On Monday, October 30, 2017 at 7:05:01 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 30 Oct 2017 07:25:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 8:47:26 PM UTC-7, John B. wrote:
On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 22:59:52 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 10/29/2017 10:59 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-10-28 17:18, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 28 Oct 2017 08:09:28 -0700, Joerg


Well, since you mentioned it. My two grandfathers, neither of whom
ever had a road accident. One died at 92 and the other at 87. My
father never had a road accident although he did get a speeding ticket
once, died at 87. My mother had one "accident", a guy ran a red light
and tee-boned her car, no speeding tickets, died at 86. All deaths
were considered "natural".

Do you really believe that safety belts would have benefited them?


Counting on luck alone is not smart. The father of a friend's wife died
from the consequences of a minor fender bender at an intersection
because he didn't wear a belt. That accident was 100% survivable. Or
would have been ...

I'd be interested to see the difference in one's lifetime odds of dying
in a traffic crash wearing seatbelts vs. not wearing them. I suspect the
difference isn't tremendous, since most people die of other things anyway.

Having said that: I do buckle up each time I ride or drive. That's
mostly because there is some benefit, and zero detriment.

However, I willingly ride in my friend's Model A that has no belts. When
our daughter got married, they rode from the wedding to the reception in
an elegant antique car with no belts, and nobody worried about the
possible tragedy of a wedding day fatality.

And if I, as a passenger, have to take my seatbelt off to reach
something in the back seat, remove a jacket or whatever, I don't hesitate.

One of the problems is that there are significant differences between
age groups and even sex. Women driver have about 1 fatality per 9,328
licensed female drivers. Males have 1/3847. I'm sure that teenage
drives are even higher. I also suspect that the driver of a 1927 Model
A probably worries a lot about anyone even getting close to his
fenders :-)

I've also wondered what the effect of overall insurance coverage is.
Here, if you ding someone's fender you park, call the insurance
company and they send a guy out on a motorcycle. The insurance guy
checks the policies, checks the vehicle identification and that is it.
The guy with the ding takes his car to the shop and they fix it and
send the bill to the insurance company.

You rarely have to worry someone is actually going to run you over. After all if might get blood on their car that they'd have to wash off. But the continuous threats are tiring. When I get back from a long city ride - say my home down to Palo Alto along Hesperian then back again - some 50 miles - I will be threatened at least two dozen times with cars trying to nudge me off the road. Even with open lanes they could easily pass in. Another thing is that you will be riding along and a car will come up behind you fast, swerve around you and turn directly into a driveway that causes you to slam on the brakes. Usually a store or something.

I can only say that the U.S. must be different. I've ridden in Japan,
Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand and have never, repeat
NEVER, had anyone threaten me, either by word or action. I also rode
in New Hampshire and Southern California, but that was a long time ago
and I can't be sure but I certainly don't remember any acts that were
threatening.

If the police were to ticket these people the state would never again have to raise taxes. And it would have the side effect of increasing road safety. But the drivers would not stand for it.

Locally one of the people who was caught by a red light camera wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper. He was outraged that they were using cameras to record miscreants. There were a dozen follow-ups by others agreeing with him and not ONE comment to the contrary.

Yet another indication of the change in the U.S. attitude toward law
and order. As I wrote before, in years gone by if a guy got caught
speeding he'd say something like, "Damn! I got caught. Got to go pay
the fine Monday." Now you get a tirade like "Jeeze Cri! I was only
doing 15 mph over the limit, and school was already out. Why is that
cop picking on me?"

Remember when in Holland the bicycle used to be king of the road? Now I'm told that it is the car and the bicycles have the same problems as the US.