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Seat belts save lives: learn why it’s important to always buckle up.

Today I read that two children were killed and a third child was seriously injured in a Jefferson County, Kansas car crash about 10 miles north of Meriden. The accident occurred when the driver of their vehicle refused to yield to an on-coming SUV. The driver and her passengers were not wearing seat belts.Two children died. The driver and the surviving child were seriously hurt. The man driving the SUV was wearing a seat belt and sustained only minor injuries.

Every day I read stories of car crash death and serious car crash injury, including traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury, which could have been prevented had the victims been wearing a seat belt. Car crashes are the leading cause of death for American under 45. There are about 40,000 car crash fatalities every year. However, if every American wore a seat belt, this number could be reduced by half. Twenty thousand lives is a lot of people.

Why is a seat belt important? Twenty miles an hour is about the speed of a record-holding runner. Most of us don’t run nearly as fast. Imagine that you are running as fast as you can and suddenly an obstacle, maybe a brick wall, pops up two feet in front of you. Could you stop in time? Probably not. Ouch, right?

When you are in a car accident, the same thing happens. Your body continues travelling at the same speed it was going at before the impact. But, the car has stopped. It has become the wall in front of you and there is no way to stop your body. But stopping you is what seat belts do. They stop the collision of your body against the vehicle from happening and they transfer the impact of the crash to your hips and shoulders – the parts of your body that are stronger and better able to deal with the impact.

Many people worry that wearing a seat belt will keep them from being able to leave the vehicle in a collision. They say “It is better to be thrown out of a vehicle than to be trapped inside.” This is not true. Accident victims who are thrown out of a vehicle because they are not wearing seat belts are 25 times more likely to suffer serious injury and six times more likely to die than occupants who are wearing seat belts. Accident victims are even safer wearing a seatbelt in the .05 percent (half on one percent) of accidents that involve fire or submersion in water. Without a seat belt, the victim has a good chance of being knocked unconscious or being injured, so he cannot escape the vehicle on his own.

Seat belts really do save lives.

The Kansas City accident attorneys at Kansas City Accident Injury Attorneys represent victims of car crashes and truck accidents throughout Missouri and Kansas. To learn more about your rights to compensation after a Kansas City car crash, contact our legal team at 1-888-348-2616.

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