Essay
How to ensure rear passenger wearing seat belt
The good things about not wearing a seatbelt are that you can move around more and you can lie down. The bad thing about not wearing a seat belt is that you can die and hurt yourself. My goal is to get people to wear their seat belts but if you do keep up the good work. The reason you should wear a seat belt is that your family doesn’t want you to die, they want you to live and if you don’t wear your seat belt and you’re in an car accident that maybe the last time you see your family. Even if you go to the mall and you live two miles away you can die if you don’t have your seat belt on.
This is actually the situation you face when the front of your car hits something at only fifteen miles per hour. The car stops in the first tenth of a second, but you keep on going that same rate you were going until something stops you like the steering wheel, dashboard, or windshield if you’re not wearing a safety belt. If you don’t wear your seat belt it’s like running into a wall and you knocked yourself out. The forty thousand people could be you some day. The injuries that happen are very bad like broken bones, bruises, dislocation, and head and brain injuries.
What’s your reason for not wearing a seatbelt? Is it because you don’t care if you die because that’s what’s going to happen sometime if you don’t wear a seatbelt? Or don’t you know that it can kill you if you don’t wear your seatbelt? "I won’t be in an accident: I’m a good driver" Your good driving will help you avoid accidents but even if you’re a good driver a bad driver may still hit you. That would be an accident. "I’m only going to the shopping center." Actually, this is the best time to wear a safety belt, since eighty percent of traffic fatalities occur within twenty-five miles of home and under forty miles an hour. "I don’t need a seatbelt; I’ve got an air bag." Lucky you! An airbag increases the effectiveness of a safety belt by forty percent and if you want to die there’s your chance because it can kill you, because it pushes on your lungs and makes it hard to breathe if you’re a kid or if you’re an adult.
Reason for not wearing seatbelt
"I'm afraid the belt will trap me in the car." Statistically, the best place to be during an accident is in your car. If you're thrown out of the car, you're 25 times more likely to die. And if you need to get out of the car in a hurry - as in the extremely tiny percent of accidents involving fire or submergence - you can get out a lot faster if you haven't been knocked unconscious inside your car.
"They're uncomfortable." Actually, modern safety belts can be made so comfortable that you may wonder if they really work. Most of them give when you move - a device locks them in place only when the car stops suddenly. You can put a little bit of slack in most belts simply by pulling on the shoulder strap. Others come with comfort clips, which hold the belt in a slightly slackened position. If the belt won't fit around you, you can get a belt extender at most car dealerships.
For most people, buckling the seat belt when they get in a vehicle is automatic. One may even call it second nature, implying a life long habit. Occupant restraint systems such as seat belts have come a long way since their inception. Unfortunately, bad habits are hard to break and many operators and passengers have not yet developed valued skills essential to survival in the traffic jungle.
- In 1968, Federal law required manufacturers to install seat belts in passenger cars and light trucks. During those 30 years, seat belt usage has been enhanced and promoted through redesign, awareness campaigns, and enforcement. In addition to lap and shoulder harness, supplemental systems such as air bags, head restraints, collapsible steering, and recessed knobs were added to help minimize injuries.
- Child passenger safety week, recognized during the second week of February, and the National Buckle Up America Week, recognized the week before Memorial Day weekend, highlight awareness initiatives.
- As of December 1997, 49 states and the
- During a crash, the fabric or webbing of the belt stretches slightly, dissipates the energy, and extends the time that the deceleration forces are experienced by the occupant. This allows the occupant to “ride down” the crash. The lap belt holds the occupant in the vehicle while the shoulder harness provides restraint for the upper chest and shoulders. In newer vehicles, air bags supplement the seat belts by cushioning the front seat occupants. Experts have found it is usually the second collision that injures and kills people. When one car hits another car or object, this is the first collision. The second collision occurs when unbelted occupants are thrown into or around the car’s interior or thrown from the vehicle. If an occupant is seat belted, there is no second collision.
- The average observed seat belt use rate in states with primary enforcement laws was less than 80 percent, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. European industrial nations boast 85 percent usage rates. NHTSA data also show that in 1997, 32,213 occupants of passenger vehicles were killed in motor vehicle traffic crashes. If all passenger vehicle occupants wore safety belts, 20,351 lives could have been saved in 1997.
- Research has found that lap and shoulder safety belts, when used, reduce the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by 45 percent, and the risk of moderate-to-critical injury by 50 percent. For light truck occupants, safety belts reduce the risk of fatal injury by 60 percent and moderate-to-critical injury by 65 percent.
- Among passenger vehicle occupants, safety belts saved an estimated 10,750 lives and air bags an estimated 842 lives in 1997. As our streets and highways become more congested, we cannot afford to be complacent or unprotected.
Accidents will continue, that’s for certain, but securing our seat belts every time we operate our vehicles is the best insurance we have for surviving an accident.The perfect restraint system may be designed in the future. Until then, we must continue to improve on the use rate. We can make a significant difference.
Nationwide surveys show that the best seat belt use rate is 79 percent -- one-hundred percent seat-belt usage is an achievable goal. Failure to wear a seat belt contributes to more fatalities than any other single traffic safety-related behavior. 63% of people killed in accidents are not wearing seat belts. Wearing a seat belt use is still the single most effective thing we can do to save lives and reduce injuries on
Data suggests that education alone is not doing the job with young people, especially males ages 16 to 25 the age group least likely to buckle up. They simply do not believe they will be injured or killed. Yet they are the nation's highest-risk drivers, with more drunk driving, more speeding, and more crashes. Neither education nor fear of injury or death is strong enough to motivate this tough-to-reach group.
Rather, it takes stronger seat belt laws and high visibility enforcement campaigns to get them to buckle up.Seat belts are the most effective safety devices in vehicles today, estimated to save 9,500 lives each year. Yet only 68 percent of the motor vehicle occupants are buckled. In 1996, more than 60 percent of the occupants killed in fatal crashes were unrestrained.
If 90 percent of Americans buckle up, we will prevent more than 5,500 deaths and 132,000 injuries annually.The cost of unbuckled drivers and passengers goes beyond those killed and the loss to their families. We all pay for those who don't buckle up in higher taxes, higher health care and higher insurance costs.
On average, inpatient hospital care costs for an unbelted crash victim are 50 percent higher than those for a belted crash victim. Society bears 85 percent of those costs, not the individuals involved. Every American pays about $580 a year toward the cost of crashes. If everyone buckled up, this figure would drop significantly.
By reaching the goal of 90 percent seat belt use, and 25 percent reduction in child fatalities, we will save $8.8 billion annually. With no seatbelt to stop the driver with the car, the driver flies free until stopped suddenly by impact on the steering column, windshield, etc. The stopping distance is estimated to be about one fifth of that with a seatbelt, causing the average impact force to be about five times as great. The work done to stop the driver is equal to the average impact force on the driver times the distance traveled in stopping. A crash which stops the car and driver must take away all its kinetic energy, and the work-energy principle then dictates that a shorter stopping distance increases the impact force.
While seatbelts do occasionally contribute to serious injury or death, nearly all safety experts agree that buckling up dramatically increases your chances of surviving an accident. According to the NHTSA, seatbelts reduce the risk of death for a front seat car occupant by about 50 percent.
For the conclusion, by Using a rear seat belt can reduce the risk of death by up to 50 per cent, according to a recent study conducted by the Malaysian Institute of Road Safety Research (Miros).
Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Seri Lajim Ukin said the study entitled "An Assessment of Rear Seat Belt Availability and Accessibility" also showed that using a rear seat belt could reduce serious injuries.
The compulsory rear seat belt ruling, which will be enforced on Jan 1, will not burden motorists as the study shows that 90 per cent of cars on the road are already fitted with them, he said when responding to a question from Senator Datuk Wang Siong Hwee in the Dewan Negara today.Wang wanted to know the number of casualties among passengers not wearing rear seat belts and help for those who could not afford to fix them.
Lajim said the government had sought the cooperation of car companies to fix rear seat belts for free.According to the Miros study, of 6,282 road casualties last year, 350 were back seat passengers not wearing seat belts, he said, adding that 175 of them could have survived had they worn seat belts.
To a question from Senator Heng Seai Kei whether cars manufactured before 1995 would be exempted from the ruling, Lajim said the cars might no longer be on the road, otherwise they would have been banned by the Road Transport Department or the Computerised Vehicle Inspection System Centre (Puspakom).
On average, inpatient hospital care costs for an unbelted crash victim are 50 percent higher than those for a belted crash victim. Society bears 85 percent of those costs, not the individuals involved. Every American pays about $580 a year toward the cost of crashes. If everyone buckled up, this figure would drop significantly.
By reaching the goal of 90 percent seat belt use, and 25 percent reduction in child fatalities, we will save $8.8 billion annually. With no seatbelt to stop the driver with the car, the driver flies free until stopped suddenly by impact on the steering column, windshield, etc. The stopping distance is estimated to be about one fifth of that with a seatbelt, causing the average impact force to be about five times as great. The work done to stop the driver is equal to the average impact force on the driver times the distance traveled in stopping. A crash which stops the car and driver must take away all its kinetic energy, and the work-energy principle then dictates that a shorter stopping distance increases the impact force.
References
http://www.car-accidents.com/pages/seat_belts.html
http://www.jmu.edu/safetyplan/vehicle/generaldriver/safetybelt.shtml
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/847948/posts
http://www.faqs.org/qa/qa-16275.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,265741,00.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,356665,00.html
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