Seatbelts Save Lives in Car Accidents

Kim Kardashian may want for nothing in life, but fame and fortune are no guarantees of safety.
E!’s hit show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” recently aired dash-cam footage of a frightening February car accident involving the 34-year-old reality television star and her sisters during a ski vacation in Montana. After the automobile the women were riding in hit a patch of ice, it skidded into oncoming traffic before coming to a rest in a roadside ditch. Kardashian, traveling in the back seat with her toddler daughter North West, was not wearing a seatbelt.

By all accounts, Kardashian was fortunate to have escaped the incident unharmed. The use of a seatbelt is the fastest and easiest way to ensure a safe arrival at your destination. That is because an unrestrained passenger is twice as likely to sustain a moderate to serious injury in a car accident. Moreover, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, front-seat passengers are 45% more likely to die in a car accident when they do not use a seatbelt.

SEATBELT USE GUARDS AGAINST SERIOUS INJURIES
Not only will the use of a seatbelt lessen the odds of being ejected – an event which itself quadruples the rate of fatal injury – seatbelts guard against head and neck injuries by protecting the upper body from impacting features in a car’s interior, such as a steering wheel or windshield. Seatbelts also work to spread the forces associated with a crash throughout the body, lessening the odds of a catastrophic injury, and provide valuable extra time for a driver or passenger to slow down with their vehicle. Additionally, New Jersey car accident lawyers note that a seatbelt will help prevent occupants from injuring each other. The University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center maintains that an unrestrained backseat passenger can travel to the front seat with a force of 3.5 tons during a 30-mile-per-hour crash.

In New Jersey, seatbelt usage is not optional. All drivers and passengers are required to use a seatbelt pursuant to New Jersey’s Seatbelt Law, which also authorizes police to cite backseat passengers 18 and older for not buckling up. Additionally a driver is legally responsible for ensuring that all passengers under the age of 18 are properly restrained, whether it is with a traditional seatbelt or through the use of a child safety or booster seat. According to New Jersey’s Division of Highway Traffic Safety, 29% of all fatal car accidents involving children eight and under resulted from seatbelt non-use.