Two seconds to save a teen’s life

By Tom Hazlett

With teenagers gearing up for the summer driving season, two seconds is all it takes to create a safety state of mind in our children.

I know. My first wife was killed in a car accident 10 years ago, and my son — unbuckled — suffered severe brain trauma after being thrown from the car. It’s an injury that he, his brother, stepmother, our families and friends and I will live with for the rest of our lives. Two seconds could have made all the difference in the world.

Buckling up is the first driver safety recommendation from the National Safety Council for Teen Driving Safety Week, this week, as part of National Safety Month.

Why a seatbelt?

● Seatbelts keep the driver and all passengers in position to be protected by airbags. Airbags don’t substitute for seatbelts — they supplement them.

● Crash victims are safer when they stay within the vehicle. They have a higher rate of survival and a lower rate of more serious injuries. Ejection or being tossed about during a crash increases the likelihood of death or serious injury.

● Even buckled-up riders are endangered by unbuckled passengers, who can become missiles within the passenger compartment.

Automobile accidents are by far the biggest killer of teenagers. Teens in the Driver Seat, a safety group sponsored by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, College Station, says more than 6,000 teens die in car crashes every year. The latest statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show 4,497 drivers and passengers age 16 to 20 were killed in car crashes in 2008. Data gathered from police reports show 54.8 percent of the fatalities were not wearing seatbelts; 62.5 percent of survivors were buckled in.

For the sake of perspective, getting older doesn’t always mean getting wiser. In that same year, 3,940 drivers and passengers age 21 to 24 were killed in car crashes, and 59.1 percent were not buckled in. Among survivors, 64.5 percent were buckled in.

The numbers tell us we still have a lot more to learn. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says Georgia’s seatbelt law, passed in 1996, requires seatbelts for all passengers age 6 through 17 in all seats and only seatbelts in the front seats for passengers over the age of 18. The IIHS says Georgia law is good about seatbelt use in its young driver education, but only fair in seatbelt use because not all occupants must be wearing seatbelts or be belted into child safety seats and boosters.

As part of a national safety effort, police agencies are enforcing seatbelt laws, and they are backed by public service announcements. That is certainly one way to get the attention of drivers and passengers. If the threat of a ticket and fine is enough to get even one teen to wear a seatbelt, the effort will be successful. Of course, we’d like to see that success multiply a million times over.

Yet for the life of me, I can’t understand why Georgians need a law to force drivers and passengers to wear seatbelts. It’s time for parents of young drivers to go beyond the letter of the law. Require your children and all passengers to wear their seatbelt. Most kids in the car will wear their seatbelts if the driver is buckled in. Withholding access to the car can strongly encourage your children to follow your rule. Set the example yourself by always buckling up and requiring all passengers to follow suit.

Tom Hazlett is regional sales director of ClickNDrive GA.