Help Them Avoid Being ‘If-Onlys’

When I was a daily newspaper reporter, I and my colleagues would take turns working the weekend “cops” shifts, meaning we’d have to pull a Saturday or Sunday writing news items about various mayhem.

When warm weather broke, it was almost inevitable that some motorcyclist would die that day on a local roadway and thus be written about in the copy we produced as the rest of the world continued about its business.

Of course motorcyclists don’t wear seat belts, but the crashes made me think about how vulnerable occupants of other vehicles are, even when they buckle up, let alone if they don’t. I had to write about quite a few of the unfortunate ones over the years.

After all, we’re piloting a couple thousand pounds of equipment at sometimes pretty fast speeds. If something goes wrong, well, I don’t even like to think about it.

Apparently a lot of people don’t like to think about seat belts. According to recently released statistics, a majority of vehicle occupants killed in traffic accidents in both urban and rural areas weren’t belted at the time, more so in rural areas. The numbers tick up even further when you’re talking about younger travelers, and especially male ones – particularly after dark.

The numbers are sobering: More than 11,000 passenger vehicle occupants killed in 2022 weren’t wearing seat belts, 57% of them in nighttime accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Fatalities were higher in the 18- to 34-year-old population: 63% weren’t buckled in nighttime crashes; for males in that age range, it was 66%.

In the long, hot summer, which goes with cars and youth like mustard on a hotdog, it seems wise to keep that in mind and encourage younger vehicle buyers to buckle up.

Seat belt use is high nowadays. NHTSA says the rate hit a record 92% last year, and it estimates the practice saved the lives of nearly 15,000 passenger car occupants in 2017 alone.

There are still those segments of the traveling population who don’t bother, at least part of the time, as seen in the above nighttime statistics. It’s one of those “if only” regrets I’m sure a lot of people have thought about when mourning their lost loved ones.

NHTSA conducted a late-spring ad campaign targeted at rural and younger drivers in an effort to convince holdouts of the difference buckling up can make. As a public service, dealers might consider giving friendly reminders, especially when working with younger customers.

Hannah Mitchell is executive editor of Auto Dealer Today. A former daily newspaper journalist, her first car was a hand-me-down Chevrolet Nova.