131–140 of 265 posts
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>I've gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Are there seatbelts in buses?
Some of them, yes. I've been on some buses (usually tour buses in some part of Europe) where the driver insists everyone buckles up.
Such a tragic loss. Like many people, I never wore a seatbelt while riding in a taxi. I'm not really sure why, it just seemed somehow to be the social norm and I went along with it. Then one day, my co-worker and his girlfriend were both severely injured while in an accident crossing the east river in manhattan. Ever since then, I've gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Som…
That's why I really like cars which make a sound if you don't have your seatbelt on. That way they don't give you the choice of not wearing the seatbelt and it's how it should be . This is why in such cases I strongly believe governments should force companies to enable something like that. The social norms are stupid and this would give you the excuse to ignore them without giving it a second thought (hey, the car i…
They should hold off on the warning until you've shifted the car out of park.
Such a tragic loss. Like many people, I never wore a seatbelt while riding in a taxi. I'm not really sure why, it just seemed somehow to be the social norm and I went along with it. Then one day, my co-worker and his girlfriend were both severely injured while in an accident crossing the east river in manhattan. Ever since then, I've gotten in the habit of using my seatbelt while in a taxi, car, bus, or whatever. Som…
Some busses don't have seatbelts, but for everything else it's just a subconscious thing that I always do (and as far as I know it's the same for almost everyone here because the penalties are quite severe - in some states, the driver can get demerit points if one of their passengers is not wearing one. For example, at certain times (usually holidays) in New South Wales when they have double demerit points, if you have two passengers unrestrained you get 12 points (at 13 points you lose your license for 3 months).
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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 bu…
The only part that saved my life was that I had stacked a bunch of HP servers right behind the driver seat, the rest of the cabin was completely crushed in ;-)
(Edit: I will never own a 4x4 or any high center of gravity vehicle which doesn't have a roll cage ever again. The day after the accident, I was sitting at the junk yard looking at the mashed ball of metal which used to be my truck, I couldn't believe I walked away without a scratch.)
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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…
In the US from 2003-2012, there were an annual average of 6 fatalities of non-driver occupants of school buses[1].
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You seem a very smart person, any chance I can get a quick list of your other "weird" behaviours?
Thanks for the complement! Hmmm... not easy to think of them. It's not that they're weird, in practice they come off as sounding very normal, but very conservative. I would say the first thing to do is to get to know all of the known cognitive biases surrounding risk because just about all humans suck at it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identifiable_victim_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias http://…
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…
For some bizzare reason though, it is somehow acceptable to not wear a belt when you are in a taxi, as if you are magically protected by the "professional" driver. I'm not 100% sure but it may have something to do with being in the back seat as well, as if that made it somehow safer.
I personally always fasten the seatbelt and have never had the slightest odd look from the taxi driver.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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…
Both of us walked away without a single injury other than the bruises from the seat belt. I've worn them religiously ever since that day.