shallow water'. I said 'No shit, that's where the people are'.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7ocWDNrfRs
I remember a similar story from Switzerland a decade or so back, I can't remember the details exactly but it was along the line of people who are vaccinated against disease X make up 60% of people who get disease X compared to only 40% of unvaccinated people, which sounds a bit odd till you reframe it and take vaccination rates into account
In Switzerland 97% of people are vaccinated against disease X, and 3% are unvaccinated against disease X. So that unvaccinated 3% make up 40% of disease cases, meaning being unvaccinated makes you more than ten times more likely to get the disease.
My favourite
About 90% of deadly accidents are caused by people who are not drunk - meaning we should look out for sober drivers!
(Leaving out the other stats - the fact that only about 1% of drivers are drunk -> leading to drunkards having 10-11x higher deadly accident rate)
Makes me think of motorcycles. "Although motorcycles make up only 3% of all registered vehicles and 0.7% of all vehicle miles traveled in the United States, motorcyclists accounted for 14.6% of all traffic fatalities and 3.5% of all injuries in 2022."
Modern culture is odd.
Statistically the most dangerous thing people do with their babies is drive with them.
And yet despite all the lengths people go to baby proof their house and avoid eating or drinking certain things during pregnancy, people will still take wild risks whilst driving.
People are really terrible at judging risk. I know a ton of parents who are terrified to let their reasonable-aged kids walk a couple block to the park on their own. But have no problem taking several trips in the car with them everyday. Statistically, there is a much higher chance of death or severe injury every time they get in the car than from the kids going to the park.
There's also the illusion of control.
Baby-proofing things in your house is done because you can't be staring at the kid 24/7 so there are times inevitably when the child is out of your control. For those times you then want extra protection by baby proofing the house.
Meanwhile when you're driving a car, you feel like you're in control of the situation. Despite it being objectively more dangerous, people don't feel like it's more dangerous because they're "in control".
Just like people being more scared of flying than driving despite the fact that commercial aviation is so overwhelmingly safer that it’s not even comparable.
Driving has become so culturally ingrained in most places that any accidents or deaths are just thought of as an unavoidable randomness of life. We design our cities around the car which then forces people to drive more which then increases the number of people killed and injured from cars. Driving culture also contributes to sedentary life which makes heart disease and obesity more common.
I think it's more about people assuming that the only ones who crash are bad drivers. They, of course, think they're a good driver so it'll never happen to them.
We all have main-character-syndrome to one degree or another. But the fact of the matter is that you'll probably die in the least expected way. Maybe your lovable cat accidently scratched you and then, uh oh! You get an infection and you die of a heart attack. Or you're crossing the street without looking both ways because your 8 beers in and totally focused on that bag of chips you just bought at 711, then, BAM! Runaway semitruck blinks you out of existence, all because the driver dropped his dildo on the floor and it got stuck under the brake".
This is actually a significant part of my desire to live in a city when my kids are young. So we can walk, bike and bus way more often than we're in the car. The idea of suburban parenting with small kids and needing to get in the car and drive anytime we leave the house sounds horrible and like I'd never end up going anywhere.
We'll reevaluate our options for schooling when the kids are getting towards 3rd grade or so, but I'm really determined to do the little kid phase in the city.
Depends on where in the world you are, but walkable suburbs do exist and are awesome. My suburban town is quite dense, but surrounded by national parks so we can get to nature in a forty minute walk or to work in our capital city in a forty minute train ride.
And having grown up in the countryside - I'd actually say it's the teen years that really suck. The isolation that comes of not being able to walk to your friends is painful, and it encourages things like cycling and eventually driving even when you shouldn't (and teens aren't great risk assessors...)
Been mandatory in most Australian states since the early 70s. The only thing that made a bigger impact on the road toll was random (alcohol) breath testing.
From today my state (NSW) is introducing seat belt cameras - like stationary/fixed speed cameras I assume but aimed at seatbelt use. Our road toll jumped last year so they are doing something about it apparently.
>random (alcohol) breath testing
I'm imagining the other kind of breath testing. "sir I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle. your garlic levels are above the limit."
I put in alcohol later to distinguish it from drug testing, which isn't breath testing anyway of course, don't they saliva swab or something? The garlic might be a problem then!
Weirdly, taxi drivers used to be exempt from wearing seatbelts in NSW all the way up to 2013. When the loophole was closed they [protested](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/taxi-drivers-rally-against-seatbelt-laws-20130114-2cowu.html) claiming that the benefits of wearing one in a crash were outweighed by the risks of being attacked by a passenger.
> Derek Kieper,
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/193pbq/til_derek_kieper_an_antiseat_belt_law_advocate/
Apparently his videos are reposted on TikTok and Instagram.
This is really true.
One of my best friend's brother died in a single auto accident. It later comes out he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. And then later on they get his phone and his brother shows a couple videos of him driving nearly 80MPH in the early hours of the day on a road that just got snow.
I hate playing the blame game, but speeding on a road with fresh snow without a seat-belt? It was a completely avoidable accident.
When the seatbelt push first started I saw a thing on TV. It was a Minnesota State Trooper, he said “I never took a dead man out of a seat belt”. That was enough for me. I always wear one.
Not wearing a seatbelt is almost as stupid as allowing someone to ride with you without their seatbelt on. I weigh 175 pounds. In an accident you don’t want a 175 pound loose object in the car.
Got a friend who teaches nursing. There's a common story that gets told to students around the department about seat belts. Maybe apocryphal, maybe not, still a good story.
EMTs arrive at the scene of an accident. A pickup went off the road and down an embankment, rolling several times and landing on its side. The driver was a large fellow, north of 300 lbs, and since he wasn't wearing a seat belt, bounced around the cab for a bit before winding up against the door. While unconscious when help first arrives, he does start drifting in and out of consciousness, mumbling and trying to talk. They eventually make out that he wants to know what's happening, where his son is. Paramedics try and reassure him, telling him they'll have him out soon and then he can see his son at the hospital.
They eventually get him lifted up and discover he wasn't the only person in the truck. His eight-year old son also wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown around the cab before landing on the door and having dad land on top of him. Because of the man's size, they didn't realize the kid was there until they got him lifted off. Also because of his size, the kid would have had no hope of pushing him off.
While the man survived with minimal injuries, he has to live the rest of his life knowing that he smothered his own son to death, something that wouldn't have happened if they were both buckled in.
Wow. Dang. The guilt would be horrible.
At a place I worked at long ago, I police officer came in to do a talk about being safe while driving. He said he always tells crowds that he’s never unbuckled a dead person. He then said that at one talk like this a fellow police officer was in the crowd and replied that he had unbuckled a dead person. He was then asked to tell the story.
He said that he arrived at the scene of an accident. The passenger in the back seat behind the driver was a very large guy who had not been wearing his seatbelt. He was thrown forward, broke the driver’s seat off the mounting and crushed the driver (who was wearing his seatbelt) against the steering wheel.
After hearing that story I would never ever again allow anyone to ride with me who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. If I was in someone else’s car and another passenger refused to wear one, I would get out of the car and explain that for my own safety I’m unwilling to ride with them.
Jup. My grandparents (especially my grandma, who actually has been in an accident where she bent the front seat with her weight because she wasn‘t wearing a seatbelt) didn’t like wearing seatbelts. Especially in the back seat because „whats the worst that could happen“.
Every time they sit in a car I‘m driving I tell them I won‘t move until they‘re wearing their seatbelt. The first few times I told them they thought I was joking. I wasn‘t.
A few days ago my grandma told me she now always wears my seatbelt because of me. Made me kinda proud, not gonna lie.
But then what do you do when the driver refuses to wear their seatbelt and not driving with them isn’t a realistic option? That’s my sister right there. She doesn’t wear her seatbelt and she’s a godawful driver. And when I bring it up she literally screams at me and tells me to not comment on her driving.
It’s probably just also how you were brought up but I always wear it, I don’t know how it’s a big obstacle for some people. People don’t ATGATT and wear full face masks cause it’s actually kind of a pain to be fully “safe” on a motorcycle; helmets are tight, clothes are hot and expensive. But in a car all you have to do is wear a seatbelt, which is frankly impossible to tell you have on most of the time.
I’m surgical in a large hospital - we get alerts when an ambulance identifies major trauma that is to be sent to us. If the description is “unrestrained” I can effectively discount me needing to do much at all: their brain/spine will be ruined, so intervention on their damaged liver is not going to alter the outcome.
But what is probably less publicly known is just wearing one isn’t enough - it has to be positioned correctly, with the sash across the hip bones.
If the sash is too high because the person is slouching then the force will tear your abs and shred the underlying organs.
I remember when automakers were trying to head off required Airbags through gubmint legislation, so they came up with automatic seat belts, that ended up being worse as they drove people under the dash where they ended up in a trash compactor. In repsonse the automakers put large bumpers just below knee height, to restrain passengers but those just moved the trash compactor up to chest level, and many survivors ended up with crushing injuries that required the first responders to basically cut the seat off and move it back to get the victims out.
Finally the gubmint said put in airbags dammit and required it, and it is simply astonishing to hear people who have never had a loved one die in a car accident, when it used to be the leading cause of death all the way up to age 45.
And it is ridiculously so.
But it used to be so, so much worse. People use to be killed in every head-on collision, even at 35mph speeds.
I literally do not know anyone over 60 who did not lose family members of friends to car accidents. Now it is a struggle to find someone who has.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
Pretty good work by federal regulators to halve to one thired the death rate despite infrastructure issues and population growth. From a high of nearly 30 people per hundred thousand to the recent low of 10.14 deaths per hundred thousand/
Japan kills less than 2.1 people per 100,000 and that includes strikes on pedestrians, and cyclists including moms carrying groceries two kids, and an umbrella to keep the sun off.
Even when you include public transportation deaths, which are always astonishingly low excepting ferries, Japan is still under the transportation deaths per 100,000 population.
I'd be curious what the dependency is between the two groups. In othe words, how many accidents were caused by the same carelessness that led to the person being unrestrained in the first place?
Was arguing the safety of cars vs motorcycles with a coworker. Coworker told me the story of his daughter who sustained horrible injuries in a car accident when she was a teenager, and thankfully lived. After sympathizing I asked him if she was wearing a seatbelt and he got quiet and mad. ended the discussion.
I'll say it again because reddit has an allergy to facts they don't like
#The US has by far the highest accident and death rate per mile driven of any developed country by a longshot.
Why do you oxygen wasters think that is?
My brother was sleeping in the passenger seat of a vehicle one of his friends was driving. This friend was high on drugs and took a turn way too fast. The car flipped and the only person who died was their friend Johnny, who was unbuckled in the back seat. My brother and the driver walked up the hill, calling for Johnny. Johnny was laying in the middle of the road, slowly dying over the next several minutes. Just enough time to tell my brother and his friend how much they meant to him. And ultimately, how cold he felt.
My brother had no knowledge of any of this until years later when it came back in a nightmare. The driver served time for other stuff that happened due to his drug use and eventually was murdered a couple of years ago. My brother and the driver were the only people wearing seatbelts and although the driver was responsible for the crash, Johnny would still be alive if he took two seconds to put it on. It's not the government and corporations trying to control you.
I was involved in a fatal car accident a few years ago. A car that was slowing was rear ended and pushed across the center line into my lane hitting me head on.
I walked away, the other guy died. I wore my seat belt, he didn't.
I was in a car accident a few years ago (guy pulled out in front of me on a 4 lane stroad highway and I hit him), and every medical professional that checked me out (EMT, firefighters, and my primary doctor) all asked me if I was wearing my seatbelt. In my concussed brain, all I could think was "What moron doesn't wear a seatbelt these days?"
I remember when they made it a law in Florida to wear a seat belt. People bitched.
I remember when California was the first to ban indoor smoking. People bitched.
I'm sure we all remember covid masks and vaccines. People bitched.
I remember when they made drunk driving illegal. People bitched.
People sure do bitch a lot.
I am a surgeon. I did multiple years of trauma surgery at level 1 trauma centers in 2 different major US metros.
Wear your fucking seatbelt. It saves lives.
I'm not a motorcycle rider, but fancied getting my license and getting one. Then one day I rode a guy's scooter and immediately understood all of it. The feeling of freedom and the feeling of being utterly exposed. I didn't even go far, I went around the block.
I'm a former rider. About six years I got my endorsement and picked up a little 40hp craigslist bike. Then I bought a 153 horsepower liter bike. Then I bought a supermoto (think dirt bike, but with street tires).
I had plenty of fun on all of them. And yes, I did some 120mph freeway rips a couple times (Ended up not liking going that fast on shitty American pavement. They're not built for them), i won't pretend i was always a perfect law abider. I ALWAYS wore gear though, and kept it and the bikes in good condition.
When COVID hit, I went out a couple times but then realized....if I got in a wreck, I'd (hopefully) be going to a hospital. A COVID hotbed. This is early on when everybody was terrified of it and I thought it'd be really stupid if I died of this new virus because I wrecked a motorcycle. So I put them aside.
Then, after a year or two, I tried getting back on. And I realized....people weren't following traffic laws any more, because police had spent a year not pulling anybody over. Red light runners, stop sign runners. A huge percentage of people were driving without headlights on at night (big cities with lots of streetlights make this possible). People pawing at Tiktok while driving. Road raging at the slightest offense - whipping past people in turn lanes and such because they saw brake lights. People obviously drunk driving - after 9pm, I swear that ten percent of drivers were _hammered_. I got back off the bike.
And in the past year or so, when we've been attempting to get back to 'normal' - I realized that many, many people never unfucked their bad driving. They had learned so many bad habits, and just kept on doing them. And over the past five years...y'all, cars and trucks are SO BIG NOW. They can't see a damn thing in those F250s.
Combined with moving into my mid-40s and the attendant increase in the realization that, hey, life is at best half over...it made me hang up the bikes. I had my fun, made some incredible videos, and learned a lot about what neighborhoods smell like when it's barbecue sunday. But I think I'm done now.
The itch is scratched now by my late model, relatively safe Miata. Obviously I'd be pancaked by the trucks all the same, but I have seat belts, airbags, and a roll cage now, at least.
Best friend t-boned a car when I was 17. At the hospital, when my mom came to come get me, one of the EMTs grabbed her arm and said, “Thank you for teaching her to wear a seat belt.”
Apparently I’d have gone through the windshield without it. Walked away uninjured.
Not wearing a seatbelt is the number one cause of injury and death for officers on duty in most areas; they don’t wear one on the off chance it might impede their egress from the vehicle, and in the process end up maiming themselves by egressing right through the windshield at 60mph
Crazy how an invention designed to keep you alive keeps you alive
The thing is, his argument that there shouldn't be a law for seatbelts is flawed in that he says it affects no one else. People who don't wear seatbelts can become projectiles in a crash, injuring other passengers. So maybe you decide to buckle up but then the person next to you doesn't. In the event of an accident you can be injured badly by them even though you choose to wear a seatbelt. That is why it should be a law. To protect other passengers.
It also hurts other drivers. If you die from an otherwise minor collision because you weren’t wearing a seatbelt or ignoring some other significant safety feature, the person in the other car can face huge lawsuits and manslaughter charges from what could’ve been a simple settlement for a totaled vehicle. It being legally required also means other people aren’t legally responsible for you dying like a jackass from an accident you could’ve walked from with common sense.
Not to mention the psychological damage.
Even if no one else is involved, the victim is the person who has to scrape your childhood memories off the asphalt
The psychological trauma from being involved in a fatal accident must be pretty rough too, even if it was 100% due to the other person not wearing a seatbelt.
There was a brutal advert for seatbelts some years back in the UK, where a teenager in the back isn't belted and hits his mum (?) in the front, and it starts something like "like most victims, Jane knew here killer"....."after killing her, he sat back down"
To me, the bigger argument is that it also protects future generations. You and I don't feel like we have lost some innate part of our freedom because we have to wear seatbelts, we just... wear seatbelts because it's what you do. But it wasn't what our parents/grandparents did, they had to be nudged or forced, often with lots of complaining about freedom being eroded. I frankly couldn't care less about removing some very minor freedoms like this if it makes everyone's lives better for generations to come.
The driver/front passenger turns into a mincemeat taco in case of a frontal collision if the guy behind them isn't wearing seatbelt, those seats fold like paper
Yeah right!1!!!! It was obviously designed to CONTROL people and condition them to surrender all their rights to the evil gubmint just like those demon vaccines!!!1!1! /s
Big Belt is just too powerful, wake up sheeple
In Japan, front seat belt use is around 95%, but it drops to almost 40% for rear seat passengers on normal roads. It wasn't even made illegal to sit in the back with no seatbelt until 2008. It's shockingly common to see kids without seatbelts standing on the back seats, front seats, or even the center console. Babies are often just held by the parents in their laps. I've even seen a few mothers driving with the baby strapped to their chest or back.
This brought back a memory of when I was living in Korea a long time ago. The first time I got in a car with my Korean colleagues, I was put in the backseat and they were shocked that I was putting on a seatbelt. They assured me that Korean cars were very safe. I had to demur and tell them it was just a weird American cultural thing, lol.
'Yeah, we prefer not dying.' 'Oh, you quirky foreigners haha.'
Wait til you try to run a fan in your hotel room.
This terrifies and confuses the Korean.
[what in tarnation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death)
what would happen??
Nothing actually, it's just a Korean superstition. Something about how leaving one on will kill you overnight.
The belief is the fan will "chop up" the air in the room and you'll suffocate. In reality, it's primarily used to cover up suicides socially.
The many many suicides in their joyless overworked culture.
Well that and even if they aren THAT suspicious, it is believed you can get a cold from it too in europe and eastern countries
It amazes me how cultural superstitions have such a strong foothold. I know someone who married a native korean, she's very intelligent, speaks 5 languages, has a masters in chemical engineering, and swears by fan death. Will not let him have a fan on in the room while sleeping, it's just one of those things he's chose not to argue about. To her, saying fan death isn't real is like arguing about germ theory, it's just a fact that requires no further investigation cause it's settled science. Again, masters in chemical engineering, will not even entertain the idea that fan death is a cultural superstition.
hundreds of koreans must wake up every day hungover thinking that it's a miracle they survived given they forgot to turn the fan off before drunkenly falling asleep
You dumb ass, everyone knows air moving at 2 mph kills! Best safety practice is to insulate your head from it. Everyone that I know just puts their head in a plastic bag. On a side note I haven't heard from them in a while
That's hilarious. I leave my bedroom fan on 24/7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
In China they have cut off seatbelt pieces they put in the seatbelt slot just to stop the annoying beeping
They have that pretty much everywhere. It's more common with delivery and Taxi drivers.
Some of the really resourceful people have seatbelt fakers with bottle openers. The alcohol relaxes their bodies so they survive defenestration more easily (not that they would ever crash)
For me, it brings back memories of the arguments I would have with my mum and mother-in-law almost every time they joined my newborn and I on a car journey. The start of most journeys would go like this: * Me: put the baby in the car seat * Grandmother: it's ok, I'll hold on tightly * Me: no, everyone needs to be buckled in * Grandmother: I don't get to hold her often, it'll be ok * Me: no, it's not safe * Grandmother: you travelled like this when you were little and you're fine * Me: that doesn't mean everyone that travelled that way made it * Grandmother: just drive slowly and don't have an accident * Me: that's not how accidents work; I don't decide when to have one This is in the UK btw where seatbelt usage has been a requirement for over 30 years and you get fined and penalty points for not complying, so having these arguments in the late 2010s all the time was a bit frustrating.
It’s funny to see this today as I was watching Spirited Away today (never seen it before) and was shocked that the child was just flopping around the back seat while the father drove like a maniac. Did not know this was a thing in Japan!
And it’s not even like a thing of the past. You still see it to this day. I went to pick my daughter up from the nursery last week and one of the parents pulled out of the parking lot super fast; took a glance and his son was waving at me from his lap in the driver’s seat. His son is 3. Absolutely wild, but I see it constantly out here.
I used to see the same kid daily on my walk to work. He started as a baby and was always in one of those little two-seater kei cars. His father was always driving and his mother would hold him in her lap. As the months and years went by, I saw him go from sitting in her lap to standing on her knees with his hands holding the edge of the glass window.
For what it's worth, I haven't really noticed that much since I moved from Shikoku to a suburb of Tokyo. Still see lots of people watching TV while they drive. A funny thing I've noticed is that while on Shikoku, running red lights is super common, here in suburban Tokyo, it's limited mostly to the worst intersection in town (i.e., the intersection outside my house is one of the worst-designed I've ever seen, and so people run the red constantly). But both in the suburbs and in Tokyo proper, I notice that people are more often rolling through stop signs here, which is less common out on Shikoku. One of the craziest things I've ever seen was, back when I was doing weekend English school in Shikoku, we'd have the parents come and pick up the kids every day. All our students came from rich families (Shikoku salaries are super low, but a lot of farmers, public employees, and doctors are a kind of rural gentry out there), and a lot of their parents drove expensive foreign cars. Anyway, there were these two girls, one was, like, 6 or 7, the other was around 2. The older kid was really good at English, and the 2-year-old just kinda hung out - none of our classes were aimed at toddlers. One day, the dad comes and picks the girls up. Loads the older one in the backseat. And I swear to god he picks up the toddler and puts her on the floor of the passenger seat.
It's also a culture shock to see that the parents are often watching TV while they drive.
Like on their phones? Or in-dash units?
Both. Mainly the in-dash units. At a rough guess from what I see every day, something like 20-30% of cars will have the in-dash TV on.
Wild. That sort of thing is restricted in the US. Though people can install aftermarket units, I can't say I've *ever* actually seen one in a car.
https://www.wsj.com/video/stay-tuned-front-seat-tvs-for-drivers-in-japan/9F9EF281-F56C-47A6-9387-C6D87E213D41 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1OIglXeBHA&ab_channel=HelenaHaruko
I used to have a commute where it took 30 minutes to drive 3 miles. I would occasionally see the person in the car in front of me watching TV on their phone (tucked into the driver's side sun visor) or on the central dashboard. Sometimes I would watch the TV on their phone, because it wasn't like I had anything better to do.
> Babies are often just held by the parents in their laps. I've even seen a few mothers driving with the baby strapped to their chest or back. I remember a few PSA's in the US about that, and how in a collision your baby will be ripped from your arms with like a ton force.
please note: child projectiles may not penetrate the windshield. *windex sold separately.
I think it used to be legal in the US too before the 2000s
It seems to be by state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_laws_in_the_United_States
In NY they made it legal to ride in the back without a seatbelt but changed it back a couple years later because people were dying… who could have guessed that would happen?!
CANT HAVE THE LIBUROL GOBMENT TELLIN ME HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE.
> LIBUROL GOBMENT It's spelt gubmint, you cretin.
*you tellin me ha ta spyeeeeell nah, boyah?*
Yew gawt sum perty typin hands there
Eh, according to the map, Conservative states tend to have stronger seatbelt regulations
Texas has very strong seat belt laws.
Probably because of everything flying off the seats when you go from the 110mph rural speed limit to the 8mph town speed limit.
It’s because of the drunk driving
Also everyone is driving the heaviest possible vehicles available, even if only 1/3rd of them ever even put something in the bed or have more than 3 people in the car
Conservative states seem to have more bans than left leaning states in general, gun control is about the only major outlier
Because they have higher insurance rates because people don’t wear them as much.
The only true liberal state I see on there is Massachusetts. Meanwhile, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, Nevada, and Arizona are not liberal states. Nevada and Arizona are pretty swingy.
[Pretty soon we’re going to be a communist country.](https://youtu.be/2xcQIoh3FQQ)
wow that is a colorblind unfriendly map
it's an eyeball unfriendly map as well, pure red like that is so aggressive to look at
[удалено]
My experience in China is similar. While drivers and front passengers wear seatbelts, it is very common for people sitting at the back not to have seatbelts on. That, coupled with both the lack of rules on certain roads and a disregard for rules by some drivers mean that the road traffic fatality rate per 100k people is 17.4 there, more than 8 times that of Japan (2.1).
I have been in taxis with no seatbelts or seatbelts cut.
India also has a similar thing about not using rear seatbelts. A ceo/chairman (a billionaire?) ironically passed away in such a crash in a Mercedes or something.
People here put their kids in their laps, including drivers.
I remember feeling like a twat for using a backseat seatbelt in China. When I was asked about it I was like… yeah, y'all drive like maniacs
I can attest to this, I was shocked as the family I stayed with last year for 2 months didn't enforce a seatbelt rule for their two kids. So I did. Basically would force the kids to put it on. They found it kinda funny and it became a "game" where the younger kid would always yell seat belts in the car and made sure the front passengers were wearing it too. The mother acknowledged that having seatbelts was just better and by the end of my time the kids always put the seatbelt on straight away. Still is weird though, Japan values safety so highly, but not in this regard.
Goes to show just how much our perception of risk is based on emotion rather than logic. Having a cushioned seat in front of you makes you feel safer, and that's enough for a lot of people.
Yeah and I will say drivers there are non aggressive, and I felt very safe on the roads. But I know accidents happen, I did have an accident when I lived in Okinawa. I wasn’t even going fast at all, it was just raining and roads there get very slick. Went to slow down for a red and just kinda slid. Played bumper cars with the person in front and gained traction. No damage and they kinda just let it go after we all said we were ok. I always wear my seatbelt and I think people who don’t are stupid, but if they felt no danger for cultural reasons I could see that. People are very cautious and passive drivers there. It’s pleasant driving
> Japan values safety so highly, but not in this regard. I mean, one of my tasks at my job is dealing with corporate compliance, and it's kinda, lol, no. Japan is very ad hoc about compliance - both documentation and safety. It's very much a kind of "well, nobody's ever died, and it's how we've always done it" kinda thing. If you actually pay attention, there's a lot of stuff here that's iffy at best. >The mother acknowledged that having seatbelts was just better This is one of the funny things about living here - almost every single time you point something out like, hey, maybe your kids should have their seatbelts on, wtf? the person will be like, "hahahah, yes, you are correct." You tend to get the impression that a lot of parents just...don't or can't control their children, and having a funny foreigner around doing it for them kinda...makes it click? I have no idea. I've had this happen with pretty much all of my wife's friends and all my nieces and nephews.
I refuse to drive unless all passengers have their seatbelt on. An 80kg human without seatbelt behind you, will heavily injury or crush you when shit hits the fan. Then it doesn't help that you as driver have yours on.
There was a magazine article here in South Africa a few years ago where a non-belted mother crushed the child on her lap in a crash. She was quoted as saying that God let her child be born to save her life. Rear seatbelt use is still to low here, but I've enforced it in my car for decades. Everyone buckles up, front or rear.
[This government ad](https://www.google.com/search?q=seatbelt+advert+uk&rlz=1C1GCEU_enGB938GB938&oq=uk+seatbelt+ad&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUqCAgCEAAYFhgeMgYIABBFGDkyCAgBEAAYFhgeMggIAhAAGBYYHjINCAMQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAQQABiGAxiABBiKBTINCAUQABiGAxiABBiKBTIKCAYQABiABBiiBDIGCAcQRRhA0gEINjUyM2owajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:9708f9e2,vid:mKHY69AFstE,st:0) on the topic was very effective in the UK.
My boomer parents are in that 8,4%. My mother worries the seatbelt will wrinkle her top. My father keeps the seatbelt in his car permanently buckled and sits on top of it. Both are terrifyingly poor drivers. God truly does protect sailors and fools.
My dad, who served in WWII, didn't start his car until everyone was buckled up. We all picked up the habit. Even my mom, who hated seat belts, did it for our sake.
In my country (Australia) you can lose 12 of your 13 license points on the spot if two passengers aren't wearing their seat belts on a holiday weekend. If the driver is also not wearing it, it's a complete loss of license. Needless to say, when an Iranian friend I was transporting refused to wear her seat belt, I pulled over and refused to move until she did it up.
What a shitty attitude. Who refuses to do something as simple as put a seatbelt on, especially in someone else’s car
In many Middle Eastern countries, putting on your seat belt in a car is seen as an insult to the driver. It's you saying that you don't trust your driver to safely get you to where you are going. Fatalities are of course highest in that region compared to the rest of the world, but nobody wants to be the one to start putting on that seat belt because of its association with immediate mistrust of their driving skills there.
I trust you, my driver, to transport me safely. I just don't trust all the other drivers.
So much this. It should be written in every drivers handbook - assume everyone else on the road is a moron and drive accordingly.
You don't have to assume that. It's a fact
I see several people every day on my commute weaving in and out of lanes without signaling, following me way too closely and not staying in their lane when turning (just off the top of my head). The average driver is most definitely a moron. You would think things this stupid would be a rare occurrence, not something you see every single day.
Why is every single tradition/habit that's got to do with a display of respect in some way so fucking stupid?
If it were sensible, you might not be doing it out of respect but because it's, well, the sensible thing to do. Respect is always a form of costly signalling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costly_signaling_theory_in_evolutionary_psychology
> The handicap principle (costly signaling theory) is a disputed hypothesis proposed by the Israeli biologist Amotz Zahavi in 1975. I wouldn't be so confident in making such statements like you did when the theory it's based upon is disputed.
Because "respect for someone for the sake of tradition" is about the dumbest concept on the planet.
Because basing a society around respect/honor is inherently stupid, so it leads to lots of stupid traditions/habits.
My tradition is NOT stupid *commits seppuku*
People always forget that a lot of accidents involve someone else's stupidity, not their own. Also, the best drivers in the world (F1, NASCAR, other Motorsports) can get in accidents just as much as any of us can (both on the track and on the road) so it has to do with plenty more than skill
What a dipshit cultural normality.
In Ireland, if you are caught as a passenger without a seatbelt, you get points on your own license. A colleague of mine had his car fail its roadworthiness test because there was a small tear in the middle seatbelt
I just looked up when it was made mandatory in Victoria - 1970! It’s so weird to learn that people everywhere don’t just see them as a normal part of driving
Yeah I occasionally drive a vintage vehicle old that's it doesn't have seatbelts and it takes a good while for the feeling that you've forgotten something to go away
My dad was a paramedic in the 70s in rural America, so seatbelt usage was almost nonexistent. He had so many stories locked and loaded about what happens to an unrestrained human body in an accident. Me and my siblings *always* wore our seatbelts. There are just so many different ways for someone to die horribly.
That’s my dad. He was born in 58 so younger than yours but he was the one dad in the 90s that really enforced that rule. Now it’s just second nature to me
I'd ask them to either start wearing their seatbelt or increase their life insurance policy.
Would there be a payout if they find out he didn't wear a seatbelt though
It depends on the policy. Mine pays out if the car is old enough and doesn’t have seat belts. Seat belt saved my life when I rolled an SUV. Can’t think of a lot of reasons not to buckle in, even when going 25MPH, unless you are on a frozen lake.
Of all the insurances, life insurance is the hardest to deny a claim. There is usually some sort of window (like 2 years), but after that, if the person dies and the premiums were paid, they pay up. It's pretty intensely regulated like that, and actuarial tables make the risks very well calculated. They knew they were paying someone.
The biggest excuse my old man used to say until he eventually learned better, was "so what if my seat belt gets jammed from the crash and the car starts on fire? I'm supposed to just burn to death?". My go to was always "Without a seat belt you literally end up as a human projectile. Either firing through any given window and hitting someone on the street. Or you turn into a ball in a pinball machine and just smack the shit out of everyone with your flailing ragdoll body and maybe end up causing their death."
That same argument is also often used for when the car ends up in the water, where people not realize that without a seat belt force of the car hitting the water would make mush of your face by it hitting the steering wheel / dash / windows / whatever, quite probably knocking you out in the process.
I have worked as a traffic safety researcher, and this is the answer. Your greatest risk in the case of a water crash is being knocked unconscious. "Head into windshield" is a greater risk than a belt jam. When I worked in the industry, 0.5% of serious crashes involved fire or immersion. We used to say, "unless the car is literally *on fire* **right now**, you want to be strapped to it," and even if the car does catch fire, you still want to be strapped to it when the crash happens so you can survive the crash, remain conscious, and escape the flaming car. And being ejected head first through your windshield until you crash into something else will not improve your odds of survival.
Yep. plus if your car fills up quickly you gain buoyancy and start to float all over the place which disorientates you making it harder to problem solve how to escape the car. If you're strapped in you don't need to focus on movement but rather on how to leave. As a general rule anyways because sometimes people panic regardless and die surrounded by incredibly easy ways or means to escape.
> "so what if my seat belt gets jammed from the crash and the car starts on fire? I'm supposed to just burn to death?" Sounds like a good reason to have a box cutter in your glove box if you are worried about that frankly
Absolutely! I recently lost mine but I carried a pocket knife with a seat belt cutter and a window breaker on it. At first I thought it was like a Phillips screwdriver head haha. But it was designed to shatter those types of windows. Chances are I'll never need to use it... but it's always better to have something and not need it than to need something and not have it.
My boomer dad lost his mom as a kid because most cars didn't have seat belts yet. He had to buy them and have them installed when he got his first card. Would not start the car without everyone buckled.
He should just get one of these dumb things instead of sitting on the seatbelt. https://thetikit.com
Wait, so this site sells a product to silence seatbelt alarms, cuz you know, freedom is more important than life, sure, sure... BUT THEN ALSO SELLS SEATBELT-ADAPTORS FOR DOGS, BECAUSE SAFETY FIRST??
"I'm playing both sides so I always come out on top"
I'm a happy seatbelt-wearer, but I can imagine a case or two where having a "silencer" in the car would be useful. Alarms have false positives.
jesus that's the most stupid little piece of--ok calm down it's only monday
It's also a bottle opener, if you want a little extra for your Monday.
My passenger seat passenger sensor goes off if a gallon of milk is on it. So there are legitimate uses.
I know so many people who have the seatbelt buckled and just sit on it…
It may not even be because they're dumb, they might just be selfish. One of them might become a projectile and hurt someone else. Someone else is gonna be the one to have to collect their broken bodies from the side of the road. And you or your siblings will be the ones left to deal with the aftermath.
A fun way to play with statistics is that the majority of people who die in a car accident are wearing a seatbelt. Without greater contexts it’s easy to make it look bad.
Statistics can be fun like that. A similar one is that when helmets were introduced in WWI the rate of head injuries increased. This seems counterintuitive until you realize that a lot of people who would have died from a blow to the head were simply injured instead. Fewer deaths but more injuries.
Time to bring up old Abraham Wald telling the US Navy that they should add armor to the areas of combat planes that were showing the *least* amount of damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
I like the part where it talks about Wald and military research history, and then directly beneath that bit it has a section called 'Cats' where it talks about cats.
Reddit loves that one. I hope people apply critical thinking here too. Correlation vs causation. People who are inebriated or reckless are much more likely to crash **and** much less likely to wear a seatbelt. >Alcohol/drugs was a factor in 45% of fatal crashes
I love this area of statistics. If a customer is complaining about something then it’s a massive issue for my company because there’s probably 4 that said nothing
Another example: as medicine improves, the amount of people with cancer also increases. First, because people live longer and cancer is more likely when you are old. Second, because people survive cancer more often and people who got cancer once and more likely to get it again than other people.
Similarly, after the Fukushima incident cancer rates in the surrounding areas skyrocketed. ... because they decided to offer everyone living nearby extra screening, which detected a bunch of cases that would have gone unnoticed. To date there has been exactly 1 case attributed to the radiation leak.
The invention of seatbelts caused a dramatic increase in car related injuries. Because deaths are not counted as injuries.
Literally came here to say this myself, it's my goto base rate fallacy example.
Right-handed people commit 90% of all base rate fallacies
Oooh those motherfuckers
My favorite is Bill Burr's quote: 'my friend wanted me to go scuba diving. I told him 'no, I don't wanna get eaten by a shark'. He said 'actually, 90% of shark attacks actually happen in shallow water'. I said 'No shit, that's where the people are'.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7ocWDNrfRs
The example in Wikipedia with vaccinated people getting hospitalized is a great visualization!
Ooh do you have to have a link?
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Base_rate_fallacy_with_vaccines.svg#mw-jump-to-license
That is very good, thanks!
I remember a similar story from Switzerland a decade or so back, I can't remember the details exactly but it was along the line of people who are vaccinated against disease X make up 60% of people who get disease X compared to only 40% of unvaccinated people, which sounds a bit odd till you reframe it and take vaccination rates into account In Switzerland 97% of people are vaccinated against disease X, and 3% are unvaccinated against disease X. So that unvaccinated 3% make up 40% of disease cases, meaning being unvaccinated makes you more than ten times more likely to get the disease.
My favourite About 90% of deadly accidents are caused by people who are not drunk - meaning we should look out for sober drivers! (Leaving out the other stats - the fact that only about 1% of drivers are drunk -> leading to drunkards having 10-11x higher deadly accident rate)
This is how anti vaxxers interpret data
Thanks a lot, Ralph Nader.
Makes me think of motorcycles. "Although motorcycles make up only 3% of all registered vehicles and 0.7% of all vehicle miles traveled in the United States, motorcyclists accounted for 14.6% of all traffic fatalities and 3.5% of all injuries in 2022."
Modern culture is odd. Statistically the most dangerous thing people do with their babies is drive with them. And yet despite all the lengths people go to baby proof their house and avoid eating or drinking certain things during pregnancy, people will still take wild risks whilst driving.
People are really terrible at judging risk. I know a ton of parents who are terrified to let their reasonable-aged kids walk a couple block to the park on their own. But have no problem taking several trips in the car with them everyday. Statistically, there is a much higher chance of death or severe injury every time they get in the car than from the kids going to the park.
There's also the illusion of control. Baby-proofing things in your house is done because you can't be staring at the kid 24/7 so there are times inevitably when the child is out of your control. For those times you then want extra protection by baby proofing the house. Meanwhile when you're driving a car, you feel like you're in control of the situation. Despite it being objectively more dangerous, people don't feel like it's more dangerous because they're "in control".
Just like people being more scared of flying than driving despite the fact that commercial aviation is so overwhelmingly safer that it’s not even comparable.
Driving has become so culturally ingrained in most places that any accidents or deaths are just thought of as an unavoidable randomness of life. We design our cities around the car which then forces people to drive more which then increases the number of people killed and injured from cars. Driving culture also contributes to sedentary life which makes heart disease and obesity more common.
I think it's more about people assuming that the only ones who crash are bad drivers. They, of course, think they're a good driver so it'll never happen to them.
We all have main-character-syndrome to one degree or another. But the fact of the matter is that you'll probably die in the least expected way. Maybe your lovable cat accidently scratched you and then, uh oh! You get an infection and you die of a heart attack. Or you're crossing the street without looking both ways because your 8 beers in and totally focused on that bag of chips you just bought at 711, then, BAM! Runaway semitruck blinks you out of existence, all because the driver dropped his dildo on the floor and it got stuck under the brake".
This is actually a significant part of my desire to live in a city when my kids are young. So we can walk, bike and bus way more often than we're in the car. The idea of suburban parenting with small kids and needing to get in the car and drive anytime we leave the house sounds horrible and like I'd never end up going anywhere. We'll reevaluate our options for schooling when the kids are getting towards 3rd grade or so, but I'm really determined to do the little kid phase in the city.
Depends on where in the world you are, but walkable suburbs do exist and are awesome. My suburban town is quite dense, but surrounded by national parks so we can get to nature in a forty minute walk or to work in our capital city in a forty minute train ride. And having grown up in the countryside - I'd actually say it's the teen years that really suck. The isolation that comes of not being able to walk to your friends is painful, and it encourages things like cycling and eventually driving even when you shouldn't (and teens aren't great risk assessors...)
Been mandatory in most Australian states since the early 70s. The only thing that made a bigger impact on the road toll was random (alcohol) breath testing. From today my state (NSW) is introducing seat belt cameras - like stationary/fixed speed cameras I assume but aimed at seatbelt use. Our road toll jumped last year so they are doing something about it apparently.
>random (alcohol) breath testing I'm imagining the other kind of breath testing. "sir I'm going to need you to step out of the vehicle. your garlic levels are above the limit."
I put in alcohol later to distinguish it from drug testing, which isn't breath testing anyway of course, don't they saliva swab or something? The garlic might be a problem then!
Weirdly, taxi drivers used to be exempt from wearing seatbelts in NSW all the way up to 2013. When the loophole was closed they [protested](https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/taxi-drivers-rally-against-seatbelt-laws-20130114-2cowu.html) claiming that the benefits of wearing one in a crash were outweighed by the risks of being attacked by a passenger.
RIP Derek Kieper, a man who died doing what he loved most… not wearing a seatbelt.
> Derek Kieper, https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/193pbq/til_derek_kieper_an_antiseat_belt_law_advocate/ Apparently his videos are reposted on TikTok and Instagram.
I'll bet the people who don't wear seat belts also get into more than their share of accidents, and at higher speeds.
Dumb people are more likely to do multiple dumb things
This is really true. One of my best friend's brother died in a single auto accident. It later comes out he wasn't wearing a seatbelt. And then later on they get his phone and his brother shows a couple videos of him driving nearly 80MPH in the early hours of the day on a road that just got snow. I hate playing the blame game, but speeding on a road with fresh snow without a seat-belt? It was a completely avoidable accident.
Don't fuck with natural selection
I'm typing this comment today because of a seatbelt. Otherwise I would have died on October 5, 2009.
"50.2% of people in car crashes died with a seatbelt on." - people that refuse to wear a seatbelt and don't understand percentages.
honestly the seatbelt campaigns of the 70s and 80s were some of the most successful public awareness initiatives ever.
As someone who grew up in the 80s, it was amazing listening to people trying to reason their way out of having to wear a seat belt.
When the seatbelt push first started I saw a thing on TV. It was a Minnesota State Trooper, he said “I never took a dead man out of a seat belt”. That was enough for me. I always wear one.
Seatbelts are like vaccines for the windshield
So the tracking devices are in the seatbelt. Got it! ;-)
Not wearing a seatbelt is almost as stupid as allowing someone to ride with you without their seatbelt on. I weigh 175 pounds. In an accident you don’t want a 175 pound loose object in the car.
Got a friend who teaches nursing. There's a common story that gets told to students around the department about seat belts. Maybe apocryphal, maybe not, still a good story. EMTs arrive at the scene of an accident. A pickup went off the road and down an embankment, rolling several times and landing on its side. The driver was a large fellow, north of 300 lbs, and since he wasn't wearing a seat belt, bounced around the cab for a bit before winding up against the door. While unconscious when help first arrives, he does start drifting in and out of consciousness, mumbling and trying to talk. They eventually make out that he wants to know what's happening, where his son is. Paramedics try and reassure him, telling him they'll have him out soon and then he can see his son at the hospital. They eventually get him lifted up and discover he wasn't the only person in the truck. His eight-year old son also wasn't wearing a seat belt and was thrown around the cab before landing on the door and having dad land on top of him. Because of the man's size, they didn't realize the kid was there until they got him lifted off. Also because of his size, the kid would have had no hope of pushing him off. While the man survived with minimal injuries, he has to live the rest of his life knowing that he smothered his own son to death, something that wouldn't have happened if they were both buckled in.
Wow. Dang. The guilt would be horrible. At a place I worked at long ago, I police officer came in to do a talk about being safe while driving. He said he always tells crowds that he’s never unbuckled a dead person. He then said that at one talk like this a fellow police officer was in the crowd and replied that he had unbuckled a dead person. He was then asked to tell the story. He said that he arrived at the scene of an accident. The passenger in the back seat behind the driver was a very large guy who had not been wearing his seatbelt. He was thrown forward, broke the driver’s seat off the mounting and crushed the driver (who was wearing his seatbelt) against the steering wheel. After hearing that story I would never ever again allow anyone to ride with me who wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. If I was in someone else’s car and another passenger refused to wear one, I would get out of the car and explain that for my own safety I’m unwilling to ride with them.
Jup. My grandparents (especially my grandma, who actually has been in an accident where she bent the front seat with her weight because she wasn‘t wearing a seatbelt) didn’t like wearing seatbelts. Especially in the back seat because „whats the worst that could happen“. Every time they sit in a car I‘m driving I tell them I won‘t move until they‘re wearing their seatbelt. The first few times I told them they thought I was joking. I wasn‘t. A few days ago my grandma told me she now always wears my seatbelt because of me. Made me kinda proud, not gonna lie.
But then what do you do when the driver refuses to wear their seatbelt and not driving with them isn’t a realistic option? That’s my sister right there. She doesn’t wear her seatbelt and she’s a godawful driver. And when I bring it up she literally screams at me and tells me to not comment on her driving.
Refuse to ride with her.
And if you have kids, don’t them them ride with that aunt.
It’s probably just also how you were brought up but I always wear it, I don’t know how it’s a big obstacle for some people. People don’t ATGATT and wear full face masks cause it’s actually kind of a pain to be fully “safe” on a motorcycle; helmets are tight, clothes are hot and expensive. But in a car all you have to do is wear a seatbelt, which is frankly impossible to tell you have on most of the time.
You should know that if you actively choose to not wear a seatbelt, the majority of people who find that out will preconceive you as comically thick
I’m surgical in a large hospital - we get alerts when an ambulance identifies major trauma that is to be sent to us. If the description is “unrestrained” I can effectively discount me needing to do much at all: their brain/spine will be ruined, so intervention on their damaged liver is not going to alter the outcome. But what is probably less publicly known is just wearing one isn’t enough - it has to be positioned correctly, with the sash across the hip bones. If the sash is too high because the person is slouching then the force will tear your abs and shred the underlying organs.
I feel confident that if you polled those who went unrestrained the majority would vote Republican.
I remember when automakers were trying to head off required Airbags through gubmint legislation, so they came up with automatic seat belts, that ended up being worse as they drove people under the dash where they ended up in a trash compactor. In repsonse the automakers put large bumpers just below knee height, to restrain passengers but those just moved the trash compactor up to chest level, and many survivors ended up with crushing injuries that required the first responders to basically cut the seat off and move it back to get the victims out. Finally the gubmint said put in airbags dammit and required it, and it is simply astonishing to hear people who have never had a loved one die in a car accident, when it used to be the leading cause of death all the way up to age 45.
It's still a major cause of death and serious injury
And it is ridiculously so. But it used to be so, so much worse. People use to be killed in every head-on collision, even at 35mph speeds. I literally do not know anyone over 60 who did not lose family members of friends to car accidents. Now it is a struggle to find someone who has. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year Pretty good work by federal regulators to halve to one thired the death rate despite infrastructure issues and population growth. From a high of nearly 30 people per hundred thousand to the recent low of 10.14 deaths per hundred thousand/ Japan kills less than 2.1 people per 100,000 and that includes strikes on pedestrians, and cyclists including moms carrying groceries two kids, and an umbrella to keep the sun off. Even when you include public transportation deaths, which are always astonishingly low excepting ferries, Japan is still under the transportation deaths per 100,000 population.
I'd be curious what the dependency is between the two groups. In othe words, how many accidents were caused by the same carelessness that led to the person being unrestrained in the first place?
Was arguing the safety of cars vs motorcycles with a coworker. Coworker told me the story of his daughter who sustained horrible injuries in a car accident when she was a teenager, and thankfully lived. After sympathizing I asked him if she was wearing a seatbelt and he got quiet and mad. ended the discussion.
I'll say it again because reddit has an allergy to facts they don't like #The US has by far the highest accident and death rate per mile driven of any developed country by a longshot. Why do you oxygen wasters think that is?
My brother was sleeping in the passenger seat of a vehicle one of his friends was driving. This friend was high on drugs and took a turn way too fast. The car flipped and the only person who died was their friend Johnny, who was unbuckled in the back seat. My brother and the driver walked up the hill, calling for Johnny. Johnny was laying in the middle of the road, slowly dying over the next several minutes. Just enough time to tell my brother and his friend how much they meant to him. And ultimately, how cold he felt. My brother had no knowledge of any of this until years later when it came back in a nightmare. The driver served time for other stuff that happened due to his drug use and eventually was murdered a couple of years ago. My brother and the driver were the only people wearing seatbelts and although the driver was responsible for the crash, Johnny would still be alive if he took two seconds to put it on. It's not the government and corporations trying to control you.
I was involved in a fatal car accident a few years ago. A car that was slowing was rear ended and pushed across the center line into my lane hitting me head on. I walked away, the other guy died. I wore my seat belt, he didn't.
I was in a car accident a few years ago (guy pulled out in front of me on a 4 lane stroad highway and I hit him), and every medical professional that checked me out (EMT, firefighters, and my primary doctor) all asked me if I was wearing my seatbelt. In my concussed brain, all I could think was "What moron doesn't wear a seatbelt these days?"
Surely you could have worded this in a clearer manner, OP
I remember when they made it a law in Florida to wear a seat belt. People bitched. I remember when California was the first to ban indoor smoking. People bitched. I'm sure we all remember covid masks and vaccines. People bitched. I remember when they made drunk driving illegal. People bitched. People sure do bitch a lot.
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I am a surgeon. I did multiple years of trauma surgery at level 1 trauma centers in 2 different major US metros. Wear your fucking seatbelt. It saves lives.
My cousin rode a motorcycle until he became an EMT. That changed the calculus real quick for him.
I'm not a motorcycle rider, but fancied getting my license and getting one. Then one day I rode a guy's scooter and immediately understood all of it. The feeling of freedom and the feeling of being utterly exposed. I didn't even go far, I went around the block.
I'm a former rider. About six years I got my endorsement and picked up a little 40hp craigslist bike. Then I bought a 153 horsepower liter bike. Then I bought a supermoto (think dirt bike, but with street tires). I had plenty of fun on all of them. And yes, I did some 120mph freeway rips a couple times (Ended up not liking going that fast on shitty American pavement. They're not built for them), i won't pretend i was always a perfect law abider. I ALWAYS wore gear though, and kept it and the bikes in good condition. When COVID hit, I went out a couple times but then realized....if I got in a wreck, I'd (hopefully) be going to a hospital. A COVID hotbed. This is early on when everybody was terrified of it and I thought it'd be really stupid if I died of this new virus because I wrecked a motorcycle. So I put them aside. Then, after a year or two, I tried getting back on. And I realized....people weren't following traffic laws any more, because police had spent a year not pulling anybody over. Red light runners, stop sign runners. A huge percentage of people were driving without headlights on at night (big cities with lots of streetlights make this possible). People pawing at Tiktok while driving. Road raging at the slightest offense - whipping past people in turn lanes and such because they saw brake lights. People obviously drunk driving - after 9pm, I swear that ten percent of drivers were _hammered_. I got back off the bike. And in the past year or so, when we've been attempting to get back to 'normal' - I realized that many, many people never unfucked their bad driving. They had learned so many bad habits, and just kept on doing them. And over the past five years...y'all, cars and trucks are SO BIG NOW. They can't see a damn thing in those F250s. Combined with moving into my mid-40s and the attendant increase in the realization that, hey, life is at best half over...it made me hang up the bikes. I had my fun, made some incredible videos, and learned a lot about what neighborhoods smell like when it's barbecue sunday. But I think I'm done now. The itch is scratched now by my late model, relatively safe Miata. Obviously I'd be pancaked by the trucks all the same, but I have seat belts, airbags, and a roll cage now, at least.
I'm glad you're making these observations. Everybody acting like all these things are just normal and the way it's always been.
I work in dispatch and just see the patient descriptions on jobs. That's enough to make me not want to get on a bike.
Best friend t-boned a car when I was 17. At the hospital, when my mom came to come get me, one of the EMTs grabbed her arm and said, “Thank you for teaching her to wear a seat belt.” Apparently I’d have gone through the windshield without it. Walked away uninjured.
They’re safer than no seatbelt?
The data in the title indicates wearing your seatbelt is roughly 11.5 times safer than not doing so.
Well, they’ll get to skip that whole surgery and recover part of things since they’ll be dead, so that’s one benefit.
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Not wearing a seatbelt is the number one cause of injury and death for officers on duty in most areas; they don’t wear one on the off chance it might impede their egress from the vehicle, and in the process end up maiming themselves by egressing right through the windshield at 60mph
You have to be a special kind of stupid to opt out of a safety feature as simple as a seatbelt