>There was a time when seatbelts were optional equipment that you paid for or they threw in as a bonus. Years and years ago, you could choose between seatbelts and other options. Seatbelts weren't chosen very often because no one wore them.

Despite what I wrote against bike helmets for grownups, I was an early proponent of seatbelts. I got into the habit of buckling up (still can't imagine wearing a belt :) first in the late seventies when we had a law which wasn't mandatory, then again in the eighties when it became mandatory but nobody enforced it, and again in the nineties when Sloba found out this law was a great source of revenue - he never met money he wouldn't like. So there would be cops 50m from the border, where you're still crawling because of all the parked trucks, maneuvering cars and people walking around from the bar to the restroom to offices - and bang, there was your friendly traffic patrol, sitting in the ambush at the first gas station. You get to support the regime because you didn't buckle up while driving the neckbreaking 15mph.

That taught us, and I could start exercising my habit without feeling like a fool.