My girlfriend and I walked away from this accident. We were both wearing seatbelts.
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.
Their last big hit was the wall.
BWAHAHAHA!
I have to agree with you. That video was more comic than anything else. Wearing a seatbelt wasn't going to save that bozo from crashing his car like that. He was falling asleep at the wheel! What a doofus!
This post is bound to generate dozens of "but I don't want the government to blah blah blah." Well, I'd like to extend a big thank you to all the idiots killed and maimed in car accidents when they weren't wearing a seatbelt. Would you like to pay my auto insurance for me?
His facial expression when he realized he was about to go splat was a Kodak moment, though...
My auto insurance isn't free. No such thing. The fact is, everyone who has to insure an automobile pays for the stupidity of those who won't wear seatbelts.
Maybe the way to deal with this is for insurance companies to insert clauses that say if it is proven that the victim was not wearing a seatbelt, they don't have to pay up.
I'm with you. But I think it's funny that there are people who think that not using one is a positive good, simply because others want to force it on them. I think they're confusing the issue.
I used to work at a printing company, alongside a busybody proofreader who would actually go back into the press area and tell the pressman to not forget to turn off the presses at the end of the day. They got so pissed off at her for "telling" them to do something so obvious that on a number of occasions they actually left the damned things on.
Ohhhhh, that's a good one. There just aren't enough Pink Floyd jokes these days.
Some people need to wear a seatbelt while posting... :)
I never did find my shoes.
Had we not been exceeding the safe speed limit for the vehicle in which we were riding, we likely would not have been wrecked when we hit the crosswind from the off-shore breeze.
Life is one big risk; nothing eliminates that.
The state of Minnesota has a law that reduces all civil damages by 50% in cases where the plaintiff was involved in a car accident while not wearing a seatbelt.
My girlfriend and I walked away from this accident. We were both wearing seatbelts.
I think I'll be wearing mine 100% from now on!
Good point. I'm willing to forego seatbelt laws as long as there's a law making the driver or passenger totally responsible financially for the injuries incurred, with exceptions in the event of it being another driver's fault. Same goes for motorcycle helmets. Don't act recklessly then expect me to pay for it through higher health care and insurance prices.
Seat belts are a good thing - like motorcycle helmets.
If they're so good,
why aren't they manditory on motorcycles?
?*^D
Running your mouth often qualifies depending on the venue.
Excellent article. Ignore those who think our unalienable rights as mentioned in the DOI include "an early death, slavery to vice, and the pursuit of unneeded suffering." Some people are so mean they would never spit if they ever thought it would do someone some good.
People who don't know how to drive should be driven off the highways.
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