Quote Originally Posted by cmailliard View Post
I have only seen one incident where a seatbelt lead to a loss of life. I cannot count the number where not wearing it caused a loss of life. I have been in two accidents while not wearing my seatbelt, one I was in the back of the ambulance and we were t-boned and flipped on our side. The other I was lucky.

You must stay inside the vehicle during an accident. Rollovers - either they had their seatbelt on and are up walking around and are fine when EMS arrives, or they were not wearing their seatbelt and it is a field pronouncement. There is very rarely a middle ground.

Wear your seatbelt, make your kids wear their seatbelt. If they should be in a car seat, make them sit in a car seat.
I agree with everything you said. There are rare exceptions where wearing a seatbelt is worse, but in a huge proportion of the time they save lives and reduce injuries.

When I was growing up we never wore seatbelts. The summer between my Junior & Senior years of HS I was the passenger in my dads Mustang on a country gravel road when a phone company service dually pickup truck came around a blind turn on our side of the road. Twenty miles/hour on a gravel road takes some time to stop. We stopped when we collided with the front of the truck. I shattered the windshield with my forehead (queue the jokes). My dad was uninjured but bent the steering wheel. I got a minor concussion out of it; I was lucky.

Over the next school year my brother and I had 4 friends roll a car. None were wearing seatbelts but all survived. The official analysis was that most or all of them would have died had they been wearing seatbelts (something about them all falling onto the floorboards while the roof was crushed). To this day my brother absolutely refuses to wear a seatbelt. I didn't realize at the time how rare those sorts of situations were so I continued to not wear a seatbelt - until I joined the military where we were under direct orders to ALWAYS wear a seatbelt, so I did.

Through the years I realized how smart it was to always wear a seatbelt but resented the .gov making it mandatory. I will never drive or ride in a vehicle without one and no one will ever ride in my vehicles without wearing one. I think seatbelts/helmets/carseats should be mandatory for anyone <18 yo but not for adults. If you aren't smart enough to wear one and get in an accident, well, more chlorine for the gene pool. Children deserve some protection from parents who can't make an intelligent decision, but we adults have an inherent right to make our own choices, even if they are wrong. Through the years I've heard and dismiss the argument that someones poor choice to not wear a seatbelt could put me at risk when they lose control of their car. I get that, but I don't buy that it's sufficient reason (based on risk analysis) to take away someone else's right to choice for themselves.