How Do Seatbelts and Airbags Save Lives?
Sometimes knowing about statistics can bring home the reality of how important safety precautions are. We all have heard that seat belts and airbags save lives. But to what extent is this true? San Luis Obispo auto accident lawyers can tell you that while following safety precautions reduces the likelihood of injury in an accident, they also serve another advantage. They frequently influence the court or insurance company’s decision to assign you a lesser percentage of fault for injury.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) tracks statistics and evaluates safety measures every year. One of its statistics is estimating how many lives seatbelts and airbags save along with how many lives they could have saved, had people used them. The value in calculating these estimates is that it allows NHTSA to determine the effectiveness of safety devices and laws that enforce their use. NHTSA estimated the following statistics for 2007:
- Seat belts saved the lives of 15,147 people from ages five and older
- Frontal air bags saved 2,788 lives of people age 13 and older
- If people used seat belts 100 percent of the time, they would have saved an additional 5,024 lives
NHTSA also estimates that risks of injury and death reduce by 50 percent when people wear seat belts. The combined use of seat belts and air bags offer adults the greatest protection, but you should use both and not substitute an airbag for a seat belt.
If you or a loved one suffers serious injury in an auto accident, you can discuss your accident with a personal injury attorney in San Luis Obispo free of charge and find out about your rights to recovering compensation.
For more than 40 years, James McKiernan Lawyers has protected people’s rights in auto accident cases and helped them recover damages.
