Seat Belt Safety

To Whom It May Concern,

Safety is an issue that is important to everyone. I believe car safety is so essential. My parents have always stressed the point that a seatbelt can save my life if something were to happen while riding in or driving in a car. I have extended family members who were killed because a seatbelt was not worn while driving.

My mom taught me to drive. Driving laws are another reason that she always made me wear a seatbelt. She said that, “Whether I fully agree with this law or I don’t, it is the law and we are going to do it.” There were many times when my siblings and I were growing up that we cried so hard to get out of our car seats to play, especially when we went on vacation or for a long drive. My mom just let us cry because she never gave in to our whining about wanting to move around in the van. I understood why, as I got older and studied about car accidents in Health my mom just ignored our cries and questions about WHY NOT. So many deaths were caused by someone being thrown from their vehicle during a wreck because they did not have a seatbelt on. Even worse, a child was killed in an accident because their parent let them get out of their car seat so that they would stop crying.

I remember a lady at my church, Ruth, one of my mom’s friends, told about how that she was traveling from here to Kansas City, Missouri, one night. She and her husband were taking her grandbaby back to her daughter. Her husband was driving. I am not sure of the reason, but they had an accident. The lady, Ruth, had her seatbelt on but was illegally holding her grandbaby inside the car seat in her lap. The car crashed killing the grandbaby but leaving Ruth and her husband unhurt. She almost never got over this incident. It was even hard for me to forget and it wasn’t even my family.

I know that there have been incidents where a seatbelt was worn and held a person in place only to have them crushed in a car accident. But most of the time a seatbelt will save your life if ever in an accident. In fact, in 2017, there was an estimation that I read on a google search that said that an estimated 14,955 lives were saved by seatbelt usage. This is a huge number! The article talked about the fact that probably 2,000 more could have been saved if seatbelts had been worn in the vehicles that were in the accidents.

I heard my pastor, John, talk about the fact that it should never be law for us to have to wear seat belts in our own vehicles. He used the excuse that school buses do not have to have them, and they have accidents, too. I don’t agree with this because even though the buses are not required to have seat belts this is no excuse for a vehicle to not have this law. If even one life can be saved it is worth having the law. So, I completely agree that seat belt safety is a very real thing and we should honor it.