Seat belts, and flawed perceptions OP ED

[Brian37]

I've been in several car accidents. The only time I didn't get hurt at all was the time I was in the back seat not wearing my seatbelt.

The others in the car got banged and scraped up while wearing their seatbelt. Why didn't I get hurt? I bear hugged the seat in front of me as the car rolled over several times. The car stopped upside down with the top crushed in. I crawled out feeling fine.

Sample rate error, that is you and one sample from your perspective. You take the totality of ALL car accidents based on police reports, and Emergency Room reports, you are not the norm. No different flawed logic people use when defending guns. They go long periods of nothing happening, then see some story of another gun owner hurting or killing themselves and stupidly think that can never happen to them.

Seat belts do not prevent all injury, they reduce the severity of possible injury and increase the chances of survival. You are far more likely to die in a car accident not wearing one. Just like you are more likely to injure yourself or die from having a gun in your home, than you would us it successfully defending yourself from a stranger.

[Chad32]

My mother refuses to wear a seatbelt because she was in an accident one time where she would have lost her legs if she hadn't been thrown into the back seat. Though in a wreck I was in, I would have shot through the windshield if I hadn't worn my seatbelt.

[Brian37]

My mother refuses to wear a seatbelt because she was in an accident one time where she would have lost her legs if she hadn't been thrown into the back seat. Though in a wreck I was in, I would have shot through the windshield if I hadn't worn my seatbelt.

Then that is not because of the seat belt in her case, it is a design flaw in the rest of the car and the conditions of the impact. The seat belt is not the entire car. 

In the case of your accident, not wearing one would more likely produce that outcome if you had not worn your seat belt.

[Chad32]

There are multiple factors that go into what happens in a crash, but I agree that wearing the belt is going to help more often than it hinders.