I was once in a taxi in which the driver would snort cocaine when we stopped at a traffic light. Needless to say I got out and walked. Another time I was in a taxi and the driver fell asleep on the highway. We were in stop and go traffic and after a long "stop" the traffic started moving but we did not. I noticed the driver sort of slumped over in his seat. I yelled "hello?" and he startled awake. Couldn't just get o…
People just fasten the seat belt while they're not sitting in the seat then sit on the fastened belt.
Good. Now, we have an active act of non-compliance with an (hopefully? please?) existing law that forces you to buckle up. Let's start the fines with 1k and see if this helps, if not, go up. Not buckling up is so insane, I cannot even begin to imagine it ..
Given that person is only harming themselves, it's totalitarian to apply a fine here.
If someone makes such a deliberate and conscious decision not to wear a seatbelt, maybe you could assume they have their own reason for that.
It's not even clear that forcing people to wear a seatbelt saves lives. It may increase the risk to other people, if people are seeking out a level of risk that they're comfortable with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Risk_compensation
We have a local school bus that took a head-on collision at speed (bus traveling 45mph, oncoming pickup at 60mph) and treated the occupants very well. The bus was full of high schoolers, the pickup was driven by another high schooler. The bus driver took a break near the ankle and none of the students sustained anything more than bumps and bruises. Now, a lot comes into play here - the bus outweighs the pickup by sev…
Are you sure the button becomes difficult to use? I might be very wrong here, but I'd at least hope that "release easily even when hanging upside down" might be a design requirement of the average safety belt buckle. Perhaps this is why aircraft belts have very different buckles than car belts? Can anyone provide more detail?
I'm not sure the claim is true. I only have one personal experience to base this on (fortunately) but I was in an accident as a passenger in a Jeep Wrangler which ended up upside-down on its roll-cage. Both the driver and I were hanging from our belts and had no problem undoing the buckles. We had to do it one-handed with our other hand trying to support ourselves so as not to drop on our heads after releasing the buckle. Click, release, just like normal.
I _always_ buckle up, even in bus. I've gotten looks from taxi drives in south Europe for this, they treat it as an insult. I feel it's better to insult than be dead. Afaik since you get fined quite severely in Norway where I live (and most of Europe) if you don't wear a seat belt, the rate of use is much higher than the US. He will be missed. Hopefully it can put focus on such a simple thing to save lives.
Here's a fun fact: the yellow school busses most North Americans get trucked to school in usually don't have seatbelts. The reason is that they follow a different school of thought regarding safety. The basic idea is that instead of giving everyone seatbelts that unruly kids won't adjust properly and will use to whack each other's teeth out, you make really high padded seats so that in the case of an accident the pas…
My bus driver would stop and lecture us about this. His reasoning was that in case of an accident, evacuation is difficult if all the kids are buckled in. So if there was a fire (not sure how likely that is), we'd be worse off with seat belts. Now that I'm older, I'm pretty sure he wasn't speaking from a point of deep experience or research, but he was very passionate about the subject, enough to drop us off late several times due to such lectures.
The culture around seatbelts in the US confounds me. As an Australian I've spent my entire life wearing seatbelts. It's second nature. I don't even think about it. Taxis or otherwise. In fact I think it's required in all cases. But in the US people seem to view the choice to turn a mild car accident into a severe or even fatal one as some kind of moral stance or personal freedom. Or rather any effort to require their…
Well, cletus, perhaps I can shed some light on this troubling question for you. Generally speaking (and there are naturally many exceptions, humans being the delightfully-flawed creatures that we are), the American government prefers to treat its citizens like competent adults who would rather not die if a suitable alternative presents itself. And so we don't generally have laws that require us to look both ways befo…
> And so we don't generally have laws that require us to look both ways before crossing a street,
You do have laws telling you where abouts you can cross a road, right? Laws about jay walking?
(Your tone is sub-optimal. I guess that's why your getting downvotes.)
This feels really odd. I just saw John Nash a few days ago in the Fine Hall elevator. Hell, I used to see him all the time in Fine Hall. I will surely remember and miss him as I walk through campus next year and remember all the "sightings." What a loss.
Good. Now, we have an active act of non-compliance with an (hopefully? please?) existing law that forces you to buckle up. Let's start the fines with 1k and see if this helps, if not, go up. Not buckling up is so insane, I cannot even begin to imagine it ..
Given that person is only harming themselves, it's totalitarian to apply a fine here. If someone makes such a deliberate and conscious decision not to wear a seatbelt, maybe you could assume they have their own reason for that. It's not even clear that forcing people to wear a seatbelt saves lives. It may increase the risk to other people, if people are seeking out a level of risk that they're comfortable with: https…
They're not; they risk harming other people in the vehicle and there is extra effort to recover the injured body of someone from an RTA if that person wasn't wearing a seatbelt which puts emergency services at increased risk of harm.
A long time ago there were cars with the shoulder belt attached to a motorized track on the door frame that would pretty much force you to wear it...only for the front seats though. Maybe instead of a power button, cars should turn on when you buckle up after the brake pedal is depressed.
They tried that with a few models and no they shouldn't. It was an actual pain and prone to failure. I had to rewire my friend's car (an all the time seat belt wearer) because of how crappy those things hold up. People will wear them or not. Making things more complex just means it will fail and make people do strange things.
It seems relatively simple to implement. One manufacturer screwing up shouldn't mean it be abandoned.
They tried that with a few models and no they shouldn't. It was an actual pain and prone to failure. I had to rewire my friend's car (an all the time seat belt wearer) because of how crappy those things hold up. People will wear them or not. Making things more complex just means it will fail and make people do strange things.
It seems relatively simple to implement. One manufacturer screwing up shouldn't mean it be abandoned.
Are you talking about automatic searbelts or alarms for seatbelts?