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It has been more than a hundred years since the first
patent for seat belts and upper torso constraints were
patented by a French automobile manufacturer. Since then
the seatbelt has undergone major changes and
improvements. Seatbelts have saved multiple lives and it
is just for this reason that it became mandatory to wear
seatbelts in 1972.
So what difference does the seatbelt really makes?
when you are in a crash and not buckled up,
two major impacts occur - you impact the
interior of the vehicle and then your internal organs
impact with
the other organs and your skeletal system once you've
stopped moving. You are also running the risk of a third
impact if you are not belted: being
thrown from the vehicle, increasing your likelihood of
sustaining serious injuries even further.
read more about what happens in a crash from the
Arizona DPS:
http://www.dps.state.az.us/agency/highwaypatrol/studenttransportation/safety/second.asp
Read more at:
"BOSTON — Kevin O'Connor, a spinal-cord
doctor who teaches people how to use wheelchairs and
control their bowels and bladder, has an unofficial
specialty: car-crash victims, the ones who don't
wear seat belts.
Before he came to Boston's Spaulding
Rehabilitation Hospital last year, O'Connor worked
in San Diego, where it was rare to see teens lying
in traction after flying out of their cars and
trucks. But now, he regularly treats people whose
lives changed forever when crashes stopped their
cars — and they kept going. ...."
the costs related to care to those that sustained
head-and spinal cord-injury patients who were
unbelted:
"Massachusetts pays nearly $40 million a year to
care for head- and spinal cord-injury patients who
were unbelted, according to a new study for the Air
Bag & Seat Belt Safety Campaign, funded by the auto
and insurance industries. That's
almost six times what Virginia, with 70% belt use,
pays."
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Material from the Arizona GOHS:
Tragic lesson. An anti-seat belt advocate died in
a motor vehicle crash...because he wasn't
buckled up. Derek Kieper, a 21-year-old senior
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, had submitted
an editorial to the Daily Nebraskan in September
entitled "Individual rights buckle under seat belt
laws." In the article he said "Uncle Sam is not here
to regulate every facet of life no matter what the
consequences." An article in the January 4, 2005
Lincoln Journal Star reported that Mr. Kieper not
only died in a car crash, but the tragic mishap that
claimed his life was the very type of accident in
which seat belts have proved so effective in saving
lives - preventing passengers from being ejected
from vehicles. The article noted that Kieper died
when the Ford Explorer he was a passenger in
traveled off an icy section of Interstate 80 and
rolled several times in a ditch. Kieper, who was
riding in the back seat of the Explorer, was ejected
from the vehicle. Two others in the vehicle,
including the driver and the front-seat passenger,
who were wearing safety belts, sustained non-life
threatening injuries. Derek was not wearing a seat
belt. Michelle Gavin, reporter.
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If you've heard that you shouldn't shouldn't wear a
seat belt because you might not be able to escape
from your vehicles in car fires?
Read this and think again:
http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/seatbelt.asp#acts
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You can also access recent reports
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