Do Seatbelts Really Save Lives?

 A little over a year ago, I retired this blog with a final summary. But I just can't keep quiet about some of the craziness out there.

I know the news agencies thrive on picking and choosing what they tell us and then telling us in a way that supports their political narrative. That can be expected. But when they, apparently unwittingly, present real information in the form of misleading headlines, it appears someone is not thinking things through.

Recently CBS (and others) came out with this news story about inadequate seatbelt warnings. The headline reads, "47% of people killed were not wearing a seatbelt." This gives people who do not want to wear their seatbelts a perfect argument that 53% percent of people killed were wearing a seatbelt - very little difference. So what's the big deal? The headline is not only not persuasive, it can be turned on itself to draw the exact opposite conclusion.

What needs to be said is that about 10% of people choose not to wear their seatbelt, but people not wearing seatbelts account for almost half the people killed in auto accidents. That means your chance of dying are about nine times higher if you don't buckle up. That's quite a difference from the implied comparison of 47% to 53%!

With use of seatbelts actually declining in recent years, wasn't anybody at CBS paying attention to the possible misinterpretation of their message? Poorly presented news is little better than fake news.

Lack of Perspective and Critical Thinking

The news sure keeps us on our toes. There are always examples of perspective issues. Likewise, some information is just passed along by the talking heads without applying any critical thinking. Here are a few examples.

In England, “Kleenex will re-brand its ‘Mansize’ tissues after consumers complained the name was sexist – touching off a social media conversation about what's in a name.” True, this is a story from London and not directly related to a Real American Solution, but it’s not a stretch to imagine the same kind of thing happening on this side of the ocean. These tissues have been going by the same name for over 60 years, and suddenly someone is offended and contacts the company. The company folds under the pressure even though about 99.9% of their customers probably don’t care.

This is a typical case of one or two people having too much time on their hands and not even appreciating the fact that being offended by a tissue box is a much smaller problem than most of their neighbors are facing. Clearly, in this case, perspective has taken a long holiday.

Meanwhile back in the US, “Pet owners will spend nearly half a billion dollars on animal costumes this Halloween,” according to Marketwatch.com. Just admit it, pet costumes for Halloween have got to be in the luxury category, clearly a want and not a need. But it doesn’t end there! “The National Retail Federation says Americans will spend $9 billion celebrating Halloween this year.” 

Things must be pretty sweet, if we can afford to drop $9 billion on one day of celebrating what was originally a pagan holiday. Despite an average credit card debt per household of $5,700, Americans can’t seem to help themselves.

But the situation is similar to the offensive tissues. When this kind of spending tops the to-do list, perhaps it’s time to appreciate how good we have it instead of fighting over trivia on social media and agonizing over petty annoyances. That's what lack of perspective looks like - taking all we have for granted while focusing on the trivia.

Finally, there was this story to challenge critical thinking from AAA. The opening paragraph reads like this: 

"As National Teen Driver Safety Week kicks off (October 21-27), the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released new research which found that when a teen driver has only teen passengers in their vehicle, the fatality rate for all people involved in a crash increased 51 percent. In contrast, when older passengers (35 or older) ride with a teen driver, overall fatality rates in crashes decreased eight percent. Considering the increased risk created by a combination of teen drivers and teen passengers, AAA emphasizes the need for teen drivers to gain adequate supervised training, especially in different driving scenarios, before taking what could be a fatal drive."

All of the reporters read it pretty much word for word.

Does this report actually present any evidence that teens riding with teens are more dangerous? I would tend to believe it is true, but this tells us nothing about it! They didn’t look at the different scenarios: teens with teens, with young adults and with people older than 35, for all miles driven or all trips. They only looked at the crashes to see how many people were killed.

That only means that when a crash happens it’s more dangerous, but it doesn’t mention the frequency of the crashes and is mute on the instances of teens driving alone. Their conclusions and recommendations assume that frequency is higher, but the analysis does not show it. Nice try, AAA. 

Why does no one else raise this question? Could it be because it fits their model of the world – that teens really are more dangerous? That probably is the case, but the news media aren’t paid to think or question, just to pass along information, accurate or not.

Risk Adaptation

Several years ago I mentioned partially in jest to my sister, at the time an elementary school teacher, that the stock market was doomed.  With all the safety features being implemented on playgrounds and other facilities for children, by the time they reached adulthood they would be too risk averse to want to invest in anything other than guaranteed accounts.  Farewell, stock market and entrepreneurship.

She immediately set me straight.  With padded playgrounds, instead of hanging upside down by their knees from the monkey bars, they were now hanging by one leg.  Reduce the risk; increase the risk taking.

That same idea came up again when I began to see the relationship between automobile safety features and careless driving.  And this is not new.

An article from 2006 tells of Researchers at Purdue, led by a civil engineering professor, that “determined that airbags and antilock braking systems do not reduce the likelihood of accidents or injuries because they may encourage more aggressive driving.”  The feeling back then was that drivers adapt to the new technology giving up some responsibility for safety “by becoming less vigilant.”

By 2012 technology and safety features and enhancements other than air bags and anti-lock braking systems became more common as they migrated to more cars from the luxury brands.  Some of these were vehicle crumple zones, stricter seat belt enforcement, side-impact protection, traction control, and better conceived speed limits.  According to another source, these were “all designed to save lives and make driving a less risky activity. However, despite all these safety measures, road accidents and fatalities have remained constant over the last few decades.”

Traditionally, safety innovations begin at the luxury level and work their way down, but today some of the autonomous vehicle research also contributes to the new technology.  Today we are beginning to see more backup cameras, collision mitigation systems, lane departure warning systems, blind-spot monitors, and drowsiness detection monitors.  Guess what!  A July article from Carfax cites their in-house study finding “that some drivers, especially younger drivers, may come to over rely on car technology safety features rather than basic safe driving habits.”

And just a few weeks later in an article principally about self-driving cars the Seattle Times confirms, “Driver-assist technology that keeps cars in their lanes, maintains a safe distance from other vehicles, warns of unseen traffic and slams the brakes to avoid rear-end crashes are rapidly spreading from luxury cars…But these automated aids aimed at improving safety are having an unintended consequence: They’re degrading driving skills.”  Drivers become lax through over-reliance on newer and newer technology.  Through interviews they confirmed that most drivers agreed that people tend to quickly become so comfortable with the technology that they would pay more attention to it than relying on their own driving skills; for example, listening for the warning chime instead of looking over their shoulder to check the blind spot.  But, of course as in most interviews, it’s always the other guy.

Driving is dangerous.  Better cars and better roads can’t totally change that.  This adaptation behind the wheel is as irresponsible as the grade-schoolers hanging upside-down by one leg, except if they slip they only hurt themselves, not their passengers or others on the road.

It’s also interesting to suppose where else this tendency to over-rely on technology may be leading, places where it's not so obvious because the consequences are subtler, hidden or delayed.

Why Be Responsible?

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times.  In fact I probably have said it one hundred times, because out of about 630 little essays here, this is the 107^th that refers to the subject of responsibility; specifically, when you don’t exercise responsibility, you give up some of your freedom because someone is always eager to step in and take over the job for you.

In many cases the helper, the one seeing to it that your careless actions don’t hurt you or someone else, is the government.  In those case the irresponsible actions of a few result either in an additional cost to everyone, an additional restriction on everyone’s actions or both.  In the latest case it is probably just a minor cost, but the example is revealing.

It seems a few people buckle their children into the child safety seat in the back seat of the car on a hot day, drive to their destination and walk away, forgetting the child is locked in a potentially dangerous car.  According to Reuters this has resulted in 800 accidental deaths since 1990.  Now that’s a long period of time, but small steps may save the lives of about 40 children a year.  (It has happened 9 times already this year and the summer temperatures are just beginning in many parts of the country.)

In response, three lawmakers in Washington have proposed a new regulation requiring that automakers install “devices to remind drivers to check their back seats for passengers before getting out.”  Safety experts agree and General Motors will already include this feature in a few high-end 2018 models.  This should not be much of a challenge or a cost.  It requires a bell or a light on the dashboard as a check-the-back-seat reminder when the car is turned off.  It should be easy as there are so many lights and bells in cars today warning of open doors, unfastened seatbelts, front airbags, etc.

One concern would be whether such a system would be easy to grow accustomed to and ignore, although some might find it helpful to remind them of a briefcase riding in the back seat.  Also, unless all the cars were recalled, it would take about 20 years to be universally installed and in that time we could lose hundreds more children.

Of course, true to the new American mythology of an excuse for everything, we are assured that it’s not really our fault.  We are too stressed out.  From Consumers Union:  “Dr. David Diamond, the director of the Neuroscience Collaborative Program and Center for Preclinical and Clinical Research on PTSD at the University of South Florida, noted that competing brain functions can cause a parent to lose awareness that their child is in the car.”  He blames the negligent acts on “flaws in the brain.”

The cost is unknown.  Congress rarely thinks about these small costs when imposing more regulations.  But if this simple fix costs less than five dollars per car, then based on annual sales of about 10 million vehicles with back seats (16 million minus some pickups and sports cars), the total cost would be under $50 million, less than or about $1.25 million for each child saved.  This would be reasonable, based on the assumption that no one ever knowingly leaves a kid in the carseat to run a quick errand. 

But that’s $50 million per year not available to spend on other things – there’s always a trade off.  What would we rather spend that money on if a few people didn’t have this "brain flaw" that interfered with their behavior as responsible parents?

The final concern is that when this is successful in saving a few lives, Washington will continue to feel duty bound to take on more of our irresponsible behavior with costs and restrictions, like this suggestion by a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine.  She believes sugary drinks should be regulated similarly to alcohol.  “We regulate alcohol… We do not sell alcohol to children. We tax it and you can’t drink while you are working.”

Some fail in the dimension of responsibility and we all lose.  Little by little we pay more and we give up our freedom.

Perspective in the News

Here is a good illustration of what I mean when I warn about not depending on the news media for a sense of perspective.

On the same day, early in the morning and around noon, I caught two news reports.  The first came from CBS This Morning.  It was promoted as, “what the car companies won’t tell you that may be a danger to your family.” Later, when the story aired, the headline read:  “’No excuse’: Safety experts say this car defect puts kids in danger.”  It featured a family whose child was severely injured when their car was rear-ended; and the father, who was driving, was propelled back into his son in the back seat.  The force of the crash caused the front seat to fail and break.  Although the seats met federal safety standards, the auto company was found partially liable for not having stronger seats and faces a verdict of over $120 million.  (Included in the video but omitted from the text was that the father was not wearing his seatbelt and the child was not riding in a safety seat.)

The report went on to say:  “CBS News investigation has identified more than 100 people nationally who were severely injured or killed in apparent seatback failures since 1989. The majority were children. Seventeen have died in the past 15 years alone.”  At the end of the piece the father urged viewers to contact their representatives demanding stricter standards.

The second report was a national story presented on the local news.  They reported that the number of pedestrian fatalities was up in 2015 partially as a result of texting while walking. 

“The [Governors Highway Safety Commission] report showed one of the biggest factors in the past few years, has been smartphones. More and more people are texting or on social media while they’re walking.”  They showed pictures of several people walking down the sidewalk while absorbed with their cell phones and conducted a few interviews.  The whole presentation was serious but had some light-hearted notes with people saying they weren’t surprised because nearly everyone was paying less attention while walking.  One interviewee joked about walking into a garbage can once while he was distracted by his phone.  According to the Associated Press, “2,368 pedestrians [were] killed in the first six months of 2015.”

So we have two news stories on the same day:  one with people wringing their hands and demanding changes to federal regulations to avoid about 100 deaths or injuries in 25 years, while the other calmly presented how we should try to reduce over 4700 deaths per year.  Now deaths and serious injuries, especially to children, are sad and important, but look at how out of proportion the first story is to the second. 

The lesson here is that we only have enough time and energy to worry about a limited number of things.  Don’t rely on the news media to help us sort these things out or set priorities.  They want us to be equally upset by everything they present, whether a problem results in a couple of deaths a year or thousands they are given the same import.  The exception is that deaths or injuries to one or two Americans usually get much more attention than to hundreds of Africans or Arabs.  Their job is to inform and entertain in such a way that allows them to sell viewers to their sponsors not to sort things out.

And Yet Another Crisis (or two)

This is a continuation of the themes from last time:  behavior has consequences (of course) and failures in the area of discipline often lead to failures in responsibility, such as finding scapegoats, making excuses or getting someone else to fix the problem.  Last time we saw how a watchdog group blames soft drinks for obesity, experts blame technology and addiction for insufficient sleep, and pretty much the same underlying causes are used to explain distracted driving.

The experts and the watchdog groups have a stake in and benefit from making victims of people, but so many others, especially the people with the problem themselves, are very quick to take up the cause.  Ultimately when we put the responsibility on others – government, scientists, big business, our employers – we are forced to live with their proposed solutions.  We surrender our freedom for the convenience of not having to deal with it, but so many of those solutions have unintended consequences and even those who have acted responsibly have these new forms of protection forced upon them.  How many more examples do we need before we smarten up and see the danger?

Two more came to our attention during the same timeframe.  CBS News reported on both:  backseat auto safety and deceptive, seductive food labels.

Experts (more experts!) look at the failure to use seat belts by backseat passengers as a potentially “deadly and mind-boggling mistake” and believe that “if states have stricter seatbelt laws, the number of deaths could drop by 17 percent.”  “Department of Transportation data show 22 percent of backseat passengers do not buckle up,” but much higher in taxicabs – 38 percent in New York City.  Riding in the back seat can be just as dangerous as riding in the front seat.  Buckling a seatbelt is not difficult.  The seatbelts are right there.  This is not rocket science by any means, but our normal behavior moves experts and the government to call for stricter laws!

The second example explains that using the word “fitness” on a food label “may actually cause you to eat more and exercise less.”  Researchers set up an experiment where half the subjects were given trail mix and the other half were given the same trail mix labeled “fitness trail mix.”  The second group ate more and, when given the opportunity to workout on a stationary bike afterward, burned fewer calories, that is, didn’t exercise as much.

The doctor makes reference to the “health halo” (what I have called on many occasions, trigger words.*  Labeling that implies health or fitness gives a false sense of security.  She goes on to warn:  “Just because it says gluten-free or organic or sugar-free or healthy doesn’t mean” it is good for you.  One conclusion she came to was to “never…underestimate the power of marketing.”  But isn’t that just another way of saying never underestimate the inability of Americans to ignore attempts to influence them into doing something that they know is bad for them?

As I said last time, this is really, really scary.  Many Americans are letting the government, marketing machines, politicians, advocacy groups, and celebrities do their thinking for them.  They are just along for the ride, going wherever they are led, eating whatever they are told they should eat, buying and wearing clothing considered cool, self-medicating with herbal remedies and miracle cures, and demonstrating for or against whatever they are told they should favor or oppose.  When problems crop up in their lives, problems that are usually brought on by their own choices, instead of changing behavior and making better choices, they sit back like victims of circumstance, expecting the same groups to provide excuses (to help them maintain their self-esteem) and come up with laws, programs, restrictions and consumer protection to make things better.  Those solutions are working so well that America is getting, to quote the Reader’s Digest from last time, “fat, sick and stupid”!

*For more on "trigger words," see any of the following:

Are We Over-Scienced?

Any Diet Will Do

Questioning Ancient Wisdom

Cute Puppies and Kittens

When is a Dollar not a Dollar?