Safety Belts Case Study

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Shortly after entering the medical field as a newly graduated Registered Respiratory Therapist, a staffing organization in Indianapolis had contracted me into several skilled nursing facilities in and around my area. In one of the facilities that I travelled to a man in his early thirties had been placed on my services; this man had been the unfortunate victim of an automobile accident in which he had suffered a tremendous debilitating brain shearing injury, an injury that he will never recover from thereby leaving his family without a husband or a father. It is altogether unfortunate that he had not been wearing his safety belt at the time of his accident. If he had been wearing his safety belt he would have never sustained the type of devastating …show more content…

Should the government mandate the use of safety belts, or should the decision be left up to the individual? Having worked as a Registered Respiratory Therapist for many years, I have been directly involved in the care of many individuals who were the unfortunate victims of automobile accidents. Some of those individuals had good outcomes and others didn’t, as was the case with the young husband and father that I previously mentioned. It has however, always been abundantly clear that those who were wearing their safety belts at the time of their accident fared well better than those who were not, and typically always had significantly better outcomes regardless of what their injuries were. Based on that experience (alone?), as well as my experience with a few of my own fender benders, I am a ferocious advocate for the use of safety belts, regardless if the government mandates their use or not.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reports that there are mandatory safety belt laws in every state except New Hampshire. Today, in sixteen out of forty-nine states, seat belt laws are secondary, meaning a police officer may only ticket a driver for not wearing a seat belt if there is an additional reason for pulling the driver over. …show more content…

• “They’re uncomfortable.” Initially people may find seat belts uncomfortable simply because they aren’t used to wearing them. People who have made buckling up a habit can assert that once they became used to them, they were no longer uncomfortable. It cannot be overemphasized that the serious discomfort of an injury sustained in an automobile accident in no way compares to the discomfort you may feel while wearing a safety belt the first few times.
• “I’m a good driver, I won’t be in an accident.” Even if you are a good driver, you cannot control the other drivers on the road.
• “I’m not going far and I won’t be going fast.” Actually, this is the best time to wear a safety belt, especially since 80% of traffic fatalities occur within twenty-five miles of home and at speeds less than 40 miles per hour. (NHTSA, 2011) The man that I referenced at the beginning of this paper was only ten minutes from home and driving just forty miles per

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