Posted on 05/15/2006 2:20:53 AM PDT by mathprof
Seat belt use is reaching record levels, so just who are the holdouts who fail to buckle up? Often they are young men who live in rural areas and drive pickups, the government says.
About 48 million people do not regularly put on seat belts when they are on the road, a figure the government's highway safety agency hopes to lower with an annual public education campaign ahead of the summer driving season.
The "Click It or Ticket" campaign involves checkpoints, patrols and advertisements to help enforce seat belt laws. It runs from May 22 through June 4.
The latest report on seat belt use by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says men account for 65 percent of the more than 31,000 people killed each year in passenger vehicles.
The report being released Monday found:
_58 percent of those killed who were not wearing a seat belt crashed along rural roads.
_in crashes involving pickup trucks, about seven in 10 people who died were unbelted.
_more than six in 10 people age 8-44 who were killed inside a passenger vehicle were not buckled up.
The agency said that lap and shoulder safety belts reduce the risk of death for those in the front seat of passenger cars by 45 percent and the risk of moderate-to-critical injuries by 50 percent.
The fatality risk for front-seat motorists in sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and vans who wear seat belts is reduced by 60 percent; moderate-to-critical injuries by 65 percent.
The public education campaign is using $31 million in state and federal grants for national and state ads that seek to attract young drivers who watch sporting events such as NASCAR and baseball.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
And, it was also a privilege back then to work with my friend Senator Frank Lautenberg to champion legislationMADD pushed hard for this, which was one of the reasons Candy Lightner quit the organization, declaring it to have been largely taken over by neo-Prohibitionists.encouragingblackmailing states to raise their drinking age to 21 thereby helping to eliminate drunk driving and blood borders between our states.
-Eric
Yep, I left MADD before Candi did they were losing sight of the original intent.
Blackmail is how the states were forced to "adopt" seat belt laws as well. SINator ELIZABETH DOLE made an unholy alliance with the auto industry and then screwed them.
According to the NHTSA, the average medical cost of collision related injuries is 55 percent higher for unbelted motorists.
85% of those collision related medical bills are paid for by someone else. Other people's taxes, or other people's insurance premiums.
So long as this is the case, it is a lesser infringement of rights to make you buckle up than it is to make me pay for it.
I'm pro seatbelts and can make that decision myself,thank you very much.I even had my husband install them in a car in 1961.
The thing that astonishes me is that here in Mass,where you have to be belted,the schoolbusses don't have them. It boggles the mind.
As long as I don't have to pay for someone's medical care via taxes or higher insurance I'm all for the law of the jungle when it comes to seatbelts.
Me, I wear mine because I prefer to be strapped into the car, I'd put a 4 point harness in if my seats would accomodate it, I don't like sliding around when driving fast.
No, it is a Saturn... it may as well be a ugo compared to my dead f250.
the wife's little plastic car.
if i hit a raccoon in it i am a goner.
To quote the great Walter E. Williams, "That is not a problem of liberty, that is a problem of socialism".
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