Fastening my seatbelt is so second nature now that I doubt I could drive with it unfastened.
I said “all the time” even though it’s more like 99% of the time. I’ve been known to drive to the corner gas station (~1000 feet) without my seatbelt. It’s just short enough of a drive that the car doesn’t start beeping at me before I get there.
Always, except when I plow my driveway. I often push on the floor with my left foot to lift myself off the seat to get a better view. A seatbelt would make that imposible. And anyway, I might go a blistering 4mph.
I’ve been known to fasten my seatbelt when moving my car from one side of the driveway to the other.
In ordinary cars: always, 100% without fail, absolutely.
Riding in taxis or shuttle vans or busses: 99% not. In most cases they don’t have belts. On the rare occasion they do, they’re busted or difficult to use or …
If/when belts get usable in these vehicles I’ll probably start wearing them. It’s certainly the statistically smart thing to do.
I wear my seat belt about 99% of the time. But sometimes, like this past Saturday, I get an urge to cruise to the supermarket Sixties-style: no seat belt, all windows down instead of using the A/C, Bobby Rydell on the car stereo. It’s just fun to go back in time like that every now and then.
Well … I am an almost a never… Well, never on a motor cycle.
But I am sure that someone on the SDMB thinks that they would be a good idea on motorcycles.
( Deleted, a long post as to my reasons, which you should thank me for doing. ) 
Life is about inches & seconds.
A lot of cabbies… :rolleyes: A couple times I even had the cabbie get pissy when I buckled up: “what, you don’t trust me?” “For starters, I don’t trust every other driver”. Both times, they were the kind of zigzagging asshole that gives cabbies worldwide a bad name.
Other times, the cabbie wasn’t buckled up but did it when they saw I was doing it.
100% wearing the belt, front seat or back.
Check the news on the recent death of John Nash and his wife. If they had been wearing seat belts, they might well have survived.
Back in 1956, before there were any seatbelts in her car, my mother lived through one of the occasional freak accidents with an opposite result: ejected harmlessly; would have been crushed if she’d stayed in her seat. Even she always wears her seat belt now.
My daughter did such a thorough job of brow-beating me about seatbelt use when she was in elementary school in the early 80s that I wear one 100% of the time. I recently absent-mindedly fastened my seatbelt when I sat down in my car in my garage to get something out of the console. I honestly don’t think I have put my car in gear without fastening my seatbelt since the 80s. I am sure I haven’t been a passenger in a moving without fastening my seatbelt since that time.
I said that yes I wear it always but sometimes I leave it off while I’m backing up and put it on before I pull forward. My garage is very tight and no mirror or backup camera shows the spacing on either side of the car adequately so I do a lot of shoulder checking and twisting until I’m free of the garage.
It’s so reflexive that even if I’m just getting into a car for a place to sit, and won’t be going anywhere for an hour, I still automatically put the seat belt on. Then I usually realize that that’s silly and take it back off, but the reflex is still there.
I always do. But if I hadn’t I would after what I saw driving outside Boston. A Caddy got clipped by another car, and flipped over a guard rail, about 15 feet high ( a stunt driver would have applauded) and landed on its roof. The driver was wearing his seatbelt. When we got to the car, he was upside down but otherwise fine.
More impressive than any movie.
One person posted in the poll that they never wear their seatbelt. I’d like to hear from that person. No recriminations, no lectures (at least not from me). Just curious…
Princess Diana probably would have survived the crash if she had been wearing her seatbelt (in the back seat).
Of course not.
I mean, you do always wear your airbag-jacket, right?
I always wear a seatbelt in my car, but it’s getting to be a PITA. The inertia lock is catching so much it sometimes takes me a literal minute to get it to pay out so I can buckle in. I got open the side panel or whatever it is once and WD-40’d around the assembly, but I have no idea what I’m doing. Gotta get that fixed soon.
I remember being a kid and vaguely remember my parents not always wearing seatbelts. Also lying in the very back of the Station Wagon and rolling about every time the car came to a stop. God, I loved that, but it was dangerous as hell!
I got in the habit when I was in the military. We were told that if we were injured in an accident and weren’t wearing a seatbelt we’d have to pay our own medical costs and/or face court martial or an Article 15 punishment for disobeying orders–dunno if that was a local rule for my base, an Air Force wide rule, or pure bullshit dreamed up by my superiors, but I’ve buckled up ever since.
Always, 100%, no matter which seat I am in. My parents made us wear them in the 70s before most people caught on to them being a good thing and years and years before they were required. The car did not move until everyone had their seatbelt on. No exceptions, ever.
I answered “always” because that’s pretty close. In reality, I’ll make sure that I have it on before I get to any main streets. So I might not have it on when I’m still in a big parking lot, or on my little residential feeder street that is only one lane wide anyway. I realize the parking lot is probably private, but my residential street is definitely public.
Besides the laws about these things, there are statistics showing that people are more likely to be injured on short trips simply because there are so many short trips for most people.