By Rick Ryckeley
Fayette County Fire & Emergency Services

My son is a typical 15-year old; he's interested in cars and girls. Both of which, I told him, could get him into a lot of trouble.

"I can't wait till I'm an adult!" he mumbled as he walked up the steps to his room, "then I can do what I want too, drive where I want to and not be sent to my room when I get into trouble." (How is it that the only thing kids want to do is to grow up and be adults and the only thing that most adults want is to be kids again?)

Like most 15-year-olds, my son wants to get his learner's permit and start to drive. I told him, "First you must learn all the traffic laws and start looking at the speed limit signs to get familiar with the posted limits."

He then said, "All of my friends drive over the limits so why can't I?"

Have you ever gone the speed limit in this county? Don't feel bad; no one else does either. If you want to see people mad, cussing and sending obscene gestures your way as they zoom past you just, try and go the posted speed limit on any road in this county.

I told my son, "At 15, I, too, got a driver's license and proceeded to drive well in excess of the speed limit. I got a ticket and paid a $300 fine and my dad did not let me drive for the next six months."

This is repeated every day but, unfortunately, sometimes with a more tragic end result.

Injuries from motor vehicle crashes in 2000 were the number-one cause of death for teenagers. The average cost of a trip to the hospital after being injured in a motor vehicle crash is $25,000 with the cost of rehabilitation being $56,000. But all you have to do to avoid all of this cost is to wear a seat belt, so why do people still not buckle up?

I picked up one of my son's friends to take them to the movies. We pulled out of his driveway, and I asked him, "Do you have $81,000?" He shook his head no. I said, "In that case you should put on your seat belt."

While driving them to the movies, I tried to explain the idea of wearing seat belts a little better. I asked, "Which one of you would run as fast as you can face first into the side of a concrete building?" They both said they would not because that would be stupid. I continued, "That is the equivalent of an unbelted passenger hitting the windshield when the automobile is traveling at only 15 miles per hour."

"But Dad," my son said, "we're only going 35." (Like most teenagers, he has an answer for everything, shame that it's not the right one.)

I told him, "Weighing 180 pounds and going 35 MPH, you would hit the dashboard, windshield, and finally the pavement with a force of over 3,600 pounds." They still could not get the concept, so I decided to paint a different picture.

I asked them to blink their eyes and tell me how long it took. When they got through arguing about who was faster, they agreed that it took about a second. A lot can happen in that one second if you are traveling at 55 miles an hour in a car.

I told them that if you hit a solid object at 55 miles per hour all of the following will happen to you and the new sports car that you will not be getting, in just one second. In the first half-second the front bumper and grill will collapse, the hood will crumble (which breaks the windshield), and the fenders will wrap around the object you just hit. At one second, the first two feet of the car's front end is wrecked but the rear of the car is still moving at 35 MPH.

But you don't care about your new car being crumpled because you were not wearing a seatbelt and are still traveling at 55 MPH as you sail through the windshield. At this point you will understand why it's always a good idea to wear your seat belt.

I had gotten their attention and decided to illustrate my point further. Both of them being big weightlifters at the high school, I asked which one of them could hold a baby. They looked puzzled. I asked them if they could hold a baby that weighed 300 pounds. They again looked puzzled.

I explained that if you were holding a 15-pound baby in your arms and were in a car crash going only 30 miles an hour, that the baby would then weigh over 300 pounds. There would be no way you could hold on to it, and what is really scary is that no one drives that slowly around here. I think my point got across, but all they could talk about the rest of the way to the movies was what a 300-pound baby looks like.

Before going into the movies my son turned around and said, "Now I understand why I should wear my seat belt and drive the speed limit. But I still think that adults don't have to follow rules like I do."

I told him, "Adults have many rules to follow; except we just call them laws. If we don't follow them we get into trouble just like you do."

He said, "Yeah, but I bet they don't get sent to their room as punishment."

I said, "Yes they do; it's just that the rooms are a little smaller than yours and they have bars on the windows and doors."

[Rick Ryckeley is a full-time employee of Fayette County Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.]

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