DR. WALLACE: I'm 17, own a car and have my driver's license. I consider driving a special privilege and do my very best to obey all the traffic regulations. Our city has a traffic law that requires all occupants of a motor vehicle to wear seatbelts. I require all my passengers to "buckle up" when they are riding in my car. Everyone does except my dad. Dad had an uncle who was involved in an auto accident. A truck ran his uncle off the road and down the hill and his car flipped over and caught fire. He couldn't get his seatbelt unfastened and died of burns.
My dad is positive that because his uncle was buckled was the reason he died. Dad is convinced that being buckled has caused more deaths that has saved lives. I don't believe this to be true. I'd appreciate any reliable data on the subject. It's more for my own benefit then for my dad's because I know he is not going to change his mind. We have signs posted all over our city that read, "click it or ticket." I don't believe they would have put up these signs if this safety message was not important. — Safety First, via email
SAFETY: The US Department of Transportation reported that seatbelts have directly saved millions of lives over the past century. Please read the following letter from a former California police officer and make sure your dad also reads it as well. It confirms that wearing seatbelts can save a life.
DR. WALLACE: I was a police officer for almost 30 years and have investigated thousands of traffic collisions — many resulted in fatalities that seatbelts could have prevented.
Basic physics can provide your readers with all the reasons they need to wear a seatbelt. Consider for a moment then when your car is traveling at 60 mph, your body inside the car is also traveling 60 mph, or approximately 90 feet per second. When your vehicle comes to a sudden stop in the collision, your unseatbelted body continues in the direction it was traveling at 60 mph until it hits something to make it stop.
Usually in a head-on collision, your body hits the steering well and/or windshield at whatever speed you were traveling, causing massive, often fatal, head and chest injuries. Often, your legs are crushed under the dash. Add a bit of an angle to the collision, and you can be thrown free from the steering wheel and through the windshield.
In a driver's-side broadside collision, your body will become a projectile that could crush and kill your passenger. As a passenger in a vehicle, there is no steering wheel to keep you from flying out of the vehicle.
Wearing a seatbelt keeps your body from flying around inside your vehicle and greatly reduces your chance of injury or severity of your injuries. The idea behind airbags in vehicles is to add more protection for you when you're flying around the inside of your vehicle after a collision.
I am the first to admit that some people die in traffic collisions wearing seatbelts. But I have been to traffic collisions where are the only person killed in the car of four was the one he was not wearing a seatbelt. I've seen some horrific traffic collisions where the driver walked away without a scratch because of his or her use of a seatbelt.
You can be the safest driver in the world and be driving through an intersection on a green signal and get nailed by the person who is the worst driver in the world. How many times have you heard, "I was just driving along minding my own business when, bam!" We've all seen videotapes of pursuits where the suspect nails an unsuspecting, law-abiding vehicle. — Former police officer
Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. E-mail him at rwallace@thegreatestgift.com. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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