As a firefighter. You are mentally handicapped to begin with if you don't wear your seatbelt.
I understand chubby and obese people have difficult times getting their seatbelts on, or elderly can't get their arms to work into the right angle to get them on, but you're not all chubby or elderly people, put it on. It takes less time to put them on then it takes for you to walk to your car. I drive a courtesy shuttle at my work fulltime and have been a Volunteer fireman for 3 1/2 years now in an area where there are a lot of 55 MPH roads that have winding turns and intersections, I'm 20 years old and I have seen more dead people then most people will in a lifetime, I say this not to brag, or get pity, or to wiggle my penis around, I say this as so that the words I type have meaning and reality that most anonymous internetgoers wouldn't have. I am 100% positive that there are other Firefighter, Police, or EMS personnel reading this forumpost. Hopefully they will agree.
From the Shuttle to the Firetruck, putting on a seatbelt is such a non-hassle that it's insane to believe someone would rather not wear them. If I can manage to get a Self Contained Breathing apparatus on, a radio set, my breathing mask all set up, turned on, and ready to go WHILE wearing a seatbelt, there is no excuse as to why you can't manage to take 5 seconds to put a seatbelt on while you are turning the car on. Put it on before you take the damn thing out of park.
Someone posted about the video how "they couldn't have known it was the one without the seatbelt who did the damage", well, we know. It's... pretty obvious in real life, you don't need to be a member of the CSI or something to figure out what happened. It's kind of a downer for a month or 4 when you go to an accident with two people supposedly trapped beneath a vehicle due to their arms and legs sticking out from beneath it only to find out that they all used to belong to a 17 year old.
There is no rational excuse for not wearing your seatbelt. If you're going to kill yourself there are far, far easier and cleaner ways to do it. I don't care if you want to or not, you wear it or you get a ticket, here in New York state we are hard on people that don't wear their seatbelts for a reason. "Click it or Ticket"'s the current saying. And I'm all for it. Nothing ruins your week like someone blowing an intersection and killing you or your friends.
if you think you're being a rebel or something and you don't want to 'conform' by choosing to not wear your seatbelt, or are a smoker who goes "These'll kill me long before a car accident will! Hah". You have a lot more issues going on in your life then a piece of woven fabric. Everyone WILL get in a car accident. including yourself. You, the person that is reading this internet forum post written by a guy you've never met. Have the possibility today, tomorrow, or whenever the next time you get into a vehicle, that you will get into a car accident and die. Seatbelt or not. If you do wear your seatbelt though? It will save your life (And not leave you as a cripple)
Statistics here in the US say that every person in the USA will go to the hospital in the back of an ambulance at least once in their life(it's actually like, 1.5 or something stupid like that, but whatever). Do you want that one trip to be to the morgue, or the hospital? With the ways cars and air bags are being made, that trip to the hospital will be quick as you'll more times then not walk out of there. I've been to calls where a car has flipped 4 times and came to a rest in a field, when we got there, there was a guy standing outside it on his Cell Phone. He wore his seatbelt, and didn't even have to go to the hospital. Or a call where an SUV driver tried to kill himself by veering off the road after receiving a text from his girlfriend breaking up with him. He was wearing his seatbelt and after cleanly going through a telephone pole and into a Forrest, he was (physically at least) fine.
I'm a firm believe that all vehicles should be required to have that stupid, annoying seat-belt reminder alarm.
(and just as an afterthought, Motorcycles aren't that bad because once you separate from the bike you are safer. as you have nothing to propel you anymore, you will come to a stop and get abrasions such as road rash, but unless you hit something, you'll probably be okay, maybe a broken bone or something like that, but most motorcycle accidents I've been to have been pretty positive. We're on a 2:6 Killed to Not-Dead ratio :3! Unless you hit something like...a telephone pole at 80 mph with your right leg while you fly 6ft off of the ground, and have it catch, spinning you around into the pole while ripping all of your tendons, muscle, and ligament out of your leg and having your abdomen instagibbed as you wrap around it and slide down the pole staining it the entire way down with your blood to the point where your buddy spends an afternoon with bleach scrubbing it out. Then as we roll you over so your head is face-up your torso is literally indented in the shape of the pole for a few minutes while blood pools up and pushes it back into a "normal" shape. Then youknow. Thats kind of a shitty day, and you won't be fine, But at least you won't be doing it again!)