Eric said:
You know, there are times now where I won't buckle up, like if I just got out to do something and only have a block or so to go until I'm done driving. However, it feels kind of weird not to buckle up -- kind of like I forgot to put on pants or something. I guess that's a sign that I'm fully conditioned, huh?
Again, exactly the same here...for instance when I drive the one 'block' down to the gas station to pick up gas for the lawnmower or something. Or the less than a block to our training facility, if I need haul something that is (it's not like I drive a car there normally
but yeah, I am very conscious of it, and if it takes more than, say, 20-30 seconds of driving, most likely I'll strap it on even if in another 5 I'll be stopping already.
It just feels very naked & weird having no belt on.
There was this one occasion belts saved four lives...in my friend's dad's Saab 9000 once in the 90's, coming on to a (small) main road from a slippery crossroads...a dual-carriage truck trailer coming from the left, the car just skids onto the road in front of the speeding road train...hits the front fender, and the Saab proceeds to turn around its axis something like a dozen times, caught between the snow walls of the road and the side of the truck trailers, you know, kinda like a ball bearing between the truck and the roadside ice walls. The rotation and throwing around is so severe my buddy's hair is caught between the back hatch of the car as it closes and opens, ripping off a chunk of hair. Every head cushion of the seats is smashed to bits, and after the collision there is basically nothing left of the car, one tire with its brakes etc. is found a hundred yards away, the engine is ripped off and lying on the road, there is not a square inch of intact metal on the body, all windows blown to hell...but the actual mid section, the passenger compartment, is totally sound and everyone is sitting in their seatbelts, dazed but pretty much unharmed save some sore necks afterwards, a few glass scratches and some torn hair.
The truck driver didn't come out of the cab in what seemed 15 minutes and when he did, he had trouble standing up, very shaken, as he said he had expected to see nothing but bloody pulp in the wreckage.
What he would have, most likely, had we not had seatbelts. (And a pretty well made car to boot).
Yeah, I always wear my belt. Also, I never will drive a motorcycle or allow my sons to drive one - been in one accident and seen a cyclist rip clean in half in the middle like a banana split etc...but that's another story.
