A few seconds that could save your life
From fires, to falls, to car wrecks, we cover serious and often tragic accidents in the Taos News, and from time to time, readers will ask us why. It’s a question sometimes posed in a clearly rhetorical way, rooted in an assumption that all news organizations must relish bad news. This is a reductionist’s viewpoint, however, one that discounts the toll bad news takes on a newspaper’s staff, who have to get up close and personal with crash scenes and sometimes spend hours on the phone with next of kin.
The reason for covering this type of news, beyond the basic record-keeping, rumor-dispelling function that accurate reporting serves, is that there’s often a lesson to be learned from the story. Because fatal car wrecks or those that cause serious injuries are the most common types of accidents we cover, the lesson we see come up most often is that everyone — always — should fasten their seat belt when driving or riding in a vehicle.
No one knows this better in our community than the men and women who conduct crash investigations, where the basic question they look to answer pertains to how the crash occurred, and in the case of injury or death, what factors contributed to the bodily harm. As you’ll read in this week’s data story by Liam Easley, proper use of a seatbelt is the number one, most important factor in preventing serious injury or death when someone is involved in a car accident, and as much as this information circulates in school and driver’s safety courses, not enough people apply this knowledge.
Some 40,000 Americans die in car accidents each year, and according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 51 percent of passenger vehicle occupants who were killed in 2020 were unrestrained. Here in Taos, it’s a factor we see frequently when law enforcement agencies send a press release about a crash, such as last Friday, when a 53-year-old Texas woman was determined to have been unrestrained when her car veered off the road and hit a tree, killing her tragically.
Buckling up is estimated to reduce the risk of fatal injury by 45 percent in a passenger car and moderate to critical injury by 50 percent. The risk reduction for light trucks was higher, with a 60- and 65-percent reduced chance of death or critical injury, respectively.
If they survive, injuries sustained by survivors of serious car crashes are often lifealtering, with traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and organ damage being common. Injury occurs in a car crash when the force of a vehicle striking another vehicle at speed transfers to an occupant or driver, causing their body to shake violently, causing bones to break and organs, such as the heart and brain, to strike the skull and chest cavity. You might imagine how much it would hurt to run into a wall, and then imagine a wall running into you.
Shockingly, most states have only legally enforced seatbelts for a few decades. New Mexico has required them since 1986. The state also requires that all children up to 7 years of age, and all children weighing less than 60 pounds, must ride in a child safety seat. The state also mandates that kids must remain rear-facing until they are at least 1 year old and weigh 20 pounds. More on rules and regulations regarding seat belts at mvd.newmexico.gov.
It takes 3-4 seconds to fasten a seat belt, and it could save your life.