Microblog Memes

Allow me to try to change your mind.

Accidents are by definition unpredictable. If you try to pick and choose when to prepare, you are just increasing your risk in order to feel smart or brave or in control.

If you want to make safety a priority, and you should when it comes to the most dangerous thing you do every day, then it doesn’t take much thought to get to the realization that you have to do it every time.

It’s kind of like how I never get caught with my car windows open during a rain storm. It’s not because I roll them up when there’s rain in the forecast, it’s because I roll them up every time I turn off the car.

Most importantly, regarding your desire to have fewer steps to do, you have to think of it in terms of cognitive load rather than physical movement. Putting on my seatbelt is just automatic pre-drive muscle memory that adds virtually no time and does NOT require me to think about and decide whether to wear my belt. Likewise, there is no mental check list to verify that I’m wearing my belt because my body is used to the feel of it. If the belt isn’t on, it feels like i’m not all the way seated into the car yet.

In addition to the wisdom of 100% belt use for other reasons, a crash on a 30mph road can and will fuck you up. The only time I’ve had a broken bone repaired with a metal plate was after some dickhead ran into me in a low speed collision like that on a side road. The bruised sternum from the seat belt fucking sucked for a few weeks, but I bet having a steering wheel ram my own broken arm into my rib cage would have been worse.