Wear Your Seat Belt!

We like this post from Jim McDonald about wearing seat belts. After driving a cab for six years and witnessing all kinds of stupid driver tricks, putting on a seat belt is now automatic. Wearing a seat belt is also part of the Teenager Driving Contract, and so obvious that it doesn’t need a separate rule, like the 3-second rule. (Oh, and the car doesn’t move until everyone in the car has their seat belt on.)

Do you know how we can tell the difference between people who were wearing their seatbelts and those who weren’t, at the scene of an automobile accident? The ones who were wearing their seatbelts are standing around saying “This really sucks,” and the ones who weren’t are kinda just lying there.

This is not to say that all unrestrained traffic accidents are fatals, or that seatbelted folks are invulnerable. But if you’re playing the odds….

“Seatbelts Save Lives“, Making Light, April 14, 2007

hat tip Tyler Cowen and Brad DeLong

From the Teenager Driving Contract:

2. Seat Belts. Driver shall always wear a seat belt while operating a Motor Vehicle; and shall always wear a seat belt while a passenger in a Motor Vehicle operated by any friend (hereinafter collectively known as “Inexperienced Teenage Drivers”). In addition, Driver shall insist and require that any person or friend, while a passenger in Driver’s Motor Vehicle, must also wear a seat belt while in Driver’s Motor Vehicle.

And, as Mark Halpern says,

“Arbitrary laws–conventions– are just the ones that need enforcement, not the natural laws; the law of gravity can take care of itself, the law that you go on green and stop on red needs all the help it can get.”