America’s motorists are very sparing in their use of seat belts but there’s no shortage of rationalized excuses: “I don’t feel free buckled up.” “I’m afraid the car will catch fire.” “I don’t mtend to have an accident.” “It would wrinkle my clothes.” Dr. B. J. Campbell, safety engineer at University of North Carolina, salys studies indicate on y 14 percent of auto occupants use any kind of restraint system. This seems tragic in the light of statistics on what safety belts can accomplish. Campbell has been studying auto accidents for 26 years. Now director of North Carolina’s Highway Safety Research Center, he is quoted in an article entitled “Buckle Up and Live” in the “Friendly Exchange,” magazine of the Farmers Insurance Group. Figures compiled from E studies of auto accidents across the world produced dramatic conclusions: “With belts,” says Campbell, “there is perhaps a 20 percent decrease in the probability of any injury at all; a 50 percmt decrease in the probability of a serious mjury, and it appears there may be as much as a 75 percent decrease in the probabiity of death.” Yet some car owners disconnect the warning buzzers or tie the belts behind the seats so they won’! be in the way. A few even take out the belts when they buy a new car, reports the safety engineer. The rationale for safety belt use is that if your car hits something that brings it to a sudden stop, you’ll hit something too – maybe the windshield or dashboard – unless you’re buckled up. You’ll fly forward at whatever speed the car was going – maybe faster. “In some cases the car comes back toward you because you’ve hit another vehicle of greater mass head-on,” says the article. In the case of a sudden stop, explains Campbell, the best thing you can hit is the lap and shoulder belt. A second physical henefit from auto belts even simple seat belts comes from what Campbell calls “ride-down,” meaning that a belt also will tend to slow you down before you hit. The safety engineer explains it this way: “If you’re not belted and your car crunches to a stop, the car is likely to be completely stopped before you hit. But if you’re belted, you begin to stop with the car. The belt, being attached to the vehicle, begins to retard and slow you down while the car is still slowing down, If you’re belted. you then get the additional benefit of whatever crushability is built into the auto. Voluntary programs for belt use have not produced impressive results and promotors of seat belt aws haven’t been successful. But, Mr. and Mrs. Motorist and young drivers in your family, you can do something for your own safety. What the engineers say makes sense, Why not heed their waming’?