Posted on 06/08/2004 4:43:00 PM PDT by ExGeeEye
Evening all…
I just found out that someone was killed two weeks ago in a car wreck in California.
His name was Corey; he was 28 years old; he wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was thrown from the vehicle.
In 1979 my family moved into the house my mother still owns. Among the neighbors, across lots (one walked through our backyard and theirs to get to their back door) are an elderly couple who have lived there all their lives, raised their children there, and frequently baby-sat two of their grandchildren. We befriended this couple and, by extension, their grandkids, who were 7 and 3, a girl and a boy. The boy was Corey.
Over the next several years I occasionally sub-babysat Corey, enduring Scooby Doo and The Dukes of Hazzard when I couldn’t get him out of the house, and taking him along on my treks to the post office when I went to get the mail.
I saw him once more after I left home in 1985; I came back on leave from Fort Bragg in 1989, and wanted to take my dad out in my new car; Corey was at his grandparents’, and we picked him up and took him along. He was 13 then.
I never saw him again, though my mother did.
In spite of having seen him in ’89, the first thought I have when I think of him comes from a photo I took in the summer of 1983, just after I graduated high school; a sturdy little fellow of 7, standing in his grandparents’ yard, a doghouse and some country woods in the background.
To all and sundry: Wear Your Damned Seat Belts!
I’m thinking of scripting a PSA in support of Michigan’s "Click it or Ticket" campaign. The tagline would be "If you get a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt, be glad it’s the worst you got. You could die, and that would hurt more people you can readily count." Or words to that effect.
I can't think of anything else useful to say, so I end this post. I hope it does some good.
Im still pissed when the nanny state made K-mart stop selling those cute little turtles.....salmonella you know..hysteria!!!
Well, they certainly need to make sure you're not serving oversize portions.
Pig out, and get penned in.
"I'll second that. I'm a near shut in due to a mixture of alcohol, an automobile, and the lack of a seat belt. There isn't much I wouldn't give to regain what I've lost."
I'm sorry for your situation, and I agree with your 'second'. Two 17-year olds lost their lives recently...lived in a small town not far from Amarillo. Beautiful couple: she had been a cheerleader, he was a football player. She was driving, fell asleep, and apparently drove off the road trying to overcorrect the car. Of course, no seat belts. Both were thrown out and she died instantly; he died a short time later. Two families (actually the entire small town) heartbroken.
Local man killed in Bypass crash
By CHANTAL ESCOTO
The Leaf-Chronicle
A 41-year-old Clarksville man was killed in a single-vehicle crash on the U.S. 41A Bypass Monday, and his 22-year-old passenger walked away with hardly a scratch.
Officer Ken Moore, with the Clarksville Police Department's Fatal Accident Crash Team, said Jonathan K. Bateman of Arbor Street was not wearing his seat belt and was partly ejected from the 1995 Chevrolet Cavalier he was driving. He was pronounced dead at Gateway Medical Center.
The passenger, Desiree M. Bankhead of South Lancaster Street, who was wearing a seat belt, was riding to work with Bateman, Moore said.
The accident happened at 1:25 p.m. when Bateman, who was traveling north on the Bypass toward Madison Street, veered the car to the right shoulder where it hit a drainage culvert twice at the Pet Palace parking lot entrance. The Cavalier went airborne, hit the ditch, landing on the driver-side front end, and overturned. No other cars were involved.
A motorist told investigators Bateman had passed him and appeared to have overcorrected. But Bankhead said Bateman just drifted off the roadway for an unknown reason, Moore said. The officer said Bateman's fate might have been different had he been restrained
. "I've been in police work for 15 years and working fatal accidents for the last eight years, and I've seen wrecks a lot worse than this with people who just walk away without an injury (like Bankhead)," Moore said. "I'm a very firm believer in seat belts."
The accident is still under investigation, but Moore said it does not appear alcohol, drugs or speed were contributing factors
Puleeeeeeze
Do not post this kinda stuff if you are not wearing your Safety Orange Nanny Cop vest
Don't feel sorry for me. I did it to myself.
"If it saves ONE LIFE, it's WORTH IT!"
Actually, I know you're kidding, but it's funny you put it that way.
A friend of mine, when we'd both just turned 17, was in a car accident. He wasn't wearing his seat belt. He was launched through the windshield, landed many yards away -and wound up walking away with a bunch of scrapes and bruises. The car, however was so thoroughly totalled that the police themselves said if he -had- been strapped in, he would've been pasty gruel.
By the "if it saves ONE LIFE" logic, I would say that people should take -off- their seat belts, cause I know for a -fact- that -not- wearing a seat belt saved someone's life.
And -that-, in my opinion, is why the government has no place in forcing people to wear them. If he had been wearing his belt because the law forced him to, his death would absolutely positively be on the government's head. On the other hand, if there was no law, and someone gets killed because they didn't wear their seat belt, it was through no fault other than their own.
Qwinn
And it's always in increments. The socialists are sure to take just an inch at a time, lest their true agenda be found out.
Case in point is the history of the Massachusetts seat belt law. The first seat belt law was enacted in the mid-1980s (by Mike Dukakis) only to be repealed by a grass-roots movement in 1986 during an election referendum. But that didn't stop the socialists. They bided their time and then started lobbying for a reinstatement of the seat belt law. They eventually got their wish, the hell with the voters. What do they know? Socialists always know what's best for the "little man."
Of course, the seat-belt law was initially sold on the idea that it would be used as a pretense to stop and search your vehicle. That is to say, you initially could not be pulled over primarily because a police officer saw you without a seat belt. You could only get cited as a "secondary offense." That is, if you were pulled over for speeding or running a red light, then a police officer could cite you. But not as a primary offense.
But of course, that eventually changed. As I said, our freedoms are being taken away incrementally. Now Massachusetts has not only "seat-belt roadblocks" in which police officers stop your car and shine a flashlight in at you, but now you have those obnoxious "click it or ticket" messages on the state's highways.
Give the socialists an inch and they will eventually have a mile and then want even more.
So that is what we now have in Massachusetts. You now have jack-booted state troopers stopping your car at 2AM and shining flashlights into your car to see if you got the damned seat belt on. And God help you if you don't, you'll be in for a l-o-n-g night.
I'm sure that makes the socialists rub their hands in glee.
I hate to say this, but I damn near peed my pants laughing at that moron.
Did he survive?
Seatbelts work! Wear them everyday. Suppose a child was tossed around like that grown man?
You're infringing on the right to be an unguided missile and hazard to one and all on the street. (BTW, that is SARCASM.)
Umm, the vehicle itself is a far greater (and FAR more common) "deadly missile"... are you going to post mournful requests until everyone bikes to work, too?
You know, falling branches can be deadly, too... no more trees, either....
and those darn dogs can jump on you at the top of some stairs... euthanize all of them, too.
Pools, tubs, and buckets of water. Unacceptable.
(Living your life in abject fear of every conceiveable danger, just because someone has incurred that sort of harm, is no way to live... I'm sorry for your loss, but please know that those of us who want to enjoy what little freedom remains in our lives aren't going to be quite so moved.)
I was a paramedic for many years and saw what happens both with and without seat belts. The no seat belt crowd should have to work an accident scene were a beautiful 16 year old, girl is first thrown through a windshield and then hit by oncoming traffic. It's not pretty and what makes it more tragic is that she could have walked away with a few cuts and scrapes if she had just worn her seat belt. No parent should have to endure this.
I propose making it mandatory that the "I ain't wearing my seatbelt no matter what" crowd be required to volunteer for duty as crash test dummies. Let 'em put their money where their mouth is...
Right now though I'm headed off to my local Giant Impersonal Store to see what they have in the way of condolence cards for three families.
Please keep up the debate. Maybe some good will come of all this. God bless you all, belted or not; you have my thoughts on it, for what little they're worth.
I am sorry about yor loss. I do wear my seatbelt, but will mention that if my father-in-law had been in a crash he had he would not be alive now.
What do Dale Earnhardt and Pink Floyd have in common?
Their last big hit was the wall.
I have no idea whether he survived or not.
I've heard that hanging a mirror at the table where you eat helps control overeating. It was a tip in a diet book.
I have no source to prove that it does or doesn't work.
Seat belts are a good thing - like motorcycle helmets. It should be a decision made by the individual and not by the government.
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