Seatbelts save lives and reduce or eliminate injury.

FACT!

The Oman Traffic Law makes it mandatory for drivers and front-seat passengers to wear their seatbelts. However, many people simply ignore this.

Apart from the legal situation, however, by the simple act of buckling up we can halve the chance of being killed or seriously injured.

In a crash, many unrestrained people die due to being ejected from the vehicle. As indicated, a person who is not wearing a seatbelt is twice as likely to die or suffer injury as a person wearing one.

BABIES AND SMALL CHILDREN

Babies and children are the most vulnerable and stand little chance of survival if they are not properly restrained.

Children who are too big for baby seats should be suitably raised on a booster seat so that a normal adult seatbelt fits them safely and comfortably without creating the risk of injury by the belt itself.

Seatbelts have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world in the past 30 years, especially in countries which have enacted and enforced laws on universal seatbelt and child restraint use.

WHY WEAR SEATBELTS?

In a crash, or even just a sudden stop, our seatbelt protects us by:

• preventing us from being ejected from the vehicle
• reducing the risk or speed of a ‘secondary crash’: that of our head and body with the hard interior of the vehicle or the bodies of other occupants
• slowing our forward momentum gradually and distributing the crash forces evenly over the stronger parts of our body (pelvis and ribcage).

At impact, if we are not wearing a seatbelt, we will continue to travel forwards at the speed the vehicle was travelling prior to the crash until we are stopped by a solid object, such as the windscreen, dashboard or steering wheel.

An unbelted passenger in the rear seat is a serious danger to a belted passenger in front of him. In a head-on collision he will be thrown forward into the person seated in front with a force of 30–60 times his body weight. The odds of death in such cases are almost three times higher for the unbelted passenger, and twice as high for the person seated in front. Any passenger, even a child, not wearing a seatbelt can kill or seriously injure other occupants of the vehicle.

The most dangerous place for a baby or small child to travel is in the arms of his mother.

In a crash at only 50 km/h an infant is likely to be violently catapulted out of the mother’s arms, hitting the dashboard or windscreen; if seated in the back, hitting the seat in front with a force, as mentioned, of many times their body weight.

People think they can keep hold of and protect a baby or small child in such an impact.

They cannot!

Do not place a rear-facing child safety seat in the front of a vehicle. The back of the baby seat would be very close to the dashboard and as the airbag deployed in a crash it would strike it and possibly cause serious injury to the child.

Thoroughly read the vehicle and child seat manufacturer’s instructions regarding how it may be permissible to place a baby seat on the front passenger seat.

A FINAL THOUGHT

If you sat in a fast fairground ride or rollercoaster and there was nothing to restrain you, would you still take the ride?

I hope your answer is that you would not.

So why take the risk in a vehicle?

Always use seatbelts and child restraints. The lives of you and your loved ones depend on it.

Safe driving!

(Jeremy Fox is a British driving and road safety expert. Since 2009, he has managed the driver-training operations of Technical & Administrative Training Institute. He considers it his privilege to have contributed to Oman’s improved road safety.)