Published: June 03, 2009 08:21 am      

Seat belts save more than lives

The costs involved when people are not wearing a seat belt during a motor vehicle crash are huge. Let’s start with why it’s a law. When uninsured motorists are involved in serious accidents, the cost to taxpayers is staggering — in the hundreds of millions.

Other reasons are that it helps save motorists from serious injury and death, and also helps to prevent the number of times law enforcement must inform family members someone they love is dead, which takes a heavy toll on the officer as well as the family.

Wearing a seat belt won’t guarantee a person will live through an accident, but greatly improves the chances a motorist will avoid serious injury or death. And while seat belt usage during an accident can cause injury and death, it is extremely rare.

It’s a sad fact that some wrecks are so severe, seat belts do not help. But many times, emergency workers are left scratching their heads when a person dies in a relatively minor accident because the seat belt was not in use.

Some of the worst injuries during a vehicle accident occur when a seat belt goes unused. They are often listed in police reports as head, leg, arm, external and internal injuries, which sounds and can be minor, but can also be horrific and painful.

Emergency officials often see shattered ankles, knees and wrists. During accidents where seat belts are not used, people sometimes have a death grip on the steering wheel and when the body goes forward, their wrists are blown out, causing compound fractures (where the bone sticks out through the skin).

Knees and ankles can also shatter when the body slides forward, slamming into the floorboard and dashboard. These injuries require surgery and often the effects last a lifetime.

Another type of wreck where a lack of seat belt use leads to horrific injuries is the roll-over accident. People involved in this wreck often face total ejection or the dreaded partial-ejection.

The last two weeks, Ada police issued a large number of "failure to wear seat belt" citations to drivers as part of the "Click It or Tickit" campaign. These traffic stops were aimed at not only punishing non-seat belt wearing drivers, but to educate them as well.

Whether or not there should be a law forcing motorists to wear seat belts is debatable, but the reasons why people should wear them really aren’t.

— Randy Mitchell