Re: Getting Students to Use Seatbelts

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

Lap belts and shoulder straps ...

> It is useful to remind kids how important the seatbelts are.
> Can somebody share real statistical data? For example,
> comparing numbers of deaths in 10,000 accidents with
> and without wearing the belts. I will be happy to pass
> such information to students.
> Ludwik Kowalski

Up here (Canada) I get the impression that seatbelt use is much more
common, the police "buckle up for safety" campaigns ended years ago and
the big recent campaigns I can picture ads for is "speed kills".  So in
class I always do questions about 'how fast you'll be going when you hit
object x, even though your friend doing the speed limit was able to
stop'.  That square factor in the kinetic energy really 'kills' you.

The sad fact about seat belts though is that even though their "use" is
widespread here, the misuse is also very widespread.  I've known people
to reject a kid's booster seat because they mistakenly thought it was
built wrong (putting the belt across the child's legs when they thought
it should go across the tummy).  Calling it a 'lap belt' is a good way
to remind people that in a high speed collision they really don't want
to get folded in half through their soft parts.  A decade ago my wife
and I took a course through the "infant and toddler safety association"
in Waterloo Ont.  Their figures for child car seats were that only about
25% were up to standard, installed correctly (e.g. read the manual to
see which set of bars the seat belt is supposed to go through - they had
some spectacular video footage of crash tests where cars seats flew to
pieces in a collsion if installed incorrectly), with the child buckled
in appropriately (e.g. "two fingers of slack above the shoulders" in the
straps)... and that there was a similar level ignorance about correct
use of adult lap belts and shoulder straps.  If someone wants to really
get into the importance of seat belts in a physics class, perhaps some
discussion of why there is is correct way to wear one would help hammer
the point home.