This is a great video of a cabbie having a crash, filmed using his in-cab camera. The silly bastard has nodded off and stacked it, and ended up being flung into the backseat due to the lack of seatbelt.
I know that libertarians (not librarians) hate them, but I am a big fan of seatbelts. If I am moving the car from the driveway to the front lawn to wash it, I'll strap myself in. I'm a fan because my family has had plenty of experience with using them. My sister has written off two cars by rolling them over. My brother also wrote off a car on the Nullarbor by rolling it. Dad wrote off a brand new Merc by running it off the road into the trees at 110 km/h, where it then caught fire and burned to a crisp. Mum nearly put four grannies in the grave by pulling out from an intersection and getting cleaned up by the grannies smashing into her at a rate of knots from the right. That is the first prang I remember - I was about 9 at the time and in the front seat. My personal tally is to have been hit by two drunk drivers, been collected by a driver who ignored a stop sign, one roo and a slide off a corner whilst driving too fast in the wet.
I think all up my family has been involved in at least 20 crashes. I am sure my sister had quite a few that she didn't tell mum and dad about. I lent her my car when I went to Europe for a year, and on my return, the only undented panel was the roof.
The worst injury that I have recieved from all that was a sprained little finger. Dad had a few days in hospital after his crash as he whacked his head into the windscreen when the car went into the trees. He had a lovely black bruise, but that was about it. My sister cried when the grannies hit us, but she was 6 at the time and it was a hell of a shock.
The one thing that all those prangs have taught me is that a crash is something that can happen no matter how careful you are. How do you avoid the drunk that runs up your arse when you are stopped at a corner? Bad things happen to good people and careful drivers. Smart people wear a seatbelt. Me? I strap myself in, drive for about 30 seconds and then give the belt another yank to make sure it is really firmly fastened. If I had it my way, we wouldn't have 3 point seat belts - we'd have four point harnesses like race cars as standard fittings.
The worst injury that I have had in a car is a big bruise on my thigh that resulted from some circle work in a paddock. I was in the passenger seat and we were drinking beer and going around and around in the mud when the ute stopped going sideways and tilted over about 45 degrees. I am amazed it did not roll. I had no belt on, and I was flung across the front seat into the "three on the tree" gear stick. Hence the bruise. After that, all circle work was done with a seat belt.
Bike helmets are another bugbear of mine. I have had two cracking stacks whilst cycling into work in the last 12 months. The first was when I was crossing some tram lines in the wet, and the front wheel went straight out from under me. Just like that. One second I am cycling, the next I am lying on the road bleeding. The second was when I hit a bit of packing foam, and the same thing happened, except that time, my helmet whacked into the concrete with a bit of a bang. Better that the helmet does it than my scone. I had a close call tonight when I went around a corner and nearly piled into an idiot cycling the other way on the wrong side of the bike path.
If you don't want to wear a helmet or a belt, go right ahead. Just don't expect an insurance payout or compo to pay for your wheelchair and nurse. It was simpler before modern medicine - people just died. People who don't want to wear a seatbelt should just have "Do not rescusitate" inked onto their chest.
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