The South Carolina House of Representatives has done its duty in at least one instance of legislation. Now it’s up to the Senate and eventually the governor to ensure that our state at last truly values life — and a simple way to preserve it.
At present, law enforcement in our state can only stop drivers under a seat belt violation if another law is being broken.
What we lack is a primary seat belt law and it contributes to dozens of needless deaths every year. There is more evidence supporting seat belt use than the few who discount it as a "violation of their personal space." To date in 2004, 76 of the 95 people killed on South Carolina roads were not wearing seat belts. Some, even some who have been elected to serve in office in this state, are so entrenched in their views they might claim that the other 19 lives were not just lost, but lost because of seat belt use. That is specious thinking at its best — or its worst.
The cavalier attitude displayed by State Sen. John Kuhn, R-Charleston is evident in his published statement to the effect that even if a weak seat belt law "ends up in resulting in a few more deaths, it’s a person’s choice not to wear a belt." Fellow Charlestonian, Republican Sen. Glenn McConnell, didn’t just scoff at the notion that seat belts save lives, he made usage the butt of jokes on the floor of the Senate.
A few more deaths ... think about that for a moment. Is not each life lost a tragedy? Don’t we all mourn when a death could have been prevented in one of the easiest ways imaginable?
But it goes beyond personal choice.
It reaches into personal example.
Safety experts note that when parents buckle up, children follow suit. Adults who are conscious of this small but significant safety measure educate their children and those children will grow to be responsible with their own children. When adults buckle up, up to 90 percent of the time the children in the vehicle will be properly restrained as well.
And not all of the effect is simply on the individual who is involved in a crash. Americans are paying more than $14 billion each year in injury-related costs for people who don’t wear seat belts, according to the National Safety Council. On average, those injured pay for less than 30 percent of their own medical costs; the rest is paid by society, through higher auto and health insurance rates and through taxes to fund Medicare and Medicaid. Drivers who buckle up are paying around $40 more each year in higher insurance costs, to make up for the medical costs incurred by those drivers who just don’t bother.
More often than not, a driver or passenger who is a traffic fatality would have escaped death had they been buckled in properly. According to officials with the S.C. Department of Public Safety, the death rate on a state’s highways will drop dramatically if that state passes a tough seat belt law for a simple reason — people don’t want to deliberately break the law and thus more people buckle up.Seat belt use in South Carolina is around 70 percent. Officials think it could jump to 85 percent with more stringent laws. The State Department of Transportation released a study last month that claims a primary enforcement law for seat belt use (meaning law enforcement would not have to witness another law being broken to cite someone for not buckling up) could save more than 100 lives and prevent more than 1,000 injuries this year alone.
In Georgia and North Carolina, where there are laws authorizing primary seat belt enforcement, deaths per 100 million miles are more than a third fewer than in South Carolina.
There are many factors that contribute to vehicle crashes and the deaths that can follow, most frequently among them speed and distracted driving. Some of those crashes are avoidable; others could not have been avoided had you been as cautious and careful as humanly possible.
But one’s chances of surviving a crash, whether caused by your own failure on the road or the carelessness of another, are much greater if the first thing you do, even before turning the key, is to fasten your seat belt.
Our legislature has been considering a primary seat belt law for years. It’s time those who have been elected to best serve their fellow citizens buckle down to the job — and make sure the rest of us buckle up.
