This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
It is simply amazing how many stories appear in the news about someone who dies from an automobile accident. There seems to be several a week. That is not what is so amazing though, considering that traffic accidents is the fourth leading cause of death in America (the top three are heart attacks, cancer and COPD).
What baffles me is the tag line in almost all those stories: "Occupant was not wearing a seat belt."
I ask myself, "What in the heck were they thinking? Are those unfortunate people lazy, uniformed or just stupid?"
Since the effort to buckle a seat belt takes about as much time as it does to tie one shoelace, then it is probably not that they are lazy.
There is plenty of information about how seat belts saves lives. Many cars have a long annoying chime sound if you try to drive a car without engaging the seat belt. So it can't be these people are uninformed.
That leaves stupid.
I'll go ahead and say it, if you are in a automobile and you are not wearing a seat belt, then you are stupid.
Quit being stupid. Wear your damn seat belt.
David T. Lancaster
Murray