How many of that 7% would waste money those devices rather than just buckle the seat belt and sit on top of it?
I’d file those under the rest of the useless items in JC Whiney’s catalog.
Still, in infinite wisdom, our legislators might get to the idea of requiring “obedient” 93% of drivers to pay for technology changes to try herding that “offending” 7% into compliance.
That ole Shakespeare quote (I think) comes to mind: “I beseech thee consider thouist may be wrong”.
As an addendum, a friend lives on a dead end gravel road that approaches a state road with a stop sign. As he was leaving home he got a call on his cell. Like a lot of us, we can’t get out phones out with the belt on so he stopped put his truck in park, removed his belt, and took the call. As he was sitting there on the phone without his belt on, a state patrol came by and gave him a ticket for not having a seat belt on. Now can any of you seat belt/law enforcement vigilantes see any point to that? He just paid the ticket rather than argue.
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The feature only works if you activate a mode for teenage drivers. In “regular driver” mode it is not active. Interestingly, studies show the MOST effective method to get drivers to buckle up is to make the annoying seatbelt chime make noise for a much longer period of time. Most people would rather buckle up than deal with the annoying sound of a seat belt chime.
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what percentage of 393,000 are kid’s under 16 or other people that don’t have a driver’s license for whatever reason people in prison or mental heath hostipital ? it seem’s that would make Bing’s comment more accurate.
This is why smart people don’t get rich, at least those who don’t do market research. They rationalize ways to defeat seatbelt warning and not bother to make and sell these. It’s difficult to see from the point of view of those who would buy these
In the art of war, sun tzu said know yourself and your enemies
Keeping it car related.
I shopped for a new car recently and among options, I do not want to have half of upsell features, but have to take them to get one or two important to me.
I can only imagine adding yet another stupid thing to watch for… all too fresh for me.
You can’t save lives, except in the religious sense. You can only prolong them. We all die. I have never asked the government to save me and I don’t think it should be their job.
In NY, you can’t swim without a lifeguard except on private property. In Vermont just across the state line is an Army Core of Engineers lake that I have always seem with a sign, no lifeguard, swim at your own risk. I am fine with that. I have swum across the Niagara river a few times, I don’t think there is a leagel way to do it but if I wanted to do it again, the law would not stop me, but my age would.
Motorcycle Helmets, I don’t think the state has any business forcing people to wear them and anyone dumb enough to ride without one, I would just as soon they not live long enough to reproduce.
What happened to " Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness"?
Makes me want to enforce my second amendment rights.
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You are ignoring the reality that many helmet-less motorcyclists do survive, and are essentially vegetables for the rest of their lives. Whether you want to consider only the increased costs of everyone’s health insurance to cover the cost of the long-term care of those vegetables, or whether you want to include the amount that each state pays for the care of indigent/uninsured patients, the bottom line is that ALL of us wind up paying for the long-term care of those people.
Whether your health insurance rates are jacked-up, or your taxes are increased to pay for the long-term care of those foolish individuals, you and I are paying for their care, and that is why it is in everyone’s interests to have as many people as possible wearing helmets or using their seatbelts.
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I was going to say the same thing.
Anyone who advocates for the relaxing of helmet laws, and anyone who is going to ride without a helmet, should watch an HBO documentary called Coma first. It’s about people who are lucky enough to come out of comas after experiencing traumatic brain injuries.
The thing is, even in states where helmets are required, they only require DOT certified helmets, which is a very low standard. You can buy a cheap helmet that won’t protect your brain stem if that’s what you want. It’s not as if they require you to buy a Snell certified helmet.
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I share your belief in freedom, but the public needs to be protected, sometimes against their own will.
My wife worked in the Operating Room of a large city hospital. She often encountered raves against seatbelts. Her standard answer was; “If you want to kill yourself that’s your business, but we have to scrape you off the pavement at public expense and treat you in the hospital at public expense, so you have no right not to wear a seatbelt”.
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I’m pretty sure seat belt laws apply to everyone who rides in a car, not just the driver, particularly children under the age of 16. I’d really like to see children wearing seat belts.
…and for what it’s worth, I think buses should also have seat belts, whether they’re hauling prison inmates, mental health patients, or any other people.
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In the wake of a school bus tragedy last year in which both a child and a teacher were killed, NJ now mandates seat belts in all school buses.
And, it is worth noting that this tragedy was completely avoidable. Thanks to NJDOT cameras, it quickly became apparent that the school bus driver made an illegal u-turn through the median of I-80, and was hit by a loaded dump truck that couldn’t avoid T-boning the bus. The truck driver was exonerated of any responsibility for the accident, but elderly bus driver will go on trial shortly for vehicular homicide.
Some states/counties do. But MOST don’t.
They do in Japan, and the bus driver checks every passenger for a properly buckled belt, just like the flight attendant does on an airplane.
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1st I am not a bike rider & you just answered a question I have wondered about helmet’s for year’s. Back in the 80s I was behind a bike on a 4 lanes street in tampa Fla. very light traffic when a car ran a stop sign from a side street in front of the bike the bike rider was good & laid his bike down to keep from t boning the idiot.I stopped to check on the rider { you know or have seen people who when they get mad they & throw they’re hat down} well this rider did that with his helmet before I got out of my truck & the helmet split into 2 pieces right down the middle. I always wandered what would have been the result if he would have been on the interstate when he was cut off.
Helmet safety stadards have improved, but the helmet splitting on impact means it probably would do better than nothing, and the split may actually decrease the blow to the riders head.
Hard-hat saves dam worker’s life
The remains of Richard Duck’s shattered hard-hat indicate the force of the blow that it absorbed.
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If the helmet split when it hit the ground, it probably wasn’t even DOT certified. It was probably just a “cosmetic” or novelty helmet that will keep the police from ticketing you for not wearing one. It probably didn’t have a DOT sticker on the back.
All a DOT certification means is that the helmet is made of particular materials. It doesn’t mean it’s been tested or that it will offer any level of protection.
On the other hand, a Snell certification is awarded based on actual testing to make sure the helmet will withstand an impact of a certain force. However, the helmet manufacturer has to pay for testing in order to get the Snell certification, so a lack of a Snell certification might not mean a helmet is unsafe; it might mean the company just didn’t want to pay for the testing. This is common for low-cost full face helmets, such as those made by Bell that sell for about $50.
One example of this phenomenon is my helmet, an HJC CL-17. In sizes S, M, L, XL, and XXL, it is Snell certified, but in larger sizes, it is not. I suspect this is because HJC didn’t pay to get the larger sizes tested, not because the larger sizes are less safe than the smaller sizes. If I wore one of the larger sizes, I’d buy one in spite of it not having the Snell endorsement.
Likewise, there are modular full-face helmets (full face helmets where the chin piece folds up so it becomes an open-face helmet), that don’t have the Snell endorsement, but there are open-face helmets (that are low in the back, protecting your brain stem) that get the Snell endorsement. I suspect this is a matter of the modular helmets not being tested, not that they actually offer less protection than an open face helmet. HJC’s open face helmets used to have the Snell endorsement, but none of their current lineup does, likely because they figure that anyone who cares about the Snell endorsement is probably going to buy a full-face helmet, so they can’t justify the cost.
If I wanted a modular helmet or an open-face helmet, I’d feel reasonably protected wearing one that is only DOT approved, but since I prefer a full-face helmet for the protection, I look for the Snell endorsement.
One last thing about motorcycle helmets: If you ever drop one, even if just falls off a table and lands a few feet below, once it hits the ground, it’s no good anymore. They’re designed to survive one impact. If you drop yours accidentally, you can send it to the manufacturer to have it X-rayed to see if it’s still safe, but that is usually a waste of money.
…so that biker who threw his helmet down in anger didn’t do any harm. His helmet had done its job. Once you’ve been involved in an collision, you might as well throw your helmet, because you can’t use it again.
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Thank you for the education all of that information I did not know as I have never been a rider.
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All of the hysterical people who demand seat nelts on school buses Ignore the findings of the crash testing by Cornell Labs years ago that stated the lap belts on school buses caused more and worse injuries than they prevented. In NY State, seat belts have been required to be on school buses for about 30 years. I do not know of any district or transportation company that requires they be worn unless they are transporting Head Start students where 4 year olds with only 2 belts per seat and have the proper mountings for child safety seats.
The trouble is any setup that requires a shoulder belt reduces the bus capacity for elementary children by 1/3. Adding a requirement for the driver to check the seat belts before each run would increase the time of each run. The district I drove for , most buses made 3 runs in 2 hours. Elementary, High School and Middle School. Checking seat belts would mean we could only make two of those runs either requiring more drivers or keeping a lot of kids in school longer each day.
There is a pervasive shortage of school bus drivers now that has been getting worse each year, causing some schools to hold part of the sudents an extra hour waiting for buses to finish one run and return to the school do do another run because a bus ir buses are siting idle at the bus garage without a driver and yes, all the mechanics and office personnel are already out filling runs.
Where are you going to get all these school bus driver from ? There just are not that many people that are willing to do it. Don’t suggest putting aids on the bus to handle the seat belts, the turnover among them is even higher than with the drivers. Most suburban and rural runs don’t have them now. When I started, I was # 93 in seniority and we had 8 aids. They were only on runs with special needs children whose Individual Education Plan required one.
I believe in freedom’ but sometimes people have to be protected against their will is a contradictory sentence.
If I have to pay health insurance costs for people with Aids, they can pay the costs of my risky behavior also. Or are you going to outlaw being gay or deny them medical care? That cost is much higher than caring for the brain damaged.
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