Seatbelts save lives. I wish people would just realize this

How awful! I've rarely heard of someone surviving being ejected from a vehicle. It always ended in horrible injuries and death.

Our rule is that the vehicle doesn't move until everyone's buckled in - front, middle and back (we have a minivan). That goes for kids and adults.

I agree.

I'm so sorry that it happened at all, and also that you have the image in your mind. That's just an awful situation. 

Thanks for the sobering reminder. Be good to yourself tonight. 

I heard that Bob Simon was not wearing his seat belt and was thrown into the front seat. They said that if he had been belted in, he probably would not have died.

I was thinking of this as well.  So sad. 

That's so sad! I don't understand why people don't wear seatbelts either.

When I was a kid, we never wore seatbelts. I have to credit my high school boyfriend for making me wear a seatbelt. I didn't wear them regularly, but I wanted to impress him, so I started wearing them all the time once we started dating. It was the rule in his car, but I started wearing them even when I was in my own car. My brother did too, he was also wanting to impress my boyfriend.

In Australia it is law
But there are still idiots who don't

You know how you learned to tie your shoes at whatever age (say 4 or 5) and you just know how to tie shoes? You look at a pair of tie up shoes and you don't think about tying them up? That's me with a seatbelt. I never think about it. It is so automatic it is the same as tie up shoes. I look at a lace the same as I look at a seatbelt. It goes on automatically. I have never even thought about it, it is that automatic. 

I don't know how people in this generation don't put on seatbelts the same way. The education has been proven time and again that more people survive automobile accidents wearing seatbelts than not and still people refuse to wear them for whatever reason. You can get pillows if they dig into your stomach or shoulder or whatever. I know I am being judgmental but it should just be automatic AND common sense. 

If someone drives an older car, let's say a 60's Mustang and the seatbelts are just the lap belts I don't know how effective they are or aren't so I can't comment and I won't say anything as I don't know either way. On a car built after 1990 which would make it 25 years old now seatbelts haven't changed that much and they are easy to put on and are not that uncomfortable.

Off my soapbox.

I am sorry you had to see that aftermath. That kind of image stays with you for a long time. You owe yourself something nice to eat or drink tonight. Glass of wine? Hot chocolate? Strawberry smoothie? San Peligrino? Whatever you like treat yourself.

How sad and hard for you to see too. Wearing seat belts is compulsory in New Zealand but some people still don't. I just don't understand it.

I spoke to a mom in our condo complex in Japan and she said "well her son and daughter just hate car seats so they got rid of them. Their daughter liked sleeping in her basinette when her husband drove but her son would never sit in his car seat-ever. He just wouldn't. Their daughter grew to like sitting in a seat though as long as she could watch tv in the car (tv was always mounted on the dash in the front) so she would often sit on her mom's knee." This is a synopsis of a conversation I had with her. Her husband is an insurance adjuster btw. He is highly disabled and beats his wife. He can't walk fast enough as he has a clubbed foot so she has to walk over to him so he can hit her. Yeah, it's messed up. She told me he hit her often and I did see a black eye or a bruise on her arm on a regular basis...they lived on the first floor so she didn't fall down many stairs or walk into that many doors.

ExDH and I put DS in every approved carseat from the day we left the hospital until he outweighed the last booster seat. He just knew it was the law and it was something that was always done every single time. It took 2 seconds to do and we were on our way. I didn't treat it like a holier than thou thing. We just did it like tying a shoe.

I'm pretty sure every state in the US also has a seatbelt law but people still do it. My DH, for example. I think he's an idiot when he doesn't wear his seatbelt. He just thinks nothing will ever happen to him while I remind him that he has a child to set an example for. Ah well, I came to term with the fact that my caring isn't going to change anything so I just hope that the constant beeping in the van makes him crazy and he gives in to putting the best on.

My DH never wore one until we had kids. Then we had to have the discussion that if he was driving them and had an accident, he had to be alive to get them out of their carseats to safety. I refused to let him drive them if he wasn't belted in. He tried to go back to no seatbelt when he felt they were old enough to get out themselves in an accident, but I trained my daughter to say, "Please put your seatbelt on Daddy" and he would do anything for her, so it worked. It finally became a habit for him.

We never wore seatbelts growing up until I was a teenager. My dad had so many tickets that he had to take a mandatory class. They showed the class a video of an accident scene where a semi truck had stopped suddenly for a dog. The car behind him just barely managed to stop in time. The toddler in the front seat of that car was not so lucky. They went through the windshield and hit the back of the semi so hard that the outline of the child's body was indented in the door. My dad wore his seatbelt ever since and made sure we all did too.

I feel sorry for the police who have to come investigate these accidents. Seeing dead people on the highway as a daily part of your job to me would burn a hole deep in your heart. Then there are the police who have to go and inform the sleeping family at 3 or 4 am that their loved one has been killed on the high way and could they please come and identify the body. Just the words "the body". Those police who do that are scarred for life, too. I can't imagine the faces they see when they answer the door. The father's son John as just flown through the windshield because he was rear ended at a high speed and died instantly.

If you can tie a shoe you can put on a seatbelt.

It floors me when I don't see kids in seatbelts. I see it way too often. The rule in our car was that the car didn't move until we were all belted in.

Newer cars will start "dinging" if the belt isn't buckled on the driver or passenger side. I'm assuming people buckle them and then sit on the seatbelt.