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As part of my research for this no win, no fee website, I came across a report that showed Warwickshire police had released a warning about fines, whiplash and death being the risks of not wearing a seatbelt - based on the fact that they had found 207 people who had chosen to put themselves at risk of personal injury and penalty charges in this way.
These figures were achieved through spot checks, and I know a couple of people who would be horrified at the police invasion of personal privacy that they'd see in that - a man's car is also his castle, apparently. They'd argue that wearing or not wearing a seatbelt doesn't increase or decrease the risk of having a car accident, just the risk of personal injury to the driver once the crash occurs.
(Yes, I end up having related conversations outside work; I've clearly been here too long. No win, no fee, no other source of conversation. Must work on that.)
Now, if that were based on actual figures rather than pub common sense there might be a point to it; but it's also worth noting that the Warwickshire figures included people in the passenger seat and children. Much as you might argue that the passenger may be making an informed personal choice in the matter, is it fair to assume the child is?
You might also be able to argue that it's the taxpayer who's going to have to pick up the tab if the driver who chooses to allow himself or herself to suffer personal injury expects the NHS to work on repairing those injuries. And, if the taxpayer's going to have to pay for it, it's in the taxpayer's interests to ensure that expenditure is kept as low as possible - which is precisely what spot checks do.
There's also a history of people arguing that seatbelts actively cause personal injury in car crashes - and there's two versions of the argument. One is that the whiplash that might be suffered by a driver would not have occurred if the seatbelt had not restrained him or her, but that tends to be overruled simply by pointing out that it's very likely a different personal injury would have been suffered instead.
The other is the old story about a friend of a friend having an uncle who was trapped in a car by his seatbelt which refused to open and he couldn't escape the fire in his car that burned him to death. Myth-busting website Snopes.com collects this under its list of false urban myths, arguing that even in incidents where a car is submerged in water or engulfed in fire, people in seatbelts are more likely to escape as the car accident that got their car into that state is less likely to have knocked them about to the point of injury or unconsciousness.
Incidentally, one myth the site lists as true is that of an American advocate against seatbelt use who was killed in a car crash that he would have been likely to survive - maybe with whiplash injury, or worse, but alive - a mere three months after writing a strident anti-seatbelt article. As the Warwickshire police note, the financial penalty for their spot checks may be £30, but "The ultimate penalty is death."
