I’m with Bippy, don’t get in the car with him if he doesn’t put it on when he is driving, and don’t start the car until he is clicked if you are driving. Tell him you don’t want to be with him and see the steering wheel column pucturing his chest, you’d rather have the bleeding stopped and gashes covered up when you ID his body at the morgue.
Not wearing seat belts is stupid.
But enough pestering and nagging. You’ve told him how you feel. I’m sure he knows that it’s required by law to wear seat belts.
He’s 50 years old for goodness sake. You’ve made your case, now let it be.
My mother-in-law often doesn’t wear her seat belt. I believe she simply forgets. My wife is frequently on her case about it, and MIL usually does buckle up when prodded. When she drives alone, though, there’s little we can do. And sometimes, she can be rather cavalier about it:
Last November the passenger seat belt in my wife’s Civic failed: it would latch, but a light tug was often enough to yank the thing right out. It took us over a month to get it taken care of, but our interim solution was to forbid anyone to ride in that seat.
During this month or so came Thanksgiving, and our planned hour-long drive to see relatives with my wife’s parents. The Civic would definitely have been preferable to my in-laws’ un-air-conditioned beater, but my wife and I were adamant that we couldn’t take the Civic because it could only (safely) hold three of us. My daily driver is a regular-cab pickup, so that wouldn’t have worked, either.
We were both a amazed/disturbed, frankly, by how hard her mother tried to change our minds on this. She said that she’d sit in that seat. My wife said, “No.” She offered to sign a release absolving us of responsibility if something happened. My wife said, “No.” She called and talked to me, hoping (I believe) to get different answers to the same questions. She got the same replies from me.
She was a bit miffed at the time, but we ultimately found another way to get out there. All was fine, and the issue was put behind us - but not, I hope, without conveying by word and deed just how strongly we felt about her wearing seat belts.
I/we can’t control what my mother-in-law does when she’s driving by herself. We will (and do) take what we view as reasonable steps to persuade her, but we’re not going to threaten to cut off ties or anything approaching that magnitude. However, in our vehicle, we feel perfectly justified in setting such restrictions as “you have to wear your seat belt.”
And that, I feel, is about all we can/should do. She’s an adult, and is ultimately responsible for herself.
Is he in your car or his? His car, his rules. Your car, your rules.
“Sorry, dad, but I love you. It would kill me if something happened to you while I was behind the wheel. I don’t give a fuck what you do in your car, but I’m not turning on my ignition until you strap in.”
You cannot change his behavior if he doesn’t want to change, but you can change his behaviour around you.
Joe Random
You completely lost the meaning of my post.
Its the mental attitude of drivers that I was getting at.
“i’m safe so I will take stupid chances”.
I’ve mentioned it several times on SDMB so I’ll just have to mention it again.
My In laws live on a curve on US highway 61 in Iowa .Its a blind curve .People
are constantly passing on that curve eventhough it is clearly marked NO Passing.
Are these people wearing their seatbelts? That will make them safe Right???
Joe, its their mental attitude that makes driving unsafe.
If you are a good defencive driver you can ,and the professional drivers do avoid
accidents by paying attention to what they are doing.But also to what you are doing.
Do they all wear their seatbelts???
The guys I drove with didn’t.
Some of them have 30+ years driving experience .
Joe, you might not mind being bound to your seat. I Don’t.
Obviously that should read I don’t like being bound to mine.
I never wore seatbelts either. They always seemed uncomfortable, in the way, and just not macho enough for me. Then one day, I had to attend a driving class given by our local police because I got a speeding ticket, and this was the easiest way out. So they talked about safety and such and I sipped my coffee shaking my head agreeing with everything they said. Then the officer said something that stuck in my head and changed my mind about seatbelts forever. He said, at the very least it will keep you in your seat so you have a chance of controlling your car. I’ve been wearing seatbelts ever since that day in school.
Head on over to your favorite vendor of bloody accident photos (keywords include “rotten” and “ogrish”, going from there is left as an excercise to the reader) and show him, graphically, what happens when you don’t wear your seatbelt. This might just put the fear of decapitation in him. Beyond that, it’s his ass to risk as he likes.
Until about two years ago, my MIL, left to her own devices, would not have worn a seat belt; FIL, however, always insisted on it. About 2 years ago, they were down in Florida on vacation, and got into a head-on collision because my FIL was blinded by sun glare. It was quite obvious from MIL’s seatbelt trauma that, had she not been wearing the seat belt, she would have gone through the windshield. FIL felt awful, because the accident was his fault, ergo, MIL’s injuries were his fault. I told him not to feel so bad, he was to credit with her still being alive, because he nagged her into wearing her seat belt.
You can’t change your father’s behavior, but you can insist he buckle up when he’s in the car with you, even if you’re the passenger (“Dad, if we get in an accident, I don’t want your unbuckled body flying around injuring me; call me silly, but we’re not going anywhere until you buckle”). You don’t stand much chance of changing opinions like your fathers or justwannano’s.
We never go anywhere til everyone’s buckled. My kids have tried to tell me they don’t need their seat belts to drive to the market, because it’s right down the street (we drive, because when we’re doing major marketing we have too much to carry home), but that just gets into a dangerous mindset of “if it’s not very far, you don’t need to buckle”, so I insist on it, every time, all the time, period.
It will certainly make them safer. If two of them were to have a head-on collision, and only one of them were wearing a seatbelt, who do you think would be more likely to escape with fewer injuries?
So “safe” drivers shouldn’t worry about wearing their seatbelt? Some accidents are simply unavoidable. For example, what about a two-way street at night, when the person coming toward you is drunk and suddenly swerves directly into your path? A defensive driver is just as likely to have this happen as a poor driver, and if they’re not wearing their seatbelt, they’re at a higher risk for injury or death.
What’s your point? You think they’re immune to being involved in an accident because of someone else’s stupidity? These people may have 30+ years of driving experience, but they obviously aren’t all too bright. Either that, or they enjoy flirting with death.
And again I ask, where are you planning on going in the car that you need to be un-bound from your seat? You planning on moving to the passenger seat while driving or something? Is it worth risking your life to have freedom of movement when you aren’t even going to take advantage of it?
I like to send the anti-seat belt people over to Snopes to read the truth about how seatbelts save lives.
Quote Joe
And again I ask, where are you planning on going in the car that you need to be un-bound from your seat? You planning on moving to the passenger seat while driving or something? Is it worth risking your life to have freedom of movement when you aren’t even going to take advantage of it?
Oh I don’t know. How about move my tired ass around.
How about reposition my aching back
Granted there isn’t too much room to move but there is still more freedom to move without them.
By the way Joe. You do wear a hardhat when you go home don’t you? Remember we are told most accidents happen in the home.
Just wanting to keep you safe Joe.
What kind of car is it? Does it have lap ones or shoulder ones or both? I read the lap ones are risky.
That’s exactly where you are going to be if you have to make a PANIC turn to the left.
Try an experiment. Find some deserted, huge parking lot late at night where you can perform this test safely. Drive along at say 25 miles an hour, you don’t need to go any faster than that for this experiment. Drive in a straight line, then as QUICKLY as you can, whip the steering wheel to the left as FAR as you can, as FAST as you can. So, how do you like riding in the passenger seat of your car?
What you just simulated is what your brain is going to FORCE your hands do if a kid/dog/whatever jumps out in front of your car. You have NO choice in the matter.
Now, use your imagination, think about doing what you just did in bumper-to-bumper two-way traffic. You’re going to be riding in the passenger seat of your car, going how ever fast you are going, head on with oncoming traffic. Wouldn’t you rather be behind the wheel so you might have a chance to steer out of this disaster?
All of this is only ONE scenario. There are countless scenarios.
(Disclaimer on the experiment mentioned: Don’t do it really, it’s too dangerous. It was only mentioned to make my point.)
To get back to the original topic: menudomucho, tell him this story. It’s very true.
In the spring of 1999, I was riding in the passenger seat of our family car. My father was driving, and we were heading out to the Pine Barrens to go biking (on trails, of course.) We didn’t have an exact destination in mind, but it was a Saturday morning, and we were both feeling mellow.
We’d been driving down a mostly-empty local highway with a several-foot-wide grass median. My dad spotted a good place to turn around across the road, we had to turn left in order to get there. This is all according to my father, since I don’t remember it myself.
My dad - who has not once gotten any sort of ticket, and has always been a defensive driver - pulled into the break in the median, looked both ways, and started the turn. Unfortunately, a car was coming down the road, perpendicular to us, at about 100 mph. It broadsided us, directly hitting the passenger-side front door. Our car spun about four times and flew across the road, ending up facing 90* away from when we’d been hit. Luckily, we ended in the undeveloped, still-wooded lot on the side of the road.
A bystander saw the accident and called 911 on their cell. I have no idea how much time elapsed, but I came to my sense as my dad was leaning into the car, asking if I could get up. My glasses had flown off my face and were bent beyond repair. The windows on the passenger side of the car were shattered, and the door was half in my lap.
The only clear memory I have of that day is the EMT in the ambulance, en route to the hospital, holding a piece of guaze to my head and thanking my father and I for wearing our seatbelts, if we hadn’t been, we’d be dead.
The woman in the other car hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt. She died later that day, after being airlifted to a trauma center.
It’s your choice to wear a seatbelt or not. If I hadn’t worn a seatbelt on that day - on a nearly-empty highway, I wouldn’t be alive. Some of my friends choose not to: I will not get in a car with them. There’s no good reason not to wear one, in my opinion. My life was directly intertwined with someone who chose not to: she’s now dead. I have scars on my leg from that day and I lost a day of memories, I could have lost my life. The danger of several-tons of fast-moving metal seems abstract until it literally hits you. Make what you want of that.
ccwaterback
I am a professional truck driver.
We learn not to panic.
We learn to expect the unexpected and act accordingly.
We learn to stay focused on driving. To pay attention all the time.
Yall think that all drivers are as unexperienced as you are.
Joe mentioned the drunk on a 2 way street.
The correct procedure would to minimize the damage.Always look for an out.
What really irks me is that the government has made it a law.
I told a cop one time,“Please don’t try to protect me from me.I’ve been doing it for a long time now and I am pretty good at it.”