Don’t forget the seat belt

Reports of people killed on Alabama highways have a familiar ring that sounds like this:

“Not using a seat belt.”

Our area’s reports come from Cpl. Jess Thornton of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency we more often think of as state troopers.

Here’s one from April: A one-car accident killed a 24-year-old Phenix City man when his 2000 Ford Explorer ran off Lee County Road 240 at 2:05 p.m. and overturned. The victim, “who was not using a seat belt,” was dead at the scene.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, almost one in five drivers never wear a seat belt.

Yet from 1975 to 2014, seat belts saved 330,507 lives, the agency estimates. If all passengers had worn a seat belt, 709,489 lives could have been saved, it says.

Seat belts won’t save you from every highway hazard. If you’re in a compact that a tractor-trailer hits head on, whether you’re wearing a seat belt likely won’t matter, much.

But if you run off the road into a ditch – and we have many opportunities for that, on our rural two-lane highways that cross multiple creeks – a seat belt can save your being hurled through the windshield or banged repeatedly against the roof as your automobile rolls into a ravine.

Thornton said one excuse he hears is that drivers just don’t think the government should be forcing them to wear such restraint, though taxpayers through the government pay for trauma centers, autopsies and accident investigators.

Other drivers don’t buckle up because they fear being trapped in a vehicle about to burst into flames. But if they’re unconscious from being banged against the car roof, they won’t escape anyway.

Thornton said from what he has seen, traffic fatalities might be cut in half if everyone wore a seat belt.

That would include backseat passengers, for whom seat belt laws are set by age.

Alabama requires anyone younger than 15 to be restrained, Thornton said.

Georgia requires anyone younger than 18 to wear a seat belt, said the AAA, adding:

“Seat belt use has been increasing nationwide (87 percent), but there remains a wide gap (9 percent) between front seat belt use and rear seat belt use. Rear seat passengers are three times more likely to die in a crash if they are unbuckled, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.”

Georgia ranks sixth in unrestrained passenger fatalities, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Every day in the news we see threats of death: diseases, disasters, terrorism. If you drive a car, the most likely threat is still a wreck, and the seat belt is the first safeguard, and maybe the most reliable, considering our recent airbag recalls.

You have to buckle up on a plane, and on a shuttle bus to the airport.

Why not do it anyway?

This story was originally published June 22, 2016 at 6:13 PM with the headline "Don’t forget the seat belt."