Those passive seat belts were the absolute worst. I'm not the kind of guy who runs around yelling sue 'em, but I think anyone injured in a crash wearing those things has got to have some sort of a case.

 

the driving ability shows on your driving records and insurance rates. simple as that.

 

I don't agree. I can't count the number of times I got behind the wheel in a severely impaired state, when I was much younger. One time I even had to stop to puke mid-trip. Am I such a great driver that I was never stopped, or more importantly, didn't kill someone else's child or children? No, definitely not. That my record shows nothing is merely a fact of pure dumb luck, nothing else. Every day, I think about how many opportunities I gave myself to be a vehicular felon and murderer. I still drink, but the car is shuttered before I pop the top.

 

So what about motorcyclists without helmets? In FL, they are allowed to ride without them.

 

Oy I know. My car now has them too. :/

Can't wait to get out of it and into a Fit.

 

Read the article posted by vividjazz on the first page of this thread. I am not an advocate of helmet laws, but I do think if you have have even 1/10 of a brain in your head you would wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle (or bicycle). Sorry for the long stories, but here are two incidents that happened to me.

1. In college, first motorcycle, late for rugby practice, decided to wear helmet, because I would be hustling to get there. I turned a corner and hit some pea gravel I hadn't seen and low-sided. It was a minor get-off, and I didn't even feel my head hit the ground. When I took my helmet off, I discovered a piece of that gravel imbedded in my helmet ride at the base of my skull.

2. In Bangkok, riding my bicycle home, when I get cut-off my a silver Mercedes (Mercedes drivers in Bangkok are THE most dangerous), I hit the brakes and launch myself over the handlebars, landing square on the top of my grape. I shattered the shell and almost full compressed the EPS in the helmet. I also jammed my neck pretty well and bruised my shoulder.

Bottom line: In both those accidents, I walked away virtually uninjured. Without a helmet the results might have been very different. I have no issue with people who choose to ride helmetless, as long as they kill themselves instantly in the crash they are sure to have. It's ones that hang on in a persistant vegetative state, sucking up untold millions in health care costs, and becoming a burden to to society that bother me.

The police should be empowered to conduct summary road-side euthanasia for any helmetless rider with head injuries, as well as any drunk drivers who cause crashes. They would be doing the individual, and society a favor.

 

i will have to agree with some luck sometimes.
however, statistically speaking, in a person's lifetime, let's say driving years will be 50 years, if you want to count luck into this, only 0.1% to the most.... 5%.
on the average, the records and the accidents pretty much show us your BASIC/BASELINE of driving ability, not racing ability.
if you can't agree with this, maybe you can talk to the lawmakers, police officers that you pay the taxes to. or negotiate with your insurance company and see what they say to you about the driving ability.
can't admit the facts that sometimes bad luck or other people will run into you. but your experience and ability to avoid and foresee the potential dangers count also. so, in a long term, it still averages out.
yeah, some people can just driving slow and never hit someone or kill someone, they can just drive. does it mean that they are bad drivers? no.
are they good drivers? probably not....

 

I agree that skill plays a major role, as well. A lot of golfers say, "the more I practice, the luckier I am." I think this works for driving, too. I have been to a couple of police driving schools, and to several track days on my bike. I can only think these have made me a better, luckier, and safer driver.

 

Regarding seat belt saves lives.... A state hwy trooper said of his career that he never pulled a dead person out of a seatbelt. That is powerfull. I happen to know because of working as an EMT for four years that seat belts are big in changing numbers of injuries. They really do save lives and improve injury outcomes of accidents. Hopefully everyone whears seatbelts properly.

 

You live in Thailand? Your lucky! I have visited there many times while in the USN. Phuket, Pattaya, etc.

 

I commute on my bike everyday and I believe in helmets. I don't even think about having to put on a helmet anymore... it's second nature. Years of autocrossing and tracking kinda help with that one. Sure it's nice not to have a helmet on, but I don't think it's worth having my brain on the pavement.

There's way too many instances where people ended up dead in a wreck they could have easily just walked away from.

Even if it's not fatal... what's better? Looking cool and end up with picking gravel out of your hip and having it heal from the inside out? Or have a bruise and maybe a burn mark where the leather slid across the pavement?

One thing that people don't really think about in car wrecks that is involved with rejections. There's a pretty good chance that you and your car will be moving in the same direction... there's also a pretty good chance that your car will land on top of you. My dad is an ER doctor and I have heard so many stories like that. Another bad type of injury is when you go through the windshield only half way. Then your head/body settles back down and cutting you up like a razorblade.

But there are some instances that wearing a seatbelt could have been fatal. But those kind of collision are so rare.

Oh another thing... rollbars without proper padding. I have hit my head on that just climbing out of a car and it freaking hurts. I hate it when I see a car with rollbars and no padding. That rollbar won't help you much if your head gets cracked open.

 

you mean like Ben Roethlisberger?

i mean, you're on top of the world, making millions playing football, why would you risk it all to ride a motorcycle with no helmet? And not just any beginner motorcycle, a Hayabusa...

 

i lost a very close friend of mine a couple years back because he was not wearing his seatbelt, his car flipped then skid across the pavement with his head pinned between the car and pavement(open sunroof)............my other friend who was in the passanger seat walked away without a scratch or bruise, he was wearing his seatbelt

 

Ive seen those types... not the flips,thats a one time but people get thrown out of the car. Years ago a jeep braked hard on the interstate hwy but did not make it. It hit the medean and flipped. the driver who was seatbelted lived. The passenger, his family, died a horible way from being thrown from the vehicale. It is not understood buy most people that your chances are very good to be thrown when not seatbelted and the person being thrown out the car usually travels in the same direction as the vehicale. This is why some people are found under the cars or get hit buy the car they were in... but that is not the worst thing that could happen or the most common. How about driving low speed and just hiting the windsheild with your head? Your looking at a craniotomy and you could loss your life or better you become very special and unique... I can go on and on. Make me feel better and let me see one person get in the habbit of buckle up 100% It is cheap life insurence and you dont get a ticket.

 

Anyone who doesn't wear a seat-belt and shoulder strap every-time they drive should think about the following. How fast can you run for a short distance? If you can sprint 5 miles per hour, then run as fast as you can and crash your head into the side of your house. Think about how much your head would hurt. If you double the speed, the energy your head will have to absorb is 4 times more not twice. The energy of motion increases as the square of the speed. At 15 miles per hour your head will hurt 9 times more than it did when you crashed your head into the side of your house at 5 miles per hour. The energy of motion doesn't just disappear into thin air when you suddenly stop. All that energy is absorbed by your body.

Last winter my friend crashed his Camero into an unlit truck at 60 miles per hour. The truck had skidded across an icy patch on the freeway in the early morning darkness. When he saw the truck in his headlights he did not even have time to get his foot on the brake pedal. His seat-belt and the airbag bruised his face, chest, and legs but he was otherwise uninjured. The car was a total loss. The airbag and seat-belt absorbed all the energy of motion during the rapid deceleration.

 

Changing topic slightly... Hong Kong seatbelt laws have been in place for front and rear passengers for a while now.

A few years ago it extended to TAXIs (and half the fleet needed to be retro fitted), and now it's extending to shuttle busses too. Although I'm not sure how well THAT's going...

 

I was driving and wasnt paying attention to how fast i was going... and i was doing a 55mph exit off the exit ramp, i almost hit the wall...but luckliy i got control of the car and if i didnt have control of the car i would end up wit the same results CLICK IT OR TICKET!

 

Being a millionaire athlete obviously doesn't make you a rocket scientist. Just look at the US NBA. No one would ever test for it, but I bet the average intelligence of that crowd is just slightly above a geranium.

Hiroko12: Yes, I have lived here since Sep 2000. It has been great, but now I am looking forward to getting back to the US to buy my Fit sport manual (if I can find one then), and getting on with things.