Fatalities show need for buckling up

In Jefferson County there have been seven crashes with fatalities since March 29. The crashes all have one thing in common: the eight who died were not wearing seat belts.

Some of those recent wrecks were:

A Bonne Terre woman who was not wearing a seat belt was killed May 31 in a head-on crash on Route 21 near Hillsboro. The driver of the other car was wearing a seat belt and escaped injury.On June 2, a 15-year-old De Soto girl was killed and her 17-year-old sister seriously injured when their car veered off the road and struck a concrete culvert. A third person in the car who was wearing a seat belt suffered only minor injuries.

Last week, a House Springs man died and his 8-year-old son injured after being ejected from his car in a two-car motor vehicle accident at the intersection of Route 30 and Sugar Creek Road. Neither was wearing seat belts. The driver of the other vehicle, who was buckled up, sustained non life-threatening injuries.

On Wednesday that same week, two men were killed in a head-on crash on Route 21 near De Soto. Neither was wearing seat belts. The 80-year-old driver of a third vehicle that was sideswiped in the same crash, was wearing a seat belt and escaped injury.

"This highlights in the most dramatic way possible the need to utilize seat belts when you operate your vehicle," Jefferson County Sheriff Glenn Boyer said.

Despite campaigns such as "Click it or Ticket" that promote seat belt use, Capt. Tim Hull of the Missouri State Highway Patrol said nearly 25 percent of Missourians still don't buckle up.

"We're as close as we're going to get (to nearing compliance) without a primary seat belt law," he said.

According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Web site, a 2006 study showed that 55 percent of the nation's fatalities ages 16 and older were people not wearing a seat belt.

Data recorded from the Missouri State Highway Patrol (MSHP) showed that of the drivers of cars, trucks, vans and motor homes killed in 2006 in Missouri, only 29.2 percent were wearing seat belts. Of the passengers killed in these types of vehicles, 30 percent were buckled up. The data shows that 96 percent of people wearing a seat belt escaped with little or no injury.

According to the MSHP, those who don't buckle up have a one in four chance of being injured and a one in 31 chance of being killed. For those who wear seat belts, the odds jump to a one in 1,300 chance of a fatality.

The MSHP statistics show that so far this year, there have been 18 fatal crashes in Jefferson County. Last year at this time, there were 10.

Boyer said the advent of air bags has fooled some people into thinking seat belts are no longer necessary.

"That's simply not true," he said. "While air bags will help keep you stationary in a front or side impact crash, they will not keep you from being ejected during a roll-over. People need to use their seat belts whether or not their cars are equipped with air bags."

The MSHP's statistics from 2006 show that of people involved in a roll-over crash, 3 percent of those ejected were wearing seat belts and 51 percent of those partially ejected were wearing seat belts.

Hull has had people tell him they would have been killed in an accident had they been wearing a seat belt. For the most part, he said this is untrue.

"People have argued that they don't want to be wearing a seat belt if their car catches on fire or goes into the water," he said. "While it's true a seat belt is probably not going to save someone from being killed if they're hit by a train, less than one-half of 1 percent of accidents end up on fire or in the water."

Hull investigated an accident where a young man had been celebrating his 21st birthday when he went around a curve too fast.

"Like we see so many times, his right front tire went off the road and he over corrected, losing control of his vehicle," he said. "He ended up hitting a tree with his front tire and it spun him around. The engine compartment caught on fire, but all four doors were fully functional and would open.

"The young man wasn't wearing a seat belt, and the impact threw him into the back seat, knocking him unconscious. He died when the rest of the car caught fire. Had he been wearing a seat belt, he probably would have escaped uninjured."