Buckle up please

Although I sometime wish Sponge would be more diplomatic about how he says things, he is right on this issue. I know this from personal experience as well as research.

When I was young, I was unbuckled in the back seat (no seat belts back then) when my mother hit the brakes in a minor accident. I was hurled into the front seat, and the glove compartment door opened simultaneously. I bear a scar to this day just to the right of my right eye, and am fortunate I did not lose it in this very minor accident. In a high speed accident, I no doubt would have been dead.

But if my personal experience is not compelling, consider this study:

Research done at the University of Buffalo (NY) Center for Transportation Injury Research, found that by not buckling up, back seat passengers endanger drivers in the vehicle in which they're riding. Researchers analyzed federal crash data, and found that when rear passengers sitting directly behind the driver don't buckle up, they triple their odds of dying in a head-on crash and double the odds that the driver will be killed. The study also found that unbelted adults in the rear passenger seat quadruple the maximum force to the driver's head and chest. The researchers calculated that if 95% of rear-seat passengers buckled up, they could save 800 lives and prevent more than 65,000 injuries each year. (national numbers).

While most slugs will not be behind the driver, the same principle would apply to the fellow slug seated ahead of them. Buckling up is a minor precaution that just might save you from serious injury or death...do it! No excuses...

"The EMT said..."

That's like the guy who was told that if he had been wearing a motorcycle helmet, he wouldn't have survived.

Maybe in a freak occurrence, someone not wearing a seatbelt survives where they might not have otherwise. But it's just that. A freak occurrence.

Anyone getting into someone else's car needs to have the courtesy to put the seatbelt on without being asked. Anyone that doesn't agree can ride the bus.

I'm nasty about this because I don't want to die because you or some other idiot can't be troubled to put on a seatbelt, which takes all of 3 seconds to do.

And because my mother-in-law chose not to wear a belt on an icy night in West Virginia and, after her husband managed to run their 300M into a ditch, she was found in the back seat somehow, with several broken vertebrae.

Four operations later, she is fine, but slower, and lives with pain everyday. ER doctor said she would have walked away from the wreck unscathed if she had her seatbelt on. Instead, her STUPIDITY messed up everybody's lives accommodating her injury and recovery. And she suffers every day, the poor dear.

That's why the Sponge vents on this subject.

And don't EVEN get me started on the people who don't buckle up their kids! Good God A'mighty!

Hey, that is good news -- good that you will be wearing a seatbelt. The Sponge wants everyone to arrive home safe and sound, and if everyone front and back wears seatbelts, then there is a greater likelihood this will happen.

(I've never said anything to parents I see with unbuckled kids, but I've been tempted. Funny how often I see unbelted kids in the back and belted parents up front. I know they care about their kids, so I have to conclude that the parents think the children are safer unbelted. THAT is why I take such strong issue with the urban myths related to being unbelted.)

Yes yes, seatbelt for me. I love snopes, I shut down many recycled emails with this site!

slugging is free, keep it that way, down with SOV ON HOV!! :')