When me and my wife first started dating she’d pretty much never wear her seatbelt. I had to ride her so much to wear it. Started not even putting the car in gear until she put it on. Finally she got the message when I asked her if she wanted her son to grow up without her.
My friend would never put hers on in my car. I initially rode her, then found intentionally hitting a sharp corner at high speed to be much more effective. She made a habit of wearing her belt in my car lol.
my dad used to not wear his seatbelt when i was a little kid so my mom got me and my brother to scream at him to put it on until he put it on. hes been putting his seatbelt on ever since
In the past children were taught fire is hot by intentionally giving them a small burn.
In much the same way, one can end non seatbelt usage by using your break pedal to engage your non compliant passengers forehead with the dashboard, in a controlled setting. (Empty road/parking lot)
This is the way.
I’m usually pretty good about seatbelt usage.
>90% as a passenger, 100% as a driver.
Recently I had a carload of people, we were doing 55mph, and a car pulled out in front of us, crossing the road. I have no idea how we didn’t hit them. I absolutely stomped on the brakes, thank goodness it was dry pavement, the wheels still locked up (ABS pulsing), but it was a very aggressive maneuver. Had it been winter we’d have t-boned them at-speed.
Also thankfully, everyone in the car was wearing their seatbelts. So while all the drinks and papers and random stuff around the car ended up on the floor, everyone was ok.
This has renewed my convictions about passenger seatbelting, both mine and others. I’m back up to 100%.
Edit: formatting
Edit 2: highlighting the relevant part people keep missing
Anything below 100% is not pretty good
You’re right, the world is black and white, and I’m a horrible person 🙄
This place is exhausting sometimes.
Edit because people can’t read: I’m not defending not wearing a seatbelt. I was never defending that. I made a comment admitting that I used to infrequently not wear a seatbelt, as a passenger. That was dumb. Then I had a near miss, greatly appreciated my belt, and had a revelation, and began wearing my belt 100 percent of the time, and increasing my insistence that my passengers do as well.
Then this guy above me here made a zinger implying that I was trying to defend not wearing a belt, and instead of defending myself (because I thought it was obvious to everyone with eyes), I chose to complain about people being exhausting.
Admittedly this added to the confusion, because those who didn’t read the first comment, chose to interpret my second comment as a complaint about being rightfully chastised, when in fact I was complaining about being unrightfully chastised.
And now I’ve spent even more time explaining myself than should ever have been necessary.
The world isn’t black and white, and you’re not a horrible person. But there is no advantage to not wearing a seatbelt, and some pretty extreme bad things that could happen
You’re not wrong, but did you read my comment?
I said I used to wear it more than 90% of the time, then I related a story about a near miss, and now I wear it 100% of the time.
The other guy seems to have had an emotional response rather than a rational one.
I’m pro seatbelt, always have been, always will be. Worst I did was admit to being not diligent enough in the past, but people seem to think I’m saying seatbelts aren’t important? Or that if you wear them most the time that’s good enough?
Wild 🤷♂️
Well, it depends.
You probably think 90% is pretty good because you’re comparing yourself to the people around you. In actual fact, national (USA) seatbelt compliance is around 91%, with the great majority of people wearing a seatbelt ~100% of the time, and the skew being made up of a minority of people who are wearing a seatbelt ~0% of the time.
Now, I can’t speak for what the other person is thinking… but objectively, most people are doing better than 90%. So when you say 90% is pretty good, it seems to me that they’re doing you a favor by telling you that it’s not. If you go around thinking that 90% is pretty good, you might not change, right?
It’s not necessarily a moral judgement. It’s just a fact. By telling you that 90% is not pretty good, they’re helping you, as well as everyone you share a car with.
Thanks for attributing me more empathy than I probably deserve.
That’s fair, I didn’t know those statistics.
But I stand by the fact that their comment felt very much like an emotional response, rather than a rational one.
It seems as though they ignored the context of my post, wherein I acknowledge that I was wrong, that >90% wasn’t good enough, and now I do 100%. This realization coming at a direct result of a near miss.
In the spirit of the comment I was responding to, I fail to see how anything I said was negative. Unless we’re not supposed to admit we were wrong, and grow?
Also, everyone seems to miss the fact that I used a greater than symbol, implying I did better than 90, and that the figure itself was a ballpark, likely much higher.
I’m fully pro seatbelt. The worst I’ve done is admit that I used to be… Only average, I guess. Which according to the downvotes, is a sin 🤷♂️
Oh well, what can you do.
You literally described a situation in which you were the driver and had to make an emergency braking maneuver and were thankful everyone in your car wore their seatbelt.
And in the same breath admit as a passenger you don’t always wear it and it’s exhausting people hold you accountable for not wearing it.
Pick a lane, Mr 100% driver.
Did…? did you read my entire comment? The part where I said that didn’t always wear it, not don’t. Past tense, and even then extremely infrequently. I admitted it was wrong, and confirmed that now I wear it 100% of the time, driver or passenger.
I literally can’t understand how people are misunderstanding me.
And that guy wasn’t “holding me accountable”, he also misunderstood me, and gave me a one line zinger to refute my “claim”. That’s the exhausting part.
The part where I keep spending time explaining myself because people would rather be outraged than stop and consider that there is a real warm blooded human at the other end of the text window.
Yep sometimes people need those real near misses to remind them.
When I was learning to drive I was very careful about checking each way and blindspots before doing anything. After about a year I was pulling out of a gas station one morning and there was a truck blocking my view to the right. I got complacent and I thought well I dont see any cars and I rolled forward a bit about to pullout and behind the truck was a car going 60km. If I’d pulled out I would have died.
Now im extra fucking careful to make 100% sure I’m pulling out safely.
Glad you didn’t die, that’s scary.
Yeah like a kid who gets told a hundred times the stove is hot, sometimes they need to gently brush hot steel to realize they need to be a LOT more careful.
It ain’t the right way to learn, but it’s dang effective.
You can be the safest driver on the road, but what about the OTHER driver who messes up and ruins your day…
You don’t even need to be in an accident. Some kid suddenly wandering in the street and you need to do an emergency stop. The car stops well before the kid, so no harm no foul right? Except the person in the passenger’s seat has been launched against the windscreen and now has permanent brain damage.
Wear your seatbelt always.
Well, the driver is always responsible. Put on your seatbelt or you are walking, you tell them.
Depends on local laws; for children it’s always the driver’s responsibility, but some states make the passenger responsible for themselves at 18 (to the point that a passenger but not the driver can get a no-belt ticket).
But my family has always been in the ‘everyone buckle up or I’m not starting the car’ school of driving.
Appropriate username
Yup. If you’re the best driver on the road, everyone else is automatically worse than you are.
I’m probably not the best, but do appear to be a local maximum.
Felt. A friend of mine from another state once genuinely asked me if we even had to take a test to get a driver’s license here.
Massachusetts?
So you’re entirely surrounded by relative idiots is what you’re saying?
When it comes to driving at least, yea. I live in a tourist town with lots of retirees.
Driving skills are not a single vector, some are better in some things, others in other things
100% why I never got into motorcycles. Not judging people who choose to ride, but that’s not a risk I feel comfortable taking on myself.
I used to ride one as its all I could afford. Now I cycle instead which is cheaper and at least some bike routes exist so some of my journey can avoid cars.
I really wish there was such a thing as a safe motorcycle, but they’re just outside my risk profile. They look so fun
You get a a motorbike or ebike and ride it where there are no cars, eg mountain biking
Mountains. Now that’s a safe place!
i know two people personally who almost died on dirt bikes alone offroad
People die skiing, swimming, cycling or even running. At some point you need to live your life and accept some level of risk.
Or live in a padded cell and die of heart disease from never leaving the house.
or just don’t ride non enclosed vehicles at high speeds
every motorcycle rider i’ve known has had at least a major close call
easy half dozen, father spent a month down on road rash
father in law died due to weight complications after a bad harley accident and pain meds
highschool buddy ran off the road doing like 40
anway list goes on
uh cosin was one of the kids on the dirtbike
his step dad is a major x games biker and he at like 14 was going too fast
Sure, let me just get a truck to haul around my motorcycle with
Like 2 cunts I saw just this past month while cycling to work.
I only cycle down like 100m of road shared with cars and its far worse than the nearly 8km shared with buses. Almost smashed someone’s door in the other day because they didn’t bother looking before turning.
My great grandfather had a saying, you drive for every other idiot on the road.
Not saying that people shouldn’t wear seat belts, but this is something you shouldn’t worry about. Seat belt laws work because if 350,000,000 people wear them, then you save thousands of lives each year. But getting killed in a car accident is still exceedingly rare. I could bet 10,000 people $200 that if they don’t wear a seat belt that they’ll still be alive at the end of the year and come out a millionaire.
So wear a seat belt. But don’t get paranoid.
Always wear a seatbelt there’s absolutely no upside to not wearing it.
OH YEAH? WHAT ABOUT THE UPSIDE IN MY FREEDUMB AND STICKING IT TO THE GUBMINT?
/s of course
Yes, always wear a seat belt but don’t live in terror.
Every time I latch my seatbelt, I need to wipe my hands first because my palms are so sweaty. I’m just so goddamn terrified of that little latch.
if 350,000,000 people wear them, then you save thousands of lives each year.
getting killed in a car accident is exceedingly rare.
Also, there are gradations between ‘fine and dandy’ and ‘dead’, how about you factor that into the benefits of seat belts.
The worst year for car fatalities was 1938. You had a like 1 in 3000 chance. That’s exceedingly rare in my book. Again, I’m not against seat belt laws. I’m just saying they work just as well if you don’t live in constant fear of death.
1 in 3000 per km travelled? Per year? Every time you get in the car? Per day? Per crash? What are these numbers.
First, again, I am not arguing against seat belt laws. Repeat: I. am. not. against seat belt laws. I’m assuming this is the misunderstanding and why I keep getting downvoted into oblivion and getting weird replies. If not, then why? I’m not understanding this push back.
What I’m saying is that it’s not psychologically healthy to think your daily commute is a war zone and obsess on worst case scenarios like the comments my original comment was in response to.
Now with the numbers.
In the US, during the 30s, about 1 out of 3,000 people died in car accidents each year. By the 70s, with road safety improvements and such, this was down to 1 out of 5,000. Then in the 90s with seat belt laws, it was about 1 out 6,500. Today, with a half dozen air bags in each car, it’s 1 out of 10,000.
If not, then why?
I didn’t downvote, but I already mentioned my objection that ‘dead or alive’ aren’t the only two possible outcomes of a car trip. So the calculation should be different.
The person who put her legs up on the dashboard and ended up with said legs way in her pelvis, has lived iirc.
Also, this is a prime example of a ‘black swan’ event: happens rarely, but when it does, you really fucking wish it didn’t.
You’ll drive yourself insane thinking like this. And that’s my concern about modern society. When seat belt laws were passed half a century ago, we never thought about our legs being shoved up into our pelvis. We understood that it was a “carpet bombing” law. If you force a quarter billion people to wear seat belts, it’ll prevent thousands of deaths and injuries. But me personally, whether I wear a seat belt or not, I am just as safe. People have lost sight of that today.
I just have an issue with misuse of statistics. “1 in 3000 people died in car accidents each year” is a useless number that gives you no information you can base a decision on, though granted, it’s at least more info than before. But still, what do we get from it? Assuming it’s correct, is it saying that for every 3000 deaths 1 was in a car crash? If so, seeing as that figure was around 2.2% in 2017, with much better traffic laws, infinitely safer cars, better road design, construction, and materials… You can draw exactly zero conclusions from that stat. Were a lot more people dying in the 30s from other preventable causes? Are people now a dying much less? No idea. There’s so much noise, how do you even factor in seat belts?
If you want to draw conclusions from statistics you need to use the right ones. If we’re comparing traffic safety then at least start here: how do injuries+deaths/km travelled compare from the 30s to now?
1 out of 3,000 people died in car accidents each year
for every 3000 deaths 1 was in a car crash?
I think it’s rather that 1/3000th of the total population died in car crashes each year, and your job as a voter was to judge if that’s acceptable.
gives you no information you can base a decision on,
What decision do you think I’m suggesting should be made?
Naah, this is bullshit, seatbelts have saved my head from concussion quite a few times just from having to brake unexpectedly for traffic.
Ironically, it’s a no-brainer. Wear the seatbelt.
This is starting to smell fishy. It’s like you’re all having a hard time parsing what I’m saying and jumping to spitting out the PSA.
Because your dumbass just told a public forum that we shouldn’t be afraid of car crashes.
Literally the dumbest possible thing one could add to the conversation.
Are you being serious?
You typed words onto a public forum. Then you told the people reading them you didn’t say that, when they can just scroll up and see you say that.
Are you talking about this post?
Not saying that people shouldn’t wear seat belts, but this is something you shouldn’t worry about. Seat belt laws work because if 350,000,000 people wear them, then you save thousands of lives each year. But getting killed in a car accident is still exceedingly rare. I could bet 10,000 people $200 that if they don’t wear a seat belt that they’ll still be alive at the end of the year and come out a millionaire.
So wear a seat belt. But don’t get paranoid.
Where I start with “Not saying that people shouldn’t wear seat belts” and end it with “So wear a seat belt.”
Are you?
Yes. Yes I am.
It doesn’t excuse not using a seat belt.
That… was exactly their point.
I’ve read it as “the other guy can ruin your day anyway, so why bother”
Nah it was a “you can do everything right, and the other guy can still ruin your day so you still need the safety”
Do you not bother to read before you reply?
Are you… a russian bot still booting up after the downtime?
Hey neurodivergents…
spoiler
OOGA BOOGAAa someone with ADHD, pretty much anything that requires planning stresses me out. But this feels infantilizing more than anything
Uh yeah we feel that way too. I don’t think anyone is glad to feel overwhelmed by basically everything.
Edit: apparently people hated this comment? I was just saying that the comment at the top was a little dismissive because yes some of us have mental health issues that cause us to be overwhelmed. At no point did I think “bludgeoning over the head” was the correct move either.
Being unhappy about being overwhelmed is not the same as bludgeoning everyone over the head with the diagnosis in their best attempt to emulate an invalid.
Don’t bottle up your feelings like that.
If I didn’t bottle up my feelings I’d be in jail for killing conservatives, I don’t think that puts my girlfriend or my mom (who both depend on me) in a better place. I think I’ll keep doing my thing.
You don’t have to actually kill conservatives. Just talk about how you want them dead. How that occurs is not really necessary to explore.
No
Yeah, so, wearing a seatbelt is overstimulating to me. As is clearing the snow from my roof. And I need my headlights as bright as possible because of my bad eyes - i mean astigmatism. The radio also needs to be as loud as possible. And my adhd makes me forget to turn off the high beam. I also have jittery hands because of my arthritis. And there is a bomb that explodes if I drive less than 80mph.
You really ought to consider that the other person might certain conditions, but still needs to get to work. And don’t say I shouldn’t drive and maybe should take public transport instead, I’m not a chump! /s
“public transport” you lucky chump! I’m taking a piss at you lol.
Though I do think your take is a bit funny, the speed “limit” is 80 in Colorado so yeah it’s 100+ an hour; I guess Speed would have been a comedy. And snow is the least of your concern lmao. Imagine waking up and it looks like an apocalypse where everyone left their cars in the street–everywhere–because of ice. And public transport is a myth in most places in the US; don’t worry I love public transport overseas. But yeah at 100+ your seatbelt saves the fire department from cleanup duty.
The shape and height of my body means the seat belt digs into my neck, instead of going across my chest and over my shoulder. Low key, sometimes I wonder if I would be decapitated in a crash because of it
Safety features are designed for a 5’9 man.
A lot of people don’t know that the seat belt anchor on the B pillar is adjustable (in some cars).
If it’s not, the only safe way to fix the problem is to raise the seat or use booster cushions, and then pedal extenders if your feet don’t reach.
The clips make it more comfy, but also more dangerous in a crash.
I’m 5’1" and even though I slide the seat belt anchor all the way down and sit on an extra cushion the belt slides towards my throat as I drive. I think shoulder width and boobs have an effect also, (mine are sort of medium) and of course when I was heavily pregnant that raised other issues (put it across your hips, not your belly! And drive carefully so you don’t have to slam the brakes because your bladder is already ready to burst!) but of course manufacturing engineers take the lazy misogynistic way out by pretending women don’t exist.
It was all of last damed year that the first explicitly designed female crash test dummies were approved for use.
So yeah.
Hopefully we’ll start to see better outcomes for women in the near future.
I think maybe you meant “damned” for emphasis, but I think “damed” is a nice fit for context. “There is nothing like a dame,” and vehicle engineers have ignored that basic fact for far too long.
get a 4 point racing harness
From a quick search, it seems like it’s not as simple as getting a harness and using it in my car, I’d have to also get aftermarket seats and possibly further alterations to the vehicle. Not a bad idea, though, and something to keep in mind when I’m ready for a new car.
huh i thought you could use stock seats but short googling says you are correct
This is bait
it’s bait, but it’s also real in the sense there are lots of people who are delusional about how ‘oppressed’ they are by ordinary everyday reality.
because they have no context of how good they have it.
Do they do pre-prints for Darwin Awards?
I’d prefer people not die or get mangled but it does remind me that some forms of autism include touch oversensitivity. Is there a solution to that?
Wear a thick sweater, turn on the AC?
Trains
For real though, there are padded covers you can buy for seatbelts that might help. I am pretty sure I have seen people make their own, and an extra layer of clothing kr a blanket might help too.
Seatbelts are not one of my particular sensory issues, but in general with stuff I try to remind myself that some things are worth being uncomfortable for. It’s an evaluation: how long will I be uncomfortable for, and how uncomfortable? What am I getting out of it? How hard would it be to reduce or eliminate this discomfort? Will I be able to take some time to collect myself soon?
Don’t drive in a car.
passengers in a car instead
checkmate 😎
Walkable cities
My deleted comment was a result of Comment Mitosis™
deleted by creator
I don’t wear a seatbelt. I just stopped caring. I do when I’m transporting others, but that’s pretty rare.
Not saying it’s smart. Just saying I don’t care anymore.
Thing is, you don’t care - but it’s not about you is it… The passers-by that witness your body on the floor, after you’re ejected from your car. Traumatised for life.
The paramedics trying their absolute best to keep you alive when you’re thrown around the inside of your car because you swerved to avoid hitting a kid…
The firefighters that have to try to get you out of your burning, crumpled vehicle when you’re wedged between the driver and passenger seat…
Your family, or friends, knowing you’ve died traumatically.
Your close family caring for you for the rest of your life because a relatively minor accident made you paraplegic .
It’s not about you, mate. Any number of things could happen to those around you, because you were top selfish to wear a seatbelt.
The passers-by that witness your body on the floor, after you’re ejected from your car. Traumatised for life.
Honestly, I’m not really concerned about this. I don’t go through my life trying to limit the chances of people potentially, in an extreme and unlikely situation, seeing my mangled body.
The paramedics trying their absolute best to keep you alive
I have paramedic friends. Wouldn’t phase them. They see mangled bodies on the daily.
The firefighters that have to try to get you out of your burning, crumpled vehicle
They do this regardless of whether people wear seatbelts or not.
Your family, or friends, knowing you’ve died traumatically.
This one’s fair. But the people close to me know how I am and most of them are realists. People die. You move on. Once you’re old enough you’ve had enough people you know, including peers, die that you get better at coping. If I was really concerned about preserving myself for others, I’d never get in another vehicle again because they’re the most dangerous thing we do in our daily lives.
Your close family caring for you for the rest of your life because a relatively minor accident made you paraplegic
Oh I’d take care of myself in that situation. Now, I understand that I could be completely paralyzed and not able to kill myself. That’s the one real flaw in this habit of mine, but I just roll the dice on that one. It’s pretty unlikely.
As a firefighting disability support worker who has witnessed what families go through on all sides of what I spoke about (which I only said because I can speak with knowledge on the matter),
I have to disagree entirely with your take.
okay but do you not care if your body becomes a cannonball in a crash? Like if you eject out of the front window you can literally kill someone if you hit them with your headless body.
okay but do you not care if your body becomes a cannonball in a crash?
I’ll go ahead and accept that this is, in fact, a possibility, but so extremely unlikely that I’m not really going to entertain it.
Well, there are fates worse than death in a car crash without a seatbelt. And this is quite a likely alternative to dying in a crash.
I suggest you visit a hospital, and see them.
do the EMTs a favor and drown yourself in the tub after calling for a wellness check.
I scraped brains off pavement. picked up skull fragments from a dashboard.
you know what happens to the eye after it reaches terminal velocity? it jellifies and bursts like an overripe kiwi. and if you manage to stay conscious during, your vision gets stretched and watery and then pops to black. the alternative is your eye pops out of socket and now you can look at your feet at the same time you can look up.
all this is heavily reliant on the glass from the windshield not shredding your eyes first.
you know what most people who don’t wear a seatbelt think as they are ejected from their vehicle? “I wish I had wore my seatbelt.” at least that’s what the ones that survive say.
wear a fucking seatbelt. if not for you, for the EMTs that will inevitably be require to have fever dreams about your gelatinous corpse for the rest of their lives if you don’t.
Eh. I don’t go through life trying to prevent others from seeing my mangled body in the extreme and unlikely event that it happens that way.
I know EMTs. They tell me stories gorier than my mangled body all the time. They’re pretty desensitized to it all. Probably shouldn’t do the job if you can’t be.
But yeah, I would, theoretically, feel bad about making them clean my goop up. But that’s also someone’s literal job that they get paid for. Cleaning up human goop.
Bruh. You sounding like a complete cunt. Not that you care though, do carry on please…
then do us a favor and go goop yourself.
If you don’t care anymore, than don’t take anyone else with you if you choose to kill yourself.
Just because you don’t care doesn’t mean people want to see you harm others from your own self destruction.
If you don’t care anymore, than don’t take anyone else with you if you choose to kill yourself.
How exactly would that work if no one else is in the vehicle with me? Which I clearly stated in my original comment.
If I crash while not wearing a seatbelt, I get hurt or die. Anyone else not in my vehicle with me is going to get hurt or not hurt the same whether I’m wearing a setbelt or not.
Hop of that high horse and learn to read.
Edit: And please don’t tell me my body would become a lethal projectile that hurts/kills someone else. That’s so unlikely I don’t really care to consider it.
You’re going to fucking love being paralyzed in a nursing home getting septic from the unchanged tubes up every hole in your body and the pressure ulcers because the staff is too busy to turn or bathe you from an accident that you could have walked away from without a scrape.
And not all EMTs are unphased by that shit. Some are unbothered, some will never admit it to a non first responder, and some are unbothered until they are. First responders have a higher PTSD rate than the military. Anyone who’s been a first responder for any amount of time knows some who has committed suicide or who has attempted suicide. I know you don’t care, because you’re a massive POS who doesn’t give a shit about anything, but I run EMS and I’m sick as fuck of having to deal with selfish people like you who don’t give a flying fuck about anyone but themselves and then inevitably cry like the biggest babies in the world once consequences come down.
In the event of an accident, there are many cases where, if you are wearing your seatbelt, being physically held into the driver’s seat will allow you to maintain control for longer, or even regain control, when you otherwise would not.
I’m from a place with a LOT of rain, and a LOT of ice, and I have personally been in three auto accidents at at least 30 mph. We are taught the simple truth that we will be in accidents, and that learning to mitigate them, when prevention is impossible, is paramount. In one case, the car literally ended up doing a 180, but my father was able to regain control afterward and prevent us from running into a cliff wall. He would have been unquestionably incapable of doing so had he not been wearing his seatbelt. To this day, it is the greatest example of alacrity in a crisis that I’ve been privileged to witness. In another, my mother was able to maintain control as we skidded off the road from a sudden hydroplane, managing to make it into a farmer’s field, rather than flipping the car. In the third, black ice prevented me from stopping as I traveled downhill (the cop who responded nearly biffed it getting put of his car, the ice was so thin and invisible it looked like nothing but mist), and the person in front of me, stopped in the middle of the road, did not have their turn signal on. I had just started to pull to get around them, forcing the belt to cut into my shoulder, when I realised they had just started turning the same direction without a signal. Had I been flung by the force of my initial swerve and unable to maintain control, I would have plowed into their driver door, but instead, I was able to just barely course-correct to the right, skimming their right rear bumper instead. Among the three accidents, no injuries, and the only one of the three which involved a collision with anything thicker than a few stalks of wheat was mine, which nearly ended with me t-boning the idiot in front of me.
Get over yourself, because there are damn important reasons you need to care, in spite of the fact you appear to value your own life so little.
