>>>>>Seat belts are forced on people by the government. First they started with the driver, then both front seat passengers, now, in TN, everyone in the vehicle must wear them.
>>>>>
>>>>>Motorcycle riders must wear helmets in many states.
>>>>>
>>>>>Smokers are not allowed to smoke in their own homes in some states.
>>>>>
>>>>>In some states, only cops and criminals can carry guns.
>>>>>
>>>>>Those laws bother me more than the government monitoring phone calls and emails that involve people from other countries. It's a different day.
>>>>
>>>>Balderdash! The examples impinge only on your right to kill yourself, or have your back-seat kids kill you in an accident - and you a cop and all! OK, smoking in your own home, unless that's qualified to say "where kids are present", say, is a bit much
>>>
>>>The point was that we are slowly losing freedoms....
>>
>>But you can very quickly lose a great deal more if you don't wear a seat belt. Besides, it's not just a case of eroding YOUR freedoms - how about the right to life of the innocent passengers in the car, esp. the kids, who haven't been educated as to the advantages of belts?
>>
>My life was saved because I WASN'T wearing a seat belt. I had an accident when I was about 17, where a woman ran a stop sign and totalled the van I was driving. I don't know if I went out the windshielf or the door, because it knocked me out. But, I was thrown into the street and ultimately on the curb, while the van flipped over about three times and wound up wrapped around a tree. My parents came to the accident site after I had already been transported to the hospital, and my mother said she just knew I was either mangled or dead. All I had was scraped knees and a little bout with shock.
>I can tell you without fear of contridiction, I wouldn't want to try that again, and if I had been wearing a seat belt, I would not be here today!

AYe, but if the same accident had happened on a motorway: 1) I doubt whethere your body would have reacted favourably to hitting the asphalt at 70 mph 2) you may have been thrown clear but right under the wheels of another car doing 70 mph.

There are always those who say something similar to you. There are also plenty of people for whom, the last thing that went through their minds, before death, was the head of the passenger behind them, who wasn't belted up.

I say "Clunk-click every trip" as an old TV ad in the UK used to say.