Buckle up: Do it for the ones you love

The saying, “Do it for the ones you love,” could apply to many different situations.  A general axiom, the first person you should love of course is yourself.  What is that old saying?  “You have to love yourself before you can love others.”  While this is true, if you are truly thinking of others when you climb in a vehicle, whether driving or a passenger, you would always buckle your seat belt.  The reason being is that you would not want to become the “elephant in the car”.  

Elephant in the car is a term applied to those who are not buckled up.  Simple physics tells us that force equals weight (or mass) times acceleration.  For example, if you weigh 175 pounds and the car is traveling at 40 mph and you are sitting behind the driver in a head-on collision, the force at which you keep traveling after the vehicle comes to a stop is with 7000 pounds of force.  That force can send you into the driver and even through the front windshield.    Newton’s second law of motion (F = M x A) is the reason unbuckled passengers unintentially hurt of kill other passengers.  In fact, the collision of passengers who are thrown at each other during a car accident accounts for one out of every four injuries sustained by passengers.  Also, one of the causes of automobile-related injury and death to children is being crushed by adults who are not wearing a belt.  (www.ehow.com).

During collisions, a car is able to stop in a fraction of a second, whereas the speed at which the passengers are moving remains unchanged until they are stopped by impact with the steering wheel, seat in front of them, other passenger or windshield.  Seatbelts help to distribute the collision forces across the passengers’ pelvis and chest – areas that most effectively withstand collision forces.

So, buckle up for you, and make sure that all of your passengers are buckled up too.  Don’t become the elephant in the car and make sure none of your passengers become one either.  Do it for you and the ones you love. A seat belt is the most effective method that drivers and occupants alike can use to protect themselves from the errors and poor decision making of others, including driving under the influence, driving in a tired state or failing to notice important indicators, such as traffic lights.

Please think of your loved ones waiting for you on the other end of your trip.  They will be extremely sad if something happened as a result of you not wearing a seatbelt.  Please buckle up, every trip, every time.