Seat belts, properly and routinely used, can save your life. Safety restraint systems have a dramatic effect in reducing injury and death in vehicle collisions. Seat belt use is mandatory in Virginia for both adults and children.

Safety Restraint Systems and Your Safety

The driver and passengers in a passenger car or light truck are required to use safety belts at all times, even if the car has airbags. Each car is required to have a safety belt for every passenger.

Every occupant of the car that is at least four years old and weighs 40 or more pounds must be wearing a seat belt. Passengers under four or lighter than 40 pounds must be securely fastened in a child safety seat, as we'll describe later.

If you are driving a pre-1968 car or pre-1972 light truck, you are exempt from Virginia seat belt requirements.

Safety belts are your life belts: they prevent you from being thrown from your car, hitting the dashboard, or being jostled out of position and losing control of your car.

Seat belts:

• Keep you inside your car. Your chances of being killed in an accident are five times greater if you are thrown from your car.
• Keep you from smashing into the dashboard or windshield.
• Keep you well-positioned behind the steering wheel and in the best position to maintain control of your car.

Studies have shown that when both safety shoulder harnesses and lap belts weren't worn up to 567% more fatalities occured among the accident victims.

Wearing your safety belt is not only a service to you, but your duty to your passengers. If you are not wearing a seat belt, a sudden stop, swerve, or even a minor crash could throw you into other passengers, hurting both you and them, and destroying your ability to control your car effectively.

Myths About Safety Belts

Whatever your reasons for not wearing your safety belt, they are certainly irrational and definitely violate the law.

Short Trips

Some drivers rationalize that seat belts are unnecessary during short trips, or trips at slow speeds.

Over 80% of all accidents occur at less than 40 MPH. Fatalities involving non-belted occupants of cars have been recorded at speeds as low as 11 MPH, basically the speed you drive in a parking lot.

Three out of four fatal accidents occur within 25 miles of the home. Belt up if you are going to the shopping center or the movies, just as you would for a longer trip.

Fire and Water

Even more irrationally, some drivers don't wear their belts for fear that if their car were to somehow become submerged in water or were to catch fire in an accident, they might be trapped.

Fewer than one-half of one percent of all injuries from collisions involve either fire or submersion. Even if your vehicle were to succumb to fire or submersion, the seat belt would still help to save your life and preserve your ability to function in the accident that preceded it.

It takes less than a second to take off your safety belt. With your safety belt fastened, you are more likely to emerge from any accident unhurt, alert, and capable of escaping quickly.

Thrown to Safety

Other drivers "rely" on not wearing their seat belt to protect them in a crash so that they'll be "thrown to safety."

In reality, the chances of your getting killed are 5 times greater if you are thrown from your car. The force of a collision could be great enough to fling your body as much as 150 feet through the air.

If you aren't thrown clear of the car, you could just as easily be dragged, scraping along the ground, or end up being crushed by your own car.

In almost any collision you are better off being held inside by your safety belt. Of all the things you can do to lessen the severity of an accident, wearing a safety belt is the single most important - and it is the law.

Safety Belts and Pregnancy

If you are pregnant, take special care when you put on your seat belt. Wear your lap belt as low as possible under your abdomen and the shoulder strap between the breasts and to the left of the abdominal bulge.

Child Safety Seats

It's Friday night, and you want to drive down to the video store to pick up a movie with your three-year-old daughter, who has missed her nap and is getting crankier by the minute. When you lift her to put her into the child safety seat, she balks and screams. She does not want to sit in the back car seat.

What do you do? Do you secure her safely in the back seat or risk driving with her in the front? Your decision could mean the difference between life and death for your little child.

If a child is under four years old or weighs less than 40 pounds, the law requires that child to be secured in an approved child safety seat.

When you have a child in the car:

• The back seat is the safest place in the car for all children younger than twelve years of age, especially infants.
• Infants up to 20 lbs. and aged one or younger should always ride in a "rear facing" safety seat that is solidly secured to the back seat.
• Make sure the vehicle’s seat belt is put through the correct slot in the child safety seat. Correctly installing a child safety seat can be tricky. Get it right - your child's life is at stake.

If your car has an airbag on the passenger side of the car, either in the door or the dash:

• Never place a child under twelve in the front seat: it is extremely dangerous. Airbags are designed for passengers older than twelve.
• Never place a child safety seat in the front seat. The force of the airbag will critically harm the child.

Remember, car accidents are the number one preventable cause of death among children -- obey the law for their safety.