Wearing Your Seatbelt

We’ve heard it time and time again, and it has also been proven time and time again. Seatbelts save lives. The seatbelt is the single most effective safety device for preventing injuries and death. Just by buckling up your seatbelt, your chances of injuries during a crash are reduced by half.

There are 5 ways that seatbelts help prevent the occupants of a vehicle from obtaining serious injuries ;

The seatbelt keeps you inside the car – The dangers of you being ejected from the vehicle are a greater risk to your life. The seatbelt keeps you safe and secure inside the vehicle to avoid deadly ejections. Someone who is thrown from a vehicle is up to 4 times more likely to be killed than those who stay inside.

It restrains the strongest parts of the body – The seatbelt is designed specifically to come in contact with the strongest parts of your body. The seatbelt stays across the hips and in-between the shoulders. You can have your seatbelt adjusted to fit better. The seatbelt strap for your lap should fit comfortably over your hip/thigh area and not ride up onto your stomach. Don’t make it a habit of moving the shoulder strap under your shoulder or behind your back, these can lead to serious injury.

Spreads any force from a collision – The seatbelt spread across your lap and shoulders can spread the force of a crash over a wide area of the body. Resulting in less stress on one specific area of the body. The shoulder strap assists in keeping you head and upper body as far away front he steering wheel, dashboard and other hard interior parts of the car should you have to suddenly stop or are hit from the rear by another car.

Helps the body slow down – When there is a drastic change in the speed of the vehicle, that is a common cause of injury. The seatbelt helps extend the time it can take for you to slow down in an accident.

Protects your spinal cord and brain – The design of the seatbelt is also made to protect your brain and spinal cord. The thing with head injuries is that it may be hard to see immediately but can turn out to be deadly. Spinal cord injuries can also have the same consequence.

Remember that everyone in a vehicle must be wearing a seatbelt or have a child in a child seat. In Ontario the penalty for not wearing a seatbelt is a fine between $200.00 and $1000.00 and two demerit points.