Seat Belt Research Paper

Buckling Down on Safety: The Importance of Seat Belts Considering the high frequency at which car accidents occur, it’s a wonder that more people don’t deem seat belts to be the number one priority when riding or driving in a vehicle. It’s not uncommon to see drivers and passengers not wearing their seat belts, or even to see kids freely moving all around the backseat of a car. In fact, everyone is bound to know someone who doesn’t wear their seat belt. Drivers and passengers alike give many varying reasons for why they prefer not to wear a seat belt, but these are just excuses. No matter what their reasoning is, it doesn’t change the fact that a seat belt can and will save your life. In order to fully realize the how crucial it is to wear a seat belt, one must understand the constant danger that driving on the road presents, the reality that there is no excuse for failing to put on a seat belt, and how much your life depends on wearing a seat belt the correct way instead of doing what feels more comfortable to you at the time. An alarming number of car accidents occur every day, and the amount of deaths that occur as a result of those accidents is staggering. According to the Association for Safe International Road Travel, over 1.3 billion people die in car crashes every year, meaning that an average of 3,287 deaths occur every day because of car accidents. Another 20-50 million are injured (“Road Crash Statistics”). Simply looking at statistics on a piece of paper can sometimes have the effect of making one feel distant from what they’re reading, as if those 1.3 billion deaths have nothing to do with them and never will, but the reality is that any one of those deaths could be you, your family, your friends, your coworkers, and anyone else you care about. Learning about the importance of seat belt safety and encouraging those close to you to do the same could help prevent death and serious injury. Trying to convince others to wear their seat belts who usually don’t can often be challenging, because even though they’ve been told countless times that seat belts save lives, they always have an excuse of some sort that they use to convince themselves they’ll be fine without one. The reasons people give for not wearing a seat belt are almost always the same. One of the more common excuses is that many people think they’re a safe driver and there’s no way they could get into an accident, but the truth is, it doesn’t matter how safe and careful you are; you aren’t the only driver on the road. Just because you’re careful, it doesn’t mean everyone else is. Besides, even without other drivers, all it takes is one second of distraction for an accident to occur. It could be the driver’s fault, it could be the result of an animal running onto the street, or the result of a vehicle malfunction. Anyone, no matter how safe they consider themselves to be, can get into a crash. Another reason people sometimes don’t wear their seat belts is because they think they’re only going to be driving for a few minutes, so they believe the chances of getting into a crash during that short amount of time are very low. But once again, all it takes is one second for a crash to happen. It’s also easy to assume that …show more content…
For light-truck occupants, seat belts reduce the risk of fatal injury by 60 percent and moderate-to-critical injury by 65 percent. (“Traffic Safety”)
Seat belts help prevent or reduce a wide range of injuries, many of which are life-threatening. They prevent these injuries by keeping your body tight against the seat and absorbing the force of the impact that otherwise would have resulted in your body slamming against the interior of the vehicle. They are most effective in preventing ejection from the vehicle, and, according to the NHTSA, “ejection from the vehicle is one of the most injurious events that can happen to a person in a crash. In fatal crashes in 2006, 75 percent of passenger vehicle occupants who were totally ejected from the vehicle were