So, what’s your excuse? It's not a difficult task to perform is it?. You unlock the door, get into the driver’s seat, put the key in the ignition lock and start the engine. All you have to do now is to reach over your right shoulder, grab hold of the belt, pull it across your body and clip it home. So why is it that so many people don’t or won’t do it?

Before we get into that let us look at exactly what a seat belt does.

“It stops you going through the windscreen!”

The chances of you actually going through the windscreen in a car during a collision are actually quite remote, and a belief that this will always happen is largely a myth, especially if you are seated in the driving seat.  To understand this, the next time you get into your car just pause for a moment or two and think about the seatbelt and the job that it actually does.

The front seats of your car are mounted on runners and will have some means of adjusting the forward and rearward position to allow for your height, or at least, the length of your legs. In most cases this will be some sort of mechanical and hand operated device and when you operate the lever or knob you will withdraw a steel pin(s) affixed to the seat and which locate into a groove, slot or one of a series of differently spaced locating holes, along the runners. Those locking pins measure not much different than about half a centimetre in diameter, which is about the thickness of a pencil. How much force do you think those locking pins are able to cope with? The answer to that is certainly nowhere near the amount of force involved during a reasonably severe collision, which occurs even at what you may regard as a low speed.

Imagine you are driving along quite happily at 30mph, and without wearing your belt.  Through circumstances for which you have not accounted for, or for some other uncontrollable factor, you have a crash into another car or at least a solid object. For the unbelted driver the seat adjustment locking pins holding the seat in position on the seat runners sheer off and your seat now runs forward on its runners just like a train on rails. Do you go through the windscreen? Unlikely, as what happens in the real world is that your seat accelerates forward and your knees go into and under the dashboard.  This exerts force downward through your lower-legs towards the floor of the car and to your feet. As your feet are on the floor, and remember that the floor may be buckling upward at this point also, that force has to be dissipated somewhere, and the route it uses to do that is to shatter your legs between knee and ankle - most likely, to shatter your ankles as well. Remember also the seat at this point is still trying to go forward, as more force has yet to be dissipated.

Most will be aware that your upper leg is located and jointed to your pelvis by a ball of bone at the top of the limb, which locates into a socket within the pelvis itself. Well, snap! Now those have gone too, as well as the pelvic bone. If you think this is bad then consider this. By the time the vehicle has come to rest you are probably well and truly trapped, and even if you are still alive at this point, and you are lucky, someone will have called for the emergency services. How long does that take for them to get there, and when they do, what happens then?  Firstly, you need to be removed from the car, and with two shattered shins, ankles, hips and possibly a broken pelvis, how do you think it is going to feel when a bunch of Fire and Rescue people start pulling and pushing at you in order to achieve this? Make no mistake, you will be screaming your lungs out, that is unless you have had your chest caved in by the steering wheel resulting in those being punctured as well!

If you think this sounds too fantastic to be worthy of being considered to be true, just think again and read what I write with some serious concern.  I am someone who has been a round the block a few times and who has spent over 20-years of attending road collisions, and who has seen the scenario above far too many times.  It happens with sickening regularity I promise.  However, there will still be those who doubt the wisdom, and will do so mainly through some fanciful idea that if they have a smash, their situation will be different.

So often I would speak to the sceptics. “I knew a bloke that was thrown out of his car, which then caught fire. If he had been wearing his belt he would have been trapped in there and would have burned to death.”

How many times have I heard this? Not only is it is complete rubbish, as the chances of this happening in the way as described are probably millions to one, but if that one lucky person does exist then there is a heck of a lot of people I have met who knew him enough for him to tell them about his escape.

Think about the supposed scenario.  With all those horrific injuries, and whilst trapped in the car with your shattered legs and pelvis, do you honestly believe that you would be able to get out of the car if it caught fire? At least if you had been wearing your belt you would stand some sort of a chance of being fit enough to get clear.  Wedged under the dash and you have no chance.

Moving on in our lesson as to what job a seat belt performs, next time you are in your car, take a look at the clasp part of the seat belt assembly - the part that you slot the buckle of the belt into. What is this fixed to? You will see that it is bolted to the vehicle floor, and if you could inspect it further, you would see that the floor in this area of the car has been re-enforced so as to provide additional strength. The purpose of it being constructed in this manner is that the seatbelt doesn’t just restrain you within the vehicle, but it actually keeps your seat in place too.  That business of your seat running along on its mountings like a train on rails, the seat belt prevents all of that and keeps you back from the dashboard.

Now sit in your car and activate the seat adjustment lever and pull your seat as far forward as it will go. Firstly, can you get it there, as in to the full extent of its travel?  Even if you can, look at where your knees are and now imagine that you have a power-lifting champion in your back seat and who is pushing you forward with all his strength.  Perhaps you will have some ideas as to what would happen if the seat continued to move forward - beyond the point of maximum adjustment.

In an impact at just 30mph your body weight will multiply several times, and to a point that can be measured, not in lbs or stone, but in tonnes. If you ever think you could hold yourself back in your seat with your arms braced to the steering wheel or dashboard, do you think that you are strong enough to cope with the forces involved and that you could stop you and your seat going forward? Not a hope!

In the back of a car the unbelted passenger is not only in very easy danger of sustaining serious or fatal injuries, but even if they do survive, they stand a very high chance of killing the person in the front of the car who is sitting immediately in front of them.

Anyone who does not wear their seat belt because they can’t be bothered is a fool, and anyone who doesn’t wear it because they don’t feel they need to, is an even bigger fool.  I have been to numerous collisions where there have been several people in a vehicle and where not all have been wearing belts.  In the case of what I would term as a substantial collision, people not wearing a seatbelt nearly always die.  People who do wear belts nearly always live.

Before I conclude this piece I want to send a special message to those who have children.  I used to see some horrific sights involving children, and I don’t just mean collision victims.  I recall coming up behind a Ford Fiesta one day, travelling in lane-3 of a motorway and with a 3-year old boy lying full-length across the parcel shelf in the back window, playing with a toy car as if he were on his bedroom floor.  When I stopped the car, and spoke to mum and dad who were in the front, they just looked blank and saying they hadn’t realised.

Another one I used to get from parents quite a lot was, “Well we put the belts on them when we start off, but they won’t stay in them.”

If you take your kids out in the car, and you choose not to wear your belt, what sort of message do you think that gives to the young ones?  What it says is that it is actually okay not to put the belt on, and that to go without isn’t actually that big a deal.  Without wanting to appear to be self-righteous, with both my kids, right from when they were very young, if I started the car engine before they had put their belts on they would shout, yell and scream almost in panic in case I would move off before they were ready.  Isn’t that a better situation?

Adults who say they forgot to put the belt on is a very lame and stupid excuse.  Quite simply, any person who always wears a seatbelt, and who drove off without putting it on, would instantly feel as though something was wrong.  It would be like walking out of your front door and into the street having forgotten to put your clothes on.

If you still have an excuse for not wearing a seat belt, or for not taking the wearing of seatbelts seriously, you are fooling no one else but yourself.