Volume 1, Issue 1
Page 6
Seatbelts and Teens
Jennifer Boone
Do you wear one? In the state of Kentucky, it is a law that in a car or motorized vehicle you must wear a seatbelt or you could get pulled over and get a twenty-five dollar ticket. How do teens react to this law? Sixty-five out of a hundred teens say they wear their seatbelts while the other thirty-five say they don‟t. Some of the thirty-five say they don‟t trust seat belts and they can hurt you just as easily as they can help you, but how? They Hurt? Thirty percent of the teens surveyed said they have been in a situation when a seatbelt could have hurt them. Twenty-five percent say they have been in a situation when a seatbelt has or could have helped them. The other forty-five percent say they have never been in either one of those situations. Many people think that is impossible for a seat belt to hurt someone but I know different. My cousin was in a bad car accident about a year ago and even though the seatbelt didn‟t kill him it did hurt him. He had a punctured lung and a big open gash starting behind his ear all the way down to
his neck. When the accident happened, his seatbelt locked up so when he slung forward it put pressure against his lung and cut his neck. That‟s just one way that a seatbelt can hurt you; there are other ways such as you could run into a lake or a river and the seat belt jam. If that happens and you can‟t get out you could die.
Getting Lucky
Even though seatbelts can Another way is hurt people they can also you could hit a tree help people. They are built and the seatbelt lock to stop someone from beup and jam so once ing ejected out of the veagain you would be hicle, hitting the windshield, or being thrown all over the vehicle. My mom‟s friend, Thomas, was drinking and driving one Only 65% of night in a Blazer, that he had just bought my mom teens at a week before. He was coming down 84 between Hodgenville and Sonora; LCHS wear another car was coming (on the opposite side of a seatbelt. the road). As the car was going past Thomas over corrected and flipped the blazer six times. The officer stuck. One way to stated „If Thomas would prevent yourself from not have been wearing his getting stuck is by carseatbelt he probably rying a knife or a razor would have died. He is blade with you in the very lucky that all he got vehicle at all times. out of this was four stitchThat way if the seates, it could have been belt gets stuck you plenty worse.‟ That is just a can cut it off. small example of how a
seatbelt can save you. Now You Know So now you see seatbelts can help you but they can also hurt you. The majority of high school students actually wear their seatbelts, which is a good thing. A lot of people still think the seatbelt law is a joke, though, but they can still save people‟s lives and people should still wear them. There is a stronger chance of a seatbelt helping someone then hurting them. If my cousin wouldn‟t have been wearing his seatbelt that night the doctors said he probably would have been dead. Even though seatbelts can be detrimental, they are still very safe. They can save your life if you are in an accident. Be smart and wear your seatbelt.