Is that good news or is it just more government infringement on our right to be reckless?

@MostlyHarmless: You are only allowed to be reckless if you promise to never get in a car crash involving another vehicle. I don't care if it's not your fault. Your not wearing a seatbelt has the potential to seriously effect other people.

@teh: I'm struggling to see how me not wearing my seatbelt affects anyone but me.

@teh:

??? Not sure how, although I haven't studies the stats of bodies going through windows and hitting other people. Perhaps they're higher than I imagine they are.

My problem with it is...so the law says we must wear our seatbelt. Was this law put into place to protect us from ourselves? Or was it put in place to help lower payouts for insurance companies? I don't recall getting an insurance discount when the law went into effect, but they sure as hell reap higher profits because of it. Why would the government care one way or the other if we are reckless? Wouldn't they ban dirtbikes, hunting, bungee jumping, etc, if this was the fact? Lobbyists at work.

It's a matter of losing control after you collide with something. It's tough to steer a car when you're flying around the passenger compartment.

@teh: Actually, it is still possible to fatally injure fellow (seat belt wearing) passengers in the same car by slingshotting around the car when it rolls off the shoulder and hits a tree. All it takes is one "rebel" to not clip the damn thing.

@teh:

How does your not wearing a seatbelt yourself seriously effect other people? You will be the one killed. I don't think NOT wearing a seatbelt yourself has resulted in anyone being killed. Has there been an instance where someone without a seatbelt flew through a windshield and killed someone outside the car? Now, there is also the argument that it effects everyone because when a person is a vegetable their healthcare will be covered by taxing everyone else. That is a better argument and one I can't glibly refute.

@shepd:

Just a guess, but I could see how a minor accident could throw the driver away from his seat and the car could keep moving, possibly into oncoming traffic or a sidewalk, while a seatbelt would keep driver in front of the wheel and brakes, and he could then stop the car.

I have worn my seatbelts without fail since the late 60's. I attribute it to what I swear was a Bill Cosby routine on why he always did, and the logic is infallible (with apologies to our public servants).

1) Ambulance workers, by definition, are human beings.
2) Human beings, by nature, are lazy.
3) In an accident, they will first look in the easiest place to look, strapped into the seat by a seat belt. If they have to look around the area to find a body, they may get bored and give up after a while.

So I always make it easy for them to find me. Heck, even when moving cars in my driveway I feel wrong not wearing my seatbelt.

@Nighthawk Foo:
Don't knock it until you try it!

@WaitingForTheNextRenFest: I feel weird not wearing a seatbelt too. Sometimes I get out of the car to see how my parking is, and when I get back in, I put on my seatbelt, even if it's just to back up and pull back into the space. You never know when someone isn't looking and plows their car into yours.

If anyone saw Thursday's premiere of "Fringe" - that's what can happen when you don't wear a seatbelt.

I attribute it fully to the fact that most modern vehicles beep, chime or buzz if you don't fasten your seatbelt before exceeding a certain speed, which quickly gets effin annoying.

@Nighthawk Foo: You mean I shouldn't wear my jetpack in the car?

Looks like the alcohol budget for police deparments' Christmas parties is going to be smaller again this year.

@wrjohnston19283: This, and if you've got your hands on the wheel, and you're involved in a collision...your hands are still on the wheel. If your body goes one direction, your hands might jerk the wheel as you move away from the seat. That itself would pose a lot of danger for other cars, like you said, that may be in the oncoming lane, or a sidewalk.

@Saboth: Companies pass cost onto consumers and keep savings for themselves. It's like that everywhere.

@Al Swearengen: Front seat passengers are frequently killed by rear-seat passengers crushing them.

@Saboth: It's not just private companies that have to cover the cost, though, it's the government as well, since Medicare and Medicaid often have to deal with the injured survivors, and of course Social Security for dependents of the deceased.

@xkevin108x: Mine doesn't. I think it just displays a light on my dash. Very annoying, but I don't think there's a chime.

@rpm773:

The police get money from ticketing people for not wearing seatbelts. The police buy booze for christmas parties. The police officers drive drunk home from the christmas parties. Circle of life, that's what that is.

@Skipweasel:

I don't think it's fair to worry about other people in the same car being hurt by those not wearing their seatbelts in the same car. People have a choice to ride/not ride with these people, and can make that choice easily.

Now, others on the road, they didn't choose for you to wear/not wear a seatbelt, so if somehow not wearing them hurts them, and it does it often, then it's a good argument.

The point about not being able to drive if you don't wear the belt might be sensible. I don't know, though, if you CAN still drive once you are impacted to the point that the seatbelt becomes life-saving...

@pecan 3.14159265: Except that they made a note that the seatbelt was buckled when they found the (initially empty) car. She also was shown wearing the seatbelt in the "near miss" scene.

I wonder if she went through the window because Walter unbuckled it later?

@xkevin108x: I have a friend with a car like this, and her response was just to turn the music up REALLY loud.

@Nighthawk Foo: Where are the three-point harnesses?

How exactly does increased seat-belt use in the past year save an "estimated" number of lives in the future? 280 lives over the next millennium is certainly not worth the bother; creating 280 zombies conjectured to be alive per year is even more troubling.

To the INSURANCE INDUSTRY: Where is our reduction in rates for for enacting mandatory and primary offense seat belt laws????

Huh? Where is it? Never have gotten a refund or reduction though these laws saved your industry billions...

@econobiker: How would you know if you got a reduction or not? It's not as if they are sharing their actuarial equations with you...

I always feel conflicted when I see threads on Teh Interwebs about seat-belt usage. On one hand, seat belts are a safety feature. They keep you in the car, in your seat, and with pretensioners, possibly further away from the airbags.

On the other hand, why should we keep people from hurting themselves?

Can you think of a good safety reason not to wear a seatbelt? If so, what is it? Are there really good statistics showing that seatbelts really do save lives? If so, what are they?

@shepd: You don't think it's fair to worry about people dying for the want of something as simple as putting on a seatbelt? Sure, if wearing seatbelts had more than a tiny downside (so small it's hard to measure, so I heard last time I read about it) then perhaps you might have a point, but just 'cos it's "not fair"?
I think we'll just have to agree to differ.

@Skipweasel:

I don't think it's fair to worry about people dying due to their personal choices if they are of sane mind, no.

Riding in a car with people who don't wear seatbelt is a choice, and not wearing it yourself is a choice. Hence, no, I don't worry about it, unless we have someone who isn't capable of making choices in the car with them (children, mentally handicapped, or insane).

I could care less about the law saying I have to wear a seat belt.
After going through EMT training and seeing a particular image of a person who had gone through the windshield [they are glass with plexi-glass sandwiched between or something I thought they said] the persons FACE was peeled off, leaving a scary skeleton head.
That in and of itself wouldn't have been too much to scare me but when the oral maxillofacial surgeon giving the lecture told us that person LIVED I decided I would always wear the seat belt.
Appeal to peoples vanity or fear of pain and you win.

@Yoko Broke Up The Beatles: And crash into a pedestrian, with one PO trying to cover up for the other.

(Happened in my neighborhood - wasn't deemed alcohol related, but seems like a logical progression nevertheless)

@xkevin108x: Read the owners manual, there's a way to shut it off. The automakers are not about to risk someone going postal on them because the sensor in the buckle lock broke.

Mind you, the instructions just might do that anyway. They tend to be along the lines of "turn on the car but do not start, engage the parking brake, shift into neutral, flip the high-beams on and off six times, put the car in park, signal left, signal right, turn on the passenger lights, and hit the brakes, the dashboard will play 'Ride of the Valkyries' to indicate successful deactivation."

Everything is a trade-off. Seat belts can save you or kill you. I once had a friend get side-struck. The doctor told him that he only lived because he wasn't wearing a seat belt that day. I used to work for an auto maker. I once found a report that had been left where it shouldn't have been. The report was about decapitation statistics as related to shoulder straps.

The government is removing individual judgment from the equation and forcing everyone to go with the government-computed odds.

@Shadowman615: Oh lord, I was trying to avoid spoilers for other people, but oh well.

We did see a shot of her going through the window of the WTC tower, so I thought her shooting through the car window was her being propelled from the WTC tower universe back to her own.

The part of this that disturbs me is people who argue for seatbelt laws because of the burden not wearing them may place on public services. I support government-run health care, but by the precedent of seatbelt laws, the government could then put regulations on how much junk food people eat, to keep them from becoming overweight and requiring more medical attention than others. The government's sole purpose should be to protect people from others while respecting their individual (and consentual) choices without discrimination. So if it can't be reasonably proven that not wearing a seatbelt can directly hurt others, it shouldn't be a legal requirement.

@shepd: Yebbut I wouldn't consider someone who doesn't wear a seatbelt to be fully sane.

@Skipweasel:

Fair enough. :)

@willdude:

Yup. And, don't worry, governments that do have "free" healthcare have other ways of evening the playing field. eg: Smokes in Canada are highly taxes. Part of the tax money is specifically earmarked for hospitals. Which seems like a fair compromise, to me. Although I don't see extra medical taxes on other dangerous activities (I'm looking at you, cars/motorcycles).

@MostlyHarmless: To tie it into other current issues: Your right to be reckless extends to the point where others don't have to pay for your medical bills when you get nailed.