When I see a police officer.
j/k
I know you are only kidding, but I imagine you speak for a ton of people who are thinking it but not posting it.
For me, it goes like this:
- Start the car
- Throw purse in the back.
- Pull seatbelt strap.
- Fail to get seatbelt strap to cross me without locking up.
- Try again. No dice.
- Say, “Fuck”
- Try again.
- Swear to improve my eating/exercise habits if the damn thing will just click.
- Success! Now drive down the street looking like two hot air balloons crashed into a telephone wire.
Ditto.
Didn’t wear a seat belt at all before joining the Navy (at the age of 27), but it was mandatory by Navy regs - if you were injured in a car accident and weren’t wearing your seat belt, the Navy could even refuse to cover your medical expenses (which under normal circumstances are 100% covered for both you and your family).
When I first sit down. My uncle Cook was a pilot in WWII. He once got in the car to wash the windows and before he knew it he had his seat belt fastened. 
After I start driving but certainly before entering the roadway! That is, while in my driveway, or while in the parking lot. Safe and efficient.
If I’m carrying anything, open back door and put stuff in rear footwell behind driver’s seat. Get in front and put bag in passenger footwell. Put keys in ignition. Never put keys anywhere but in ignition or in pocket. They don’t get lost that way. Faff about with adjusting mirrors, seat position, coffee cup, connecting phone to car, etc., since I car share. Fasten seat belt. Start car. Go.
Uh yes to increasing (not doubling) the number of answers? I couldn’t answer questions relation to when “I” started the engine since the timing of that is not up to me. Is it too much to ask for a well written poll, so that when I click on the thread there is an option for me – and a large number of other people – to answer.
Yes.
It can actually be before or after starting the engine for me. Depends on where I am, what I’m doing and the rush I’m in. But definitely before I hit a public road. I have a gate at my house, so sometimes I open gate, pull car through, get back out, close gate (with engine still running) and then buckle up. Or if I’m in a strip mall driving from one store to the other in the same parking lot, I don’t buckle up. Private property and low-speeds, you know.
I’m getting old.
I always wear the seat belt when I’m driving. I feel naked and vulnerable without it.
But: I used to always get on my dad’s case for not fastening it the moment he sat down in the car. He would always plead, “when I’m backing up, it constrains me from looking around. I always wear it when driving.” I would always pooh-pooh this argument.
But these days - yeah, I’m not quite as limber and thin. And it is easier to twist the full torso without the lap/shoulder belt buckled. So my behavior has become - start the car, get out the parking lot, then buckle the safety belt before I hit the road.
Since I am getting old, I can remember not wearing a safety belt at all. When I was little, child safety seats were used until you were about 4 years old, then not at all. I can distinctly remember (~age 5) screwing around in the front seat of my mom’s car, beltless, when she had to make a hard stop. I hit the windshield, then the dashboad, then fell under the seat. Mom just shrugged and said “I told you to sit properly”
I’m sure older dopers have even more modernly-inconceivable car stories.
I voted ‘whenever it occurs to me’, but most of the time it’s asap. When I left work, I would e the first out of the parking lot, because I’d have the door open, my stuff in the back, my ass in the seat, the belt on and the engine running before most people had their butts in their seats. I have it down to a SCIENCE!!
I have my monkey-servant start the engine and buckle me up. He’s to sit in the front passengers seat, because I don’t want to appear like I’m chauffeuring around a monkey with a little hat.
Also, he’s not allowed to mess with the stereo; my car, my music.
I recently discovered that my ‘new’ (it’s second hand) car screams hysterically if you don’t fasten your seatbelt within a set amount of time. I put a heavy bag of shopping on the front passenger seat (I have my mother’s wheelchair in the boot/trunk) and drove away, next thing all hell breaks loose. I pulled over and stopped and tried to figure out what I’d done wrong.
Apparently the car thought my shopping was a passenger and objected strongly to the seat belt not being done up.
I do mine after I’ve started the engine but before I drive off.
I fasten mine after I have finished backing out of my driveway, or wherever I am. I don’t like driving in reverse with the seatbel on. It rides up high on my neck.
my car does that too… (Renault Fluence)
Oh, and this thread got me checking myself – and I’ve found that in fact, I don’t actually buckle up before starting the engine - I get in, start the car, faf about with the auxilliaries (set the A/C, choose music, put my phone in its place…) then put on my seat belt, and then (and only then) put down the hand brake and start driving.