What if Utah had a law that half the population ignored? And ignoring this law cost Utah taxpayers millions of dollars each year and caused at least two deaths a week. Would Utahns want to change this situation? I think so.
Utah does, in fact, have two such laws - the Safety Belt Law of 1986 and the Child Restraint Law of 1984.While virtually every licensed Utah driver is aware of these laws, a recent survey revealed only 50 percent of Utahns wear safety belts and only 56 percent of our children are protected with child-safety restraints.
Compare those figures to California where usage rates are 70 percent; Hawaii, 80 percent; and Canada, 86 percent, with proportional decreases in deaths, injuries and costs.
We know safety belts and child-restraint devices decrease the number of deaths and serious injuries from motor-vehicle crashes by 50 percent. Why don't people protect their lives and the lives of their family? Don't they know the consequences of motor-vehicle crashes?
What are the consequences of motor-vehicle crashes to our society?
First, fatalities: According to the Utah Traffic Accident Summary, 255 people died in motor-vehicle crashes in Utah in 1992; 198 of those killed - 78 percent - were not wearing safety restraints. No children were killed while in child- safety restraint devices, and none of the 198 fatalities involved cars equipped with air bags.
Second, injuries: Last year, 22,490 people were injured in Utah in 15,665 crashes. Of those, 7,222 were not restrained.
Third, cost: "The Economic Cost of Motor Vehicle Crashes, 1990" states the out-of-pocket expense to society - individuals, employers, insurance companies, government - resulting from one fatality (including emergency, medical, funeral, lost pro-ductivity, insurance administration, legal and court costs) to be about $702,000.
Multiply that by the 255 fatalities last year in Utah, and you get a staggering figure of $179.01 million per year lost to Utah's economy.
In 1992, 4,089 Utahns suffered incapacitating injuries ranging from minor loss of work or school time to critical injuries involving long-term disability. The total cost of these injuries to Utahns is hundreds of millions of dollars.
Fourth, emotional cost: The effect on a family when a father, mother or child is killed cannot be measured. Some people still insist, "If I don't buckle up, it's my choice and I suffer the consequences." But very few things we do affect only ourselves; to think otherwise is naive.
The void left in a home, a school, a church or a business when a person dies or is permanently injured is perhaps the most effective argument to those who seek their own freedom at other's expense.
What is the solution for this continuing, costly drain on our state's finances and people? We have educational programs, child-safety seats are more affordable and "user friendly," and safety features are now more frequently installed in new cars.
But with all these efforts only half of the population chooses to protect themselves. The solution is a better law.
Utah's existing safety-restraint law is a secondary offense. This means a driver cannot be cited for that offense alone. Many drivers have learned this and don't take the law seriously.
In states with a primary law, an officer can ticket a driver or passenger for observed failure to wear a safety belt/shoulder harness. It has been proved that conversion of a secondary safety-belt law to a primary law increases a state's safety-belt use rates and decreases injury and death.
If enough Utahns are tired of seeing children and adults unrestrained in cars and trucks; if Utahns are tired of paying tax dollars and increased insurance premiums for needless injuries and deaths; if Utah's health-care reform addresses our most expensive and preventable medical costs, then we must enact more comprehensive restraint laws and ask for strict enforcement by law officers and the courts.
The existing laws must be rewritten to cover all drivers and passengers, to provide for primary enforcement, to eliminate the use of pick-up truck beds/shells to carry passengers.
Requiring the use of safety restraints with enforceable laws makes sense - just as laws requiring obedience to traffic signals and prohibiting drunk driving make sense.
The people of Utah who believe in this issue must take a stand and support upcoming safety-restraint bills in the 1994 state Legislature.
It would cost nothing and save millions of dollars for Utahns. But legislators vote for or against bills based on their own view or on what they hear from their constituents. They need to know how the voters feel about this issue.