Fasten your seat belts

Did you know that, as it stands now, if you’re older than 16, Indiana law doesn’t require you to wear a seat belt if you’re riding in a car’s backseat, in an SUV or in a pickup truck?\nA bill requiring people in these situations to buckle up failed 65-34 on Wednesday to make it through the Indiana General Assembly’s House of Representatives.\nOpponents called it “government intrusion.” Some complained that, as the new version of the bill had removed an earlier amendment to classify trucks as passenger vehicles in funding decisions, it didn’t shift a large enough slice of the state road-maintenance budget to rural areas. The horror!\nIncredibly, the bill had already passed the House earlier (55 to 41). But the Senate removed the truck-classification amendment, prompting a new vote. Nice to know we have our priorities straight.\nSheesh. Have any of these people driven on State Road 37 to Indianapolis lately? Or, heck, just around Indy? Or Bloomington? Some days it seems amazing that there are any Hoosiers left – that some rush-hour misfortune doesn’t take us all out in some epic, “Blues Brothers”-esque pileup, leaving the state to be colonized by Kentuckians.\nAnd really, who hasn’t heard how seat belts improve survival rates of automobile crashes? In its 2003 Annual Assessment of Motor Vehicle Crashes, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported that 56 percent of the victims killed weren’t wearing safety belts. In Indiana, the number was 46 percent. And according to the organization’s 2003 Traffic Safety Facts, 73 percent of restraint-wearing occupants involved in fatal crashes survived – compared with only 42 percent for those not wearing restraints. The NHTSA’s 2002 Economic Impact of Crashes study found that, from 1975 to 2000, safety belts saved 135,000 lives and $585 billion in medical and other costs. But if all occupants during that period had used safety belts, 315,000 lives and $913 billion would have been saved, the study found.\nYet here in Indiana, only 55.8 percent of pickup-truck occupants wore seat belts in 2004, a survey by the Center for the Advancement of Transportation Safety found. Thirty-seven percent of the fatal crashes in the NHTSA’s 2003 report involved light trucks – but, as the Indianapolis Star reported March 31, Indiana is one of only two states that does not require people in pickups to wear safety restraints. (The other is Georgia.)\nThe seat-belt bill is now going to a House-Senate conference committee to see if the two chambers can work out a compromise.\nC’mon, politicians. It’s time to quit dickering and get on the ball – there are lives at stake.\nIt’s not like this problem doesn’t affect legislators. On April 12, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was critically injured when his SUV was involved in a high-speed crash. He was riding – you guessed it – without a seat belt.