Everyone get their Affluenza shots?

[Niiro]

Also not having a cutaway knife for that.

[archibaldcrane]

Really is amazing that auto fatalities are continuing to decline year after year despite the rising population.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/...icleInline.jpg

It's getting pretty hard to die in a wreck in a modern car if you have your seatbelt on.

[archibaldcrane]

Or put another way:

[hey]

I answered that already, don't be obtuse.

lol no you didn't.

[Ksandra]

I am not falling for that.

[Serra]

When did they make seatbelts mandatory?

Also, I had a realtor who had the same reason for not wearing a seatbelt -- she had an uncle who burned to death in a fire. Made it annoying as hell to ride around with her though, car wouldn't shut up >.>;

[archibaldcrane]

When did they make seatbelts mandatory?

In cars or wearing them?

[archibaldcrane]

the first seat belt law was a federal law which took effect on January 1, 1968 that required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts in all designated seating positions.

Each state determines their own laws about wearing seat belts, but they are required for children in every state, and for adults in all states except New Hampshire.

[Serra]

Sorry, wearing -- didn't even think of the alternative..

[hey]

I am not falling for that.

The closest thing i see is

You have to be shit retarded if you think they shouldn't have laws to try and prevent that as best they can.

Which is not an answer.

[RKenshin]

It's getting pretty hard to die in a wreck in a modern car if you have your seatbelt on.

challengeaccepted.jpg

[Moss]

You actually are a danger to others in your vehicle if you aren't wearing a seatbelt. If you're riding solo... I guess you are free to be ejected if that's really what you want.

[Xantavia]

the first seat belt law was a federal law which took effect on January 1, 1968 that required all vehicles (except buses) to be fitted with seat belts in all designated seating positions.

Each state determines their own laws about wearing seat belts, but they are required for children in every state, and for adults in all states except New Hampshire.

This has never made any sense to me. Shove kids 3 in a seat on a schoolbus, 2 in the half seat (only way to actually hit that max. capacity painted in the front), but then don't have any belts available. Always hearing crys of "protect the children" yet the schoolbuses they ride every day are going to kill them all if it rolls.

And to continue further with the derail, I don't know how people can drive without a belt. After buckling up for 22 years behind the wheel, it feels weird to even move the car 10 feet in the driveway if I don't have it on.

[Kryssan]

You actually are a danger to others in your vehicle if you aren't wearing a seatbelt. If you're riding solo... I guess you are free to be ejected if that's really what you want.

This. Go ask any EMT what happens. You don't need to see some scripted video if that's not your thing. Driving solo... well, you can still become a projectile outside of your vehicle which does pose a risk to others; at least that risk is smaller. This is a very light slope, if you indeed think it a slope. Slope would be outlawing all objects in the vehicle besides those required for operation of the vehicle and the proscribed transport passenger count ( in itself something I do not know of - does anyone know of a state law that requires maximum occupancy rules outside of public transports? ). I have yet to know of any state that forbids you to carry around dense, heavy objects in your car - or has even had a discussion on that topic - yet these are also capable of becoming missile hazards in an accident. How about explosive objects, ie. natural gas tanks for grills? Here we can start talking slope. The only requirements in these regards I know of involve commercial transport, and license requirements for vehicle weight.

On the point of operation of a vehicle with cell phones and / or drug influences, or sleeping - along with the above seatbelts discussion - this is really an insurance and NHSTA lobby point, and has been since the beginning; ie. we're talking about money. This is not really about the gov't safeguarding you to protect you, because they care, no matter how it is portrayed or emotionally attached / manipulated. My data is old ( 1988 ) given how long its been since I was an EMT, but:

Vehicle ( Car )
Occupant - Protection - Effectiveness in Preventing Fatality if All Wear a Belt
Driver - Lap / shoulder belt - 42 +/- 4%
Right Front - Lap / shoulder belt - 39 +/- 4%
Left Rear - Lap belt - 19 +/- 10%
Right Rear - Lap belt - 17 +/- 9%

Vehicle ( Motorcycle )
Driver - Helmet - 27 +/- 9%
Passenger - Helmet - 30 +/- 8%

If you don't like the laws, you just need to convince the lobbies they'll make more money / lose less money through a different system, and that adverse public opinions will not detrimentally effect revenue. Good luck with that.


On the tangent, school busses are death traps. I've never liked them. Forget the kids not wearing seatbelts - think about all the stuff around them. All those lovely bookbags. Lunchboxes. Some of them are quite heavy. Sometimes made of metal. Nicely filled. Such beautiful missiles.

[Callisto]

This has never made any sense to me. Shove kids 3 in a seat on a schoolbus, 2 in the half seat (only way to actually hit that max. capacity painted in the front), but then don't have any belts available. Always hearing crys of "protect the children" yet the schoolbuses they ride every day are going to kill them all if it rolls.

It's because people tend to drive more carefully when around schoolbuses. The rate of accidents that schoolbuses are involved in are massively lower than normal vehicles.

[Ksandra]

It's because people tend to drive more carefully when around schoolbuses. The rate of accidents that schoolbuses are involved in are massively lower than normal vehicles.

While a nice thought and probably statistically true, the real reason has more to do with funding. No one votes for better buses when it makes taking more taxes out of their pockets. People only give a shit about the kids when it's free.

[Niiro]

That aside, the prospect of getting a school bus full of children/adolescents (shit, any bus full of any people) to fasten their seatbelts and ensure that they stay that way is completely unfeasible.

[Ksandra]

That aside, the prospect of getting a school bus full of children/adolescents (shit, any bus full of any people) to fasten their seatbelts and ensure that they stay that way is completely unfeasible.

y/n Back in the day a lot of schools would hire a second adult to sit in the bus as like a monitor to keep the kids in line. But again, that is another paycheck, so now the bus driver has to do it, and ya in no way could a bus driver actually drive and be able to keep all the kids buckled.

[Serra]

Apart from the money argument (which I do agree, is why there aren't seatbelts in buses), couldn't they just set up sensors like cars have? If a seat has a weight in it but the seatbelt isn't buckled, a light is lit up for the driver. Could even have a display so he can see which seat it is. Enforcing it would be another matter, but still..

[RKenshin]

Wasn't there some reasonable analysis arguing kids were ultimately safer not buckled in a bus? Or at least that the difference was negligible.

Something having to do with how infrequent heavy buses are stopped short enough to eject kids (or the number of ejection injuries in a year) and how they're designed, vs the projected difficulty of safely evacuating 20-40 kids all strapped in seat belts in a timely manner for any sort of emergency. Ends up being a wash.

EDIT:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40820669/#.UriI8LRWopk

But larger buses — like the standard long yellow school bus that makes up about 80 percent of the nation's fleet and the school-chartered coach carrying the West Brook soccer team — weigh in much heavier, and their passengers sit much higher, making them safer in collisions. For those, federal education and transportation agencies leave the decision up to the states. And so far, only six require seat belts to be installed. (See box below. This paragraph was updated to reflect that school-chartered coaches fall under the same rules.)

If cars have seat belts, why aren't they generally required in school buses? Because modern school buses are already remarkably safe, and because seat belts don't work the same way in buses as they do cars, research shows.

Numerous federal and academic studies have concluded that school buses are the safest form of ground transportation of all, in fact. The National Safety Council says they're about 40 times safer than the family car.

About 440,000 public school buses carry 24 million children more than 4.3 billion miles a year, but only about six children die each year in bus accidents, according to annual statistics compiled the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. About 800 children, by contrast, die every year walking, biking or being driven to school in cars or other passenger vehicles, said Ron Medford, the agency's deputy director.

That's because designers of modern school buses don't trust squirmy children to use seat belts properly. Instead, they use a passive system called compartmentalization. Bus seats aren't packed so closely together just to maximize capacity (although that's one reason); they're spaced tightly and covered with 4-inch-thick foam to form a protective bubble.

In a crash, "the child will go against the seat, and that will absorb most of the impact," said John Hamilton, transportation director for the Jackson County, Fla., school board. "Plus, it's a safety device so that they won't be projecting through the air."

Cost and risks of seat belts
School and transportation officials cite two other main reasons for declining to install seat belts:

• Cost. Separate studies by the NHTSA and the University of Alabama(.pdf) concluded that installing seat belts would add anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000 to the cost of a new bus while having little to no impact on safety.

Seat belts would also take up room that's now used for seats, meaning "fewer children can be accommodated on each row," according to the Alabama study. That could require school systems to increase their bus fleets by as much as 15 percent just to transport the same number of pupils, it suggested.

"The cost of installing seat belts on every bus at once is prohibitive," said the authors of the Alabama study, the October release of which was highly anticipated by school officials nationwide because it is among the first large-scale analyses of the subject.

Seat belts would have to be phased in over a decade at a minimum cost of $117 million per state. That cost could be prohibitive, "especially when the nation is dealing with an economic downturn," the study said.

• Safety. Numerous safety agencies say seat belts aren't the best choice for children, which is why nearly all states require container-like full car seats for younger kids in passenger cars.

"Lap/shoulder belts can be misused and NHTSA's testing showed that serious neck injury and perhaps abdominal injury could result when lap/shoulder belts are misused," the NHTSA warnedin its study, adding that "increased capital costs, reduced seating capacities, and other unintended consequences associated with lap/shoulder belts could result in more children seeking alternative means of traveling to and from school."

"Even the smallest reduction in the number of bus riders could result in more children being killed or injured when using alternative forms of transportation," it said.

Choose your poison I suppose:
http://www.nea.org/home/19085.htm
http://www.nhtsa.gov/School-Buses
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/featu...bus-still-best

Ultimately, I'm sure there's plenty of argument and analysis in favor of both sides of the coin here... but seems like it's mostly a wash to me. ~1.3 deaths for every 1 billion miles driven (of ~4.3bill/year), is likely just about as good as it gets within reason.