Buckle up: Dispatch readers share seat belt tales
I wrote on Tuesday about wrecking my car 28 years ago, and how I was spared serious injury or worse because I’d made the uncharacteristic – back then at least – decision to buckle my seat belt.
Until that crash, I had a bad habit of driving without my belt. That I buckled up that day was a fluke, probably because I was starting my first job out of college and it felt like the grown-up thing to do.
The column wasn’t revelatory. We all know the seat belts in our cars are there for a reason.
After the column ran, Dispatch readers shared stories of their own membership in what the State Highway Patrol calls the “Saved by the Belt” club. They were happy to have me pass on their stories.
First, here’s reader Jack Willer, who learned to buckle up while taking flying lessons in the 1940s.
“You did what you were told, period, and belted up every flight,” he said.
“Some years later, 1954, I was shocked when a church lady was killed in a one-car accident: It was a nice Sunday afternoon, there was a fresh 2-inch snow, and she was with her family on a relaxed drive. The car, going maybe 35 mph, slid off the road into a culvert, her door flew open, she was thrown out of the car, her head hit something, and she was DOA. Note that this was before the days of seat belts in cars.
“I was about to drive my family to Florida and was greatly concerned,” he continued. “I went to Western Auto, bought two seat belts, and with the help of a good neighbor, installed them in my new 1954 Ford. And, have used belts ever since in all my cars.”
Terry Dountz is a retired Franklin County deputy sheriff. He saw plenty of roadway tragedy in that job, but his exposure to it began in the early 1970s, when he worked for a hometown funeral home that handled emergency ambulance runs.
“From age 15 on I saw probably 120 fatal crashes,” Dountz said.
On his way to work at the sheriff’s office one morning, he encountered a crash that sounded much like mine.
“I came upon a Honda on its top in the middle of (Route) 104,” he wrote. “Girl driver was in car hanging upside down without a scratch. This was her second bad crash in a month, and seat belts saved her both times.”
Mike Adamkosky referred me to a letter to the editor he’d written in 1997. I pulled it from our archives.
“When I was broadsided on my driver’s side several years ago, I landed in intensive care,” he’d written. “The doctor said that if I hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, I would have bounced off the passengerside door and probably would have been killed. ... Buckle up, folks. The lives saved (and the insurance premiums lowered) might be your own.”
Julie Carroll Darling shared a story about her brother, Patrick. The events happened some 40 years ago, but they seem timely as we approach the holidays.
Back then Patrick was working at the Metal Container Corp. in Columbus, making beer cans for Anheuser-busch. That Christmas he’d worked until 6 a.m., when he planned to drive straight to their mom’s house in Toledo. Carroll Darling already was there with their mom and siblings, Kipp and Mary Anne.
Patrick’s expected arrival time came and went. They began to worry. The phone rang. Kipp answered, and after a short conversation left without explanation, saying only that he would be back. Carroll Darling takes it from there:
“After 45 minutes or so, the two brothers burst in the front door, both walking and seemingly unharmed ...,” she wrote. “Then (Patrick) began the story of his plunge from the top of a double-tiered highway bridge after hitting the sole patch of ice between Columbus and Toledo just as he exited the I-75 freeway at Perrysburg.”
He’d bounced down a grassy embankment, which was fortunate, she said. “Had he gone off the left side, he would have landed either on the ramp below or the interstate highway below that. His maroon Chevrolet truck was buried nose-first in the soil.”
Kipp and Patrick retrieved some battered presents from the back of the truck, along with a case of beer, a gift from Patrick’s employer. Carroll Darling recalled her brother’s words that morning:
“This really hammered home the value of seat belts,” he had said.
“A lot of times I’m in a hurry or just forget. But when I came out of the plant this morning, I said, ‘Ya know, I’m a little tired ... I think I just better put that belt on … just in case …’ Well, look at me: not a scratch or a bruise on me. My good looks are intact. Now, the Christmas presents don’t look as good. Sorry about that.”
Of course no one cared that the presents were in rough shape, Carroll Darling said.
“It didn’t matter. Pat was there. We broke out the beer by noon.” tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker