My Own Son Didn't Listen

Despite the recent focus on the terrible problems of drunken driving or on newly identified problems such as aggressive driving, increasing seat-belt use is still the single most effective thing we can do to save lives on America's roadways. As a flight nurse and an emergency health-care giver, I have witnessed the difference a seat belt makes. The most satisfying part of my job is the opportunity to help save lives. The most difficult part is seeing unbelted children and adults who have been violently ejected from their vehicles or thrown into the windshield and knowing that their terrible injuries or death could have been prevented. The only reason Nik died was that he was not wearing his seat belt.

Based on my firsthand experience, I tried to drill into my four children the importance of wearing seat belts. When Nik was learning to drive, I had him take a driver's ed course sponsored by my auto-insurance company. We even made a visit to a young man recovering in an intensive-care unit who is now a quadriplegic because he wasn't wearing his seat belt.

I did everything I could think of to get Nik to buckle up. Unfortunately, the threat of serious injury or even death is not enough to persuade some people--especially young people, who believe they are invincible--to always buckle up.

The only proven way to get people who can't be convinced through public education to use a seat belt is a real threat of a ticket and fine. Belt use is about 15 percent higher in states with ""standard'' enforcement laws, where police officers treat failure to buckle up like every other traffic offense. In states with weak ""secondary'' enforcement, officers must first observe a motorist committing a traffic violation before ticketing for failure to use a belt. I feel certain that if Nik had known there was a real chance of getting stopped and given a ticket for not wearing his seat belt, he would still be alive today.

Ironically, in the months before my son's death, I had joined my local Safe Kids Coalition to help increase belt use by working to pass a standard belt law. While the challenge seemed great--belt use in Oklahoma was 48 percent--we were encouraged by the experiences of other states. Louisiana, which recently upgraded its belt law to standard enforcement, saw its belt use jump from 50 to 68 percent in just three years.

Through my advocacy work I also learned how weak belt laws leave innocent young children at risk. Adults who don't buckle up are telling children it's all right not to use a seat belt. More than 75 percent of the time, when the driver is unbelted, children and other passengers in that vehicle will be unbelted as well. If every state in the nation adopted a standard-enforcement law, we could save 1,900 lives and prevent more than 49,000 injuries a year.