Friday, November 7, 2014

Seat belts and crash helmets

Seat belts and crash helmets!  What a pain in the ass!
Now don't get me wrong, I always wear my seat belt when I'm driving, and I always wore my crash helmet on the bike when I was a public road.  And theres no doubt both save lives, no question at all about that, you'd be a fool to ride or drive without one.
That said what I object to is being forced to wear one.
You see not wearing a crash helmet never killed anyone else except the rider, it's his or her head thats on the line. And if your on your own in a car the same applies to a seat belt, it's a bit different if theres passengers, if the car rolls over you get the driver "tumble dried" around the inside of the vehicle hitting the passengers.  Believe me you wouldn't want that happening, especially if it's me!  Just the weight in my pockets could kill you without my weight landing on top.
You see the problem with seat belts is they can be awkward, you can't get in your pockets to get money out to pay the car park, stuff like that, the same with parking, sometimes you need to turn around or lean out of the door to see.
My car has a hissy fit if I try to drive it with a selt belt undone, a bleeper goes off and goes totally bonkers after about 30 seconds.  It's actually dangerious, it's so distracting and you cant hear instructions over it if your trying to do something. There really should be an option to turn it off.
The big issues is where will it end.  Why for example are we allowed to walk across a road with cars feet away at a crossing, yet if I were mending the wall on the pavement half a mile of road would be closed off by the cone police.  Why don't busses have seat belts on all the seats (coaches only have them on the front row) Why do lorry drives have to wear hi-vis jackets all the time but car drives, the most common road users don't have to?

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