Why Should You Wear a Seat Belt?

New York Used Cars | St. James Preowned Car Dealer

Click. It’s the sound that saves lives every day. It’s the sound of a seat belt being securely fastened. No other single small daily act can so drastically change your life as can wearing your seat belt. “Lap and shoulder belts are about 50 percent effective in preventing fatal injuries to front‐seat occupants in crashes of all kinds,” says Mike Ciccone, senior director of crashworthiness evaluations at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). In fact, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), seat belt use saved 12,802 lives in 2014 alone. Need a few more reasons to buckle up? Take a closer look at the invention, technology, and laws behind seat belt usage.

• 1885: First seat belt patent is issued by the U.S. Patent Office
• 1949-50: Nash Motors Company implements lap belts in select models
• 1959: First three-point safety belt invented in Sweden by Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin
• 1968: The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards law is passed which requires all new cars in the U.S. to include lap or shoulder belts
• 1984: The “primary enforcement law” is passed in New York, enabling police officers to pull over and issue tickets to drivers not wearing seat belts
• 1993: The “Click It or Ticket” campaign, which would later become a national slogan, is launched in North Carolina and drastically increases seat belt use from 65 percent to 81 percent
• 2015: States which have adopted “primary enforcement laws” report seat belt usage at 91 percent; states with only “secondary enforcement laws” or none at all estimate seat belt usage at 79 percent

In today’s rushed and hectic world, it’s certainly easy to take the little things for granted. Seat belt usage, however, is one such little thing that is simply too important to neglect. Protect yourself and your family by buckling your seat belt every time you’re in a vehicle. For more information about the life-saving abilities of seat belts, visit your Smithtown Preowned Car Dealer today. Certified Head Quarters is now serving Long Island, Suffolk County, and the St James surrounding areas!