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The belt, stupid

THE recent spate of young people dying in car accidents is depressing. In the past three months, in three separate crashes, six young lives were lost.

Sun, Mar 02, 2008
The Straits Times

THE recent spate of young people dying in car accidents is depressing. In the past three months, in three separate crashes, six young lives were lost. All the victims were in their late teens or early 20s. Last Sunday, another car with young people inside went off the road in Yishun Avenue 1. The car, a new Mazda RX-8, was a mangled wreck, but fortunately, the men, in their early 20s, had only minor injuries. Many reasons have been given for the trend of more young people dying in road accidents, from easy access to cars to raging hormones to a false sense of invulnerability. But more to the point, say car experts, is that there is a mismatch between the hardware and the software. Cars have become more powerful over the years, but drivers have not been trained to a commensurate level of proficiency to handle them. The Mazda RX-8, for example, is as powerful as the Ferrari of 25 years ago. There is a need to update teaching in driving skills, they suggest.

But the single most important thing that could prevent more deaths in accidents is the seat belt, the experts stress. The six men who died in the three crashes had all been flung out of the cars they were travelling in. They had not put on their seat belts. In the Yishun crash, what saved the four men from more serious injuries or even death could be put down to the fact they had seat belts on. In the 1997 crash that killed Princess Diana, her boyfriend and the driver, the only survivor was her bodyguard. He had his seat belt on. A CNN-commissioned computer simulation analysis suggested that Princess Diana's life could have been saved if she had buckled up. The traffic police here must step up their vigilance of motorists and their passengers who do not belt up, and mete out more severe punishment to those who flout the rule.

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