Wear Them Always

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30063, 22 February 1963, Page 15

Wear Them Always

T’HE latest road safety x slogan in the United State* is: “Don’t be caught dead sitting on your safety belt.” The same slogan should be adopted in New Zealand, says Mr J. M. Nicklin, of Auckland, managing director of this country’s largest safety-belt manufacturing company.

Numbers of people who have fitted safety belt* in their cars do not bother to wear them when driving around town. “They have the idea that belts are only necessary for high-speed travel. Nothing is further from the truth. Belts should be worn any time a car is on the move.

‘‘By far the biggest proportion of crash deaths and serious injuries occur in cars traveling at under 30 miles an hour and within a few miles of the drivers’ homes.

“People have a sense of security when they are travelling at low speeds. But this feeling is based on a fallacy. Two cars crashing into each other at 25 miles an hour create an impact force just as great—and just as shattering to life and limb—as a single car crashing at 50 miles an hour.

“In other words, there’s far more risk to life and limb involved in a low-speed trip through busy town streets with many intersections, to the office or to the grocer's, than there is in a high-speed drive of several hundred miles on the open highway.”

Mr Nicklin said that New Zealanders were now fitting car safety belts in great numbers, and in the last year the belts had saved numerous drivers and passengers from death or serious injury.

“But belts won’t save people who aren’t wearing them.”