There I was, on scene of a routine motor vehicle crash. The front end of car number one was damaged, and the airbags had gone off. The twenty year old woman who was driving that car had been traveling at such a speed that when she struck the other vehicle she pushed their trunk into their back seat. Her airbags had gone off, and luckily for her she wasn’t hurt.
“Were you wearing your seatbelt?” I asked her, as I was collecting the information I needed for my refusal.
“No, I don’t believe in them. They said I would have been killed if I was wearing one in the last accident I was in.”
“Well,” I replied, “You’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse today.” I finished up my paperwork without saying much more to her than my usual refusal talk and “sign here.”
In our profession, we encounter many different types of people, but those who make the conscious decision to not buckle up are a breed that I will never understand. Evidence does not lie: seatbelts save lives. Anyone who says otherwise is grossly misinformed.
Furthermore, who is this “they” that this girl was speaking about? Friends? Family? I could not ever imagine a medical professional or law enforcement officer saying to someone that it was a “good thing she wasn’t buckled up!”
And then there are parents who not only neglect to wear seatbelts but don’t buckle their kids in as well. When I was younger, I remember overhearing a friend of my mother’s comment to her that the reason she didn’t buckle up her five year old who would spend most of his time climbing around his car was that he “cried every time.” She was one accident away from never hearing that kid cry again.
If a person does not want to look out for themselves, well, that’s their decision but when they put their child’s well being on the line that is something that I cannot stand for. I tried to explain to a mother once that her son could have easily been killed when he was riding in her lap in the passenger seat when they got in an accident. Her response to me was classic: “We weren’t going very far.”
One of the most frequent responses seen in any EMS system is the motor vehicle crash. As years have gone by cars have gotten safer and safer. We’ve seen the addition to front and side airbags, crumple zones, and emergency notification systems like On Star are poised to potentially change how we respond to accidents for years to come. Nothing though has made more of a difference in patient outcomes than the seatbelt.
The message is simple: buckle up. It saves lives.
In 40+ years in the EMS biz, never, ever, not even once, did I see someone buckled into a car, who in an accident was killed, that would have been better off unbelted. I have however seen countless dead folk who got to meet Mr. Pavement, Mister Pole and Miss Rock on an up close and personel basis who were not wearing their seat belt when their car came to a sudden stop.
Well said, Scott!
Responding to a UPS truck accident, I recalled never having seen the drivers wearing their seat belts. this accident was moderate, but he was uninjured after lifting his legs just in time. Still in shock that he avoided losing a leg, we discussed how rare it is that said drivers wear their seatbelts getting in and out all day long. I told him he had to tell 5 strangers that a seat belt saved his life, a common thing I tell folks. he took it to heart and shook hands with the triage nurse. “My seat belt saved my life, please wear yours.”
I’ve also encountered people who tell me the hospital said if I’d have been wearing my seatbelt it would have damaged my liver and I would have died or my personal favorite if I hadn’t been thrown from the car I could have been killed by the things flying around inside. I don’t even try to talk to these people anymore I just summit there names for the Darwin award
Well said, Scott. Maybe if insurance companies stopped paying for “excessive injuries secondary to failure to use restraint system” (I made that up) people would see the light (or see it less even).
Something to think about that I read recently, the US is the only place where crash testing is done for unbelted drivers. Only in the US are auto manufacturers required to ensure that their vehicle meets a safety standard for an *UNBELTED* driver. I’ve only been doing this for a few years, but I can say that I’ve never told anyone it was a good thing they weren’t wearing a seatbelt. I’ve never seen anyone have a better outcome because of it, nor have I seen anyone escape “fiery crashes” because of it. Come to think of it, nobody’s ever been thrown clear of the danger either. Yet for some reason, I hear the same excuses over & over. While I believe that at some point it becomes a matter of personal choice (and common sense), almost nothing gets my blood pressure as jacked up as seeing kids hopping around in the back seat or on someone’s lap.
I’ve had that discussion with patients as well and it almost always comes back to the hospital. At the hospital ‘they’ told me I was lucky I wasn’t wearing it. Then when I try to interject, I’m overlooked because in the deck of cards that is EMS, hospitals always trump EMS. The thing they never think about is that it was (hopefully only) an aide or tech that told them that. A child barely out of high school who has a minimum wage job following orders. The same could be said for the patient who told me that she didn’t quit smoking because ‘her doctors office’ told her that quitting would be harder on the baby than if she just finished out her term smoking. I wonder if ‘Dr.’ Receptionist told her that.