"JNugent" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
news:
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>
> Similarly, it was only the (1983) change in the law on seatbelts that made
> me wear one. It's becoming history now (almost 25 years), but back then, a
> passenger who belted up was sometimes seen as lacking confidence in the
> driver in a very obvious way, whilst a driver belting up could be
> perceived as preparing for an accident and make a passenger nervous!
I can remember my friend's dad in the 1970s being very scathing about seat
belts, particularly after (he said) *not* wearing a seat belt saved him from
being squished when someone T-boned him and because he wasn't wearing a seat
belt he was able to move across to the passenger seat before it happened -
it was a car with a bench set in the front: couldn't do it in a modern car!
However my dad drummed into my sister and me that we must always wear our
seat belts if we sat in the front. And mum and dad enforced this rigidly: on
one occasion I took my belt off because I didn't like feeling constrained by
it (it was an old-style non-inertia belt) and dad stopped immediately and
read the riot act: "I don't set off again until you put it on or get in the
back seat".
Mum's car was a different matter: a 1960 Morris Minor with shiny leather
seats, no seat belts and no latch to stop the front seats from tipping up
(it was a 2-door car). On one occasion, I was sitting in the front and my
sister was behind me in the back. Mum had to stop quickly. I braced myself
and I'd probably have been OK except that my sister shot forward, pushing
the backrest of the seat forward and catapulting me out of my seat into the
very hard, unforgiving metal dashboard. Ouch!!! After that, Dad enquired
about getting seat belts fitted but found that the door pillars and floor
pan weren't strong enough to take the mountings.
Compared with my friends at school, I think we were probably fairly rare in
the 70s in wearing seat belts.
The change in the law in 1983, and the later one making it compulsory to
wear seat belts in the back, had no effect on me: I was already always
wearing one. To this day, I do it automatically as soon as I get in a car,
and I feel "undressed" without a seat belt on.
Turning to cycle helmets: I never used to wear one when I had my first bike
in the 70s and 80s, but then I don't remember seeing them in the shops or
seeing anyone wearing on. When I bought my new bike a few years ago and took
up cycling again, I bought one as a matter of course, especially after the
friend who was with me when I bought the bike had recently come off her bike
(fortunately at low speed) and her helmet had protected her. It would never
occur to me not to wear a helmet - indeed one day I set off without putting
mine on, realised that something wasn't right, turned round at the end of
the road and came back for it.
Having said that, the article quoted earlier in this thread makes
interesting reading. Maybe the case for wearing a cycle helmet is less
clear-cut than for a motorbike helmet (which tends to be larger, thicker and
covers the full head/jaw, not just the top of the head), and certainly the
case for wearing a seat belt, with the risk of flying through the windscreen
without one, is pretty clear-cut.
My gut feeling is that any form of protection is better than none, though
maybe the degree of protection is less than I might expect.
I wonder how long it will be before someone suggests that all cyclists
should wear motorbike leathers to protect them from nasty abrasions if they
come off the bike and scrape along the road! As I'm going down a steep hill,
I sometimes think what the road surface could do to me if I were to hit a
pothole and come off. But cycling in a teeshirt and shorts in hot weather is
much cooler than wearing even long trousers and a long-sleeved shirt, never
mind leathers.
