Some people still refuse to wear seatbelts. Why?

General Discussion
61

Im suprised at how many people are bothered by seatbelt/helmet laws.

You ever get hit by a bug like a beetle or rock when doing 50+ on a motorcycle? That hurts! Plus you cant really see clearly with no eye protection. Its just more comfortable to wear a helmet, a full faced one at that. Just my opinion.

As for the seatbelts, I have heard numerous stories of people being thrown from cars and thats what allowed them to live, but thats so rare. I feel naked without one on, so I always wear it anyhow. Doesnt bother me at all. I also wait until passengers put theirs on, not only for safety, but more so because Im not paying for a ticket because someones not wearing a seatbelt. As for the government aspect, I really dont feel like my rights are infringed upon because of some safety laws that are really no big deal.

62

Arabs need seat belts, too:

Ooops, looks like YouTube deleted the video. All it showed was a car being “drifted” before going out of control and rolling a few times while the occupants were thrown out (and presumably killed).

63

Very recently there was a fatality rollover where the passenger was standing with his head out the sunroof while his buddy was doing doughnuts in the dirt. Right up until the truck hit a berm of dirt and flipped over landing on the roof.
http://www.theolympian.com/2014/06/04/3165462/prosecutor-expects-to-file-vehicular.html?sp=%2F99%2F224%2F&ihp=1

64

Man, Doug, that’s a tough one. Two young kids just acting like young kids and now one is dead and the other likely up for homicide, his life to be destroyed by a felony conviction. I’m not sure that if I were the DA I’d have the heart to charge the kid with homicide. I think I’d look for a lesser charge.

I probably did things just as dumb when I was a young man.

65

Sadly it’s not the first bad accident out there. Since this happened 2 days ago we will have to see what the prosecutor decides. But put yourself in the shoes of the victim’s family. A co worker lost her 21yr old son when he drove at double the posted speed (don’t know if he was drunk) in a place where you have a s-bend to the road going downhill, and straight into a tree. He was also a co-worker of ours. I get that people do dumb things but sometimes you’re forced to grow up. Looks like the prosecutor is waiting for the investigation to be complete but the whole thing could have been avoided. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt or in this case dies.

My older brother used to do some pretty crazy things at that age (55mph downhill on roller blades according to the people following him with the car and midnight cliff diving) but wised up after a couple seasons of ski patrol seeing all the dumb things people do because they feel they can’t get hurt or die doing it. The Mt. Baker ski resort had the area roped off with signs and people just ducked under the rope and kept on going (the day after a fatality)

66
But put yourself in the shoes of the victim's family

…except that the victim, in this case, was a willing co-conspirator who personally put himself in harm’s way by hanging his head out the top of a vehicle being driven wildly. It’s morally complicated, like when three drunk buddies come home from the bar, vote the “least drunk” guy the driver, and he wrecks and kills one of his passengers. Yes, he needs to be punished, but there needs to be an acknowledgement that the victim met his end at least partly as a consequence of his own actions.

I read the link, and found it awful funny that the judge “OR’d” a guy potentially looking at a homicide rap. Whether or not that is any indication of how this case is subsequently handled, I could not tell you…

67

The Passenger shouldn’t have had his head out of the sunroof, I agree. We’ll have to see how things proceed.

68
Two young kids just acting like young kids and now one is dead and the other likely up for homicide, his life to be destroyed by a felony conviction.

Hey @“The same mountainbike” - we have those idiots too here in NH. Although some are a little older.

Back in the early 90’s a brain-trust was killed when he fall out of the bed of a pickup on I-93 near exit 1. He was standing up taking a p*ss off the truck bed. Needless to say there was alcohol involved.

69

Some people thought at one time I will wager that putting a line down the middle and asking drivers to stay on one side or another was a slippery slope to socialism. As the speed of our cars increases in our state along with the complete lack of social etiquette exhibited by the deer who choose to share our roads, some one needs to be belted in. Deer, moose and other wildlife have steadfastly refused to adopt any form of restraint when using our roads, do not attend classes on their responsibilities, are uninsured and just will not follow that slippery slope to social conformity. As a result, they die at alarming rates at the hands of buckled in drivers who do conform and survive these crashes, get their cars fixed and live to drive another day.

70
"Waaaay back , before seat belt ''laws'', my dad was one to purchase and add seat belts to the cars that came without....front and back..due to the ''laws'' of...physics and vinyl seats."

My Dad was of a similar mind to your Dad, Ken.
In 1964, Chevron gas stations had a nationwide promotion involving the installation of seat belts at a very low cost. I think that the corporation was probably subsidizing the process at the local Chevron stations, simply because the cost was so low.

We didn’t have any Chevron stations anywhere in our NJ town, but there was one near my aunt & uncle’s home on NY’s Long Island. So, the next time that we visited the relatives, my father had a Chevron station install front seat belts in our '63 Plymouth.

My uncle (my father’s BIL) reacted in a predicable manner, due to his insecurities that were usually played-out with false bravado, and he asked my father, “What’s the matter, Bernie? Don’t you trust the way that you drive?”

My father replied, “No Murray, I don’t trust the way that you and most of the other people drive”.
That shut my uncle up very quickly, and we were able to have some additional safety protection–albeit only in the front seat–a few years before the feds required seat belts in new cars.

71

Mike, I remember that one.
God must love idiots. He made plenty to go around.

72

Whitey, you were on a roll until you included those who don’t believe on the climate change. That has been totally disproved. No change in temperature for over 15 years.

Y’all have no idea how humorous it is sitting here in rural Mexico, and reading the people living in the worst police state in the history of the world talking about a slippery slope because of seat belt laws.

Around 1962, the J.C’s in our town had a seat belt campaign. For a few dollars, they drilled holes in the floor of my car, and using very large washers under the car, installed seat belts. I cannot remember being without seat belts since then. This in part had to do with the way that I was driving in those years. I knew I was on a wing and a prayer when I hit the starter. But, here I am. My theory is God wanted to torture me some more…

Here in Mexico, loading a large number of people in the back of a pickup is rather common. I have been back there. Is it because the people here have no common sense?

No, it is a poor nation, and there simply aren’t enough cars to go around. It’s back of pickup or walk twenty miles so they climb in back. And, if the US were as poor, we’d be doing the same thing.

Some years ago, my Real Daughter came up with the idea of a family reunion in our new house. The other daughter and i were talking by phone, and I told her we needed to coordinate arrivals so I could make one trip to the airport for arrivals and one for departures around 4.5 hours from home.

We had had a reunion in Mexico City, and because of no coordination I made 8 trips to the airport, but that was a lot closer. If they did that out here, I would be on the road all day every day for over a week.

I told her your two babies will have to sit on laps in our mini-van. She said, haughtily, “My babies will be sitting in their car seats.” Which meant two men would have a long and harrowing trip in ‘cattle-truck’ buses with considerably more danger than in my car with an experienced driver.

I told her, “The trip is canceled.”

She said, “You are making that decision by yourself.”

I said, “Yes!” And, that was that.

Every nation has its own safety systems. Clearly, the richest nations have the safest (and most expensive) safety systems. So, if you don’t own enough vehicles in the US to give each child a safety seat, you don’t drive. Other nations simply don’t have the resources.

It is a matter of resources, not of caring for your kids.

73

@irlandes, let’s do everyone a favor and leave the politics of climate change out of this discussion. Having said that, this video does a really good job of explaining the science behind climate change without any of the political garbage. I think we can all agree Al Gore is a blowhard, so let’s leave him out of it.

If, after watching that video, you want to debate the science of climate change, please send me a private message. The same goes for all of you.

74

Oh yah, the climate’s going through changes alright …cycles…just like it has for millenia.
A natural occurance for this ol’ earth of ours.

We’re not causing it.
We can’t…’‘fix’’ it
We just get to sit back and watch…and adapt as humankind has never needed to before.
Yet look at the evidence of the drastic and massive changes the earth has gone through in the past !
Ice ages.
Water so deep it shows on the mesas here out west.
Water so scarce they could theoretically have built Atlantis on the ocean floor !

75

Seatbelts/climate change
@irlandes‌
I don’t believe that Whitey was making a one to one correspondence between peoples in each of these camps of disbelievers. What I do believe is that those who don’t believe in seat belts take a myopic view of the situation and devote all their energy to support their beliefs based on a few seemingly contradictory situations ( getting out of a car in water) or unrelated arguments (slippery slope). For those who don’t believe in climate change, they too take a limited view of temperature in the last ten years or cold in the last three in Oshkosh or where ever. There are valid reasons to wear a seatbelt supported by a variety of the most highly regarded sources and their opinions are available to everyone. There is valid reasoning supporting climate change available to everyone as supported by the most highly regarded sources and can be verified as well.

76

Great political talking, points, Ken. I’m sure convinced … NOT.

Like I said, if you’d like to debate the science instead of spewing political rhetoric, please watch the video above and send me a private message. Otherwise, all you’re doing is pushing to get this thread closed due to off-topic political rhetoric.

77

Looking at 15 years of temperature data is very misleading. There have been several times in the last 135 years that global temperatures have decreased over short terms like 10 to 15 years, yet temperatures continue to rise over the 135 years that data was recorded. What is surprising is that such a small amount of change, 1.5 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) has had such a strong effect on polar melting. The issue is not what is happening now, but what might happen in 50 to 100 years. If the Antarctic ice shelf continues to melt at today’s alarming rate, South Florida, New York City, and many other coastal areas will be under water. I can’t imagine how much it would cost to put up dikes to stem the flow of water. We won’t know whether we can stem the temperature rise until we try something. Most of us will be dead by the time any of the polar melt catastrophe could take place, but our grandchildren and great grandchildren will be alive. I would hate to leave them with this problem without at least tryingg to fix it.

78

I would say, even with draconian measures, we have a 1% chance of changing the course of the Earth’s climate, and a 100% chance of lowering the standard of living for our children and grandchildren.

79

I am skeptical of the climate change threat. My respect for Machiavelli’s insight into the successful ruling of a country leads me to question every demon thrown out to rally support by either political party. And it appears that the Democratic Party has seen that the environment is such a warm and cozy thing to support, making any who oppose that effort to be evil demons serves them well. And it may be necessary to exaggerate and fabricate truth to gain the political momentum to take on the real problems threatening the environment. Better to throw a few $trillion into protecting our air and water than to throw another several $trillion into destroying WMDs and building palaces and pipelines in the Mid East. The GOP sure did a good job of manufacturing demons there.

80

It is fine to be skeptical, but I cannot help but notice your skepticism is based on politics, not science.