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20
Jan
2019
I’ve had seatbelts in my cars since 1966. They didn’t come with the car; I had to install them myself.
My friends scoffed. “I’d rather be thrown clear in a crash,” they declared.
I can only say that if it weren’t for seatbelts, I wouldn’t be writing this column today.
While seatbelts were still controversial, magazines like Popular Scienceand Popular Mechanics invited readers to conduct their own experiments. Tape an egg securely inside a cardboard box and drop it on the floor; the egg will usually survive. Put a loose egg inside a cardboard box and drop it; the egg will usually break. Drop an unboxed egg, the equivalent of being thrown clear in a crash; the egg will always smash. Always.
It took another ten years for the first Canadian province to make seatbelts mandatory in new cars.
Today, we take seatbelts for granted. An estimated 91 per cent of Canadians use seatbelts whenever they enter a car. Only Japan and Sweden rank higher.
Seatbelts have become the norm.
Except in buses. Especially school buses.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: School buses, seatbelts, crashes, deaths