Buckle up, yo

[prog]

A paramedic's view of why you should always wear a seatbelt, over on Making Light.

Sometime around now is the 10th anniversary of the time I destroyed my Chevy Nova in a nighttime head-on with a big pickup truck, up in Bangor. I walked away from it with a bruised liver, which healed within days. The bruise was from my seatbelt squeezing my ribs tight. If I hadn't received that bruise, I would probably be dead, or something like it. (The other driver was in an enormous vehicle and barely felt anything. He was very kind, though.)

I kind of shudder to think that I didn't make a habit of putting on seatbelts until college. Dopey as it seems, the gory lectures in the driver's ed course I took right before freshman year sold me on it. When I was growing up, only my brother Peter had a hard rule about everyone in his car being belted - probably because he was scared straight by the same sorts of lectures. My parents are old enough to have missed all that, and so I rarely buckled up through most of my childhood. Yeesh.

Comments

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

My folks were in a car accident when I was in kindergarten (a very serious one) and I've been a seat belt fanatic as long as I can remember. The first time I really realized that if I get out of the car and notice I'm not in the parking space just right, I will get back in, turn the ignition, put my seatbelt on, and move the car forward a foot or so... well, I was amused by myself, but I still do it.

[popecrunch.livejournal.com]

I just thought about that the other day actually. Ten years? Cripes.