On [wearing] seat belts

Just when you think that a debate is over, it comes back with a vengeance. I shouldn’t even have to write this note because I think the content is self-evident, but I would be wrong. Ever been wrong? I have. This summer I made my students buckle up on the bus in Spain because it’s the law–if the bus has seat belts, the riders must put them on or they might be fined, not the driver. Nevertheless, there are still older buses on the road in Spain that do not have seat belts and are not bound by the law because they were manufactured before the law was put into place and the bus companies are not required to upgrade their equipment. In a recent tragic accident seven people were thrown from a bus that went off of the road, and they were all killed. Two were also killed on the bus, but in general, those who stayed in their seats, lived. If those seven had had seat belts on, they would have at least had a chance at surviving the crash. Instead, they were thrown from the vehicle and killed. One would think that the lives of passengers would be more important than a few thousand Euro to install seat belts, or is it more complicated than that? Do we still not take seat belts seriously enough? I was required to use seat belts as a new driver learning how to drive. Yet, some thirty-five years later, I still read reports of people who are thrown from their vehicles and killed because they weren’t wearing their seat belt, which is both kooky and tragic at the same time because they don’t seem to understand simple physics–and I mean simple. Any object which is moving will continue to move in a straight line until it is acted upon by some other force. Ergo, if you traveling at sixty miles an hour and your vehicle stops, unless you are belted in, you will continue to move at sixty miles an hour, which means that you will be thrown through the windshield and into oblivion or the next life, which ever comes first. I find it both amusing and scary that people will brandish this argument against seat belts: I’m not going to let the state mandate my safety–if I don’t want to wear a seat belt, I won’t. At some point in their short lives, this attitude will be fatal. It’s just a question of when. Then there are the folks who say that they won’t buckle up because they might get caught underwater or in a car fire. Either of those two scenarios are so rare that these people will end up in the cemetery long before water or fire ever happen. Some people are just stupid and sloppy about putting on (or not putting on) their seat belts, and they die at some point as well. If you stay in your seat in the car, you have a great chance of living through most any accident that is not totally catastrophic. If the highway patrol have to search for your body in the weeds along the side of the road, well, forget it, there are no second chances in the game of life, mostly because it’s not a game. The real truth about seat belts? Buckle up and live. If the bus passengers had had on seat belts, they would have made it, most likely. In the meantime, there are lots of dangerous tour buses out there along with lots of dangerous and stupid unbuckled drivers. For Pete’s sake, buckle up, and even if you won’t do it for yourself, think of your family–they will most likely miss you when you are gone.