• dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 days ago

      yeah i got one of those and my wife got really mad at me. i mostly just drove 5 blocks to work in a 30mph residential road. if i got on the highway, i’d take it out and put the belt on

      • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        I don’t understand why you’d put the burden of that extra step on yourself rather than just wearing your seatbelt

        • dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org
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          3 days ago

          its not an extra step. 9/10 trips were short trips in a neighborhood, and saved the step of putting on the seatbelt. 1/10 trips on highway with an additional step. saved me 9/10 steps.

      • Zink@programming.dev
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        3 days ago

        Allow me to try to change your mind.

        Accidents are by definition unpredictable. If you try to pick and choose when to prepare, you are just increasing your risk in order to feel smart or brave or in control.

        If you want to make safety a priority, and you should when it comes to the most dangerous thing you do every day, then it doesn’t take much thought to get to the realization that you have to do it every time.

        It’s kind of like how I never get caught with my car windows open during a rain storm. It’s not because I roll them up when there’s rain in the forecast, it’s because I roll them up every time I turn off the car.

        Most importantly, regarding your desire to have fewer steps to do, you have to think of it in terms of cognitive load rather than physical movement. Putting on my seatbelt is just automatic pre-drive muscle memory that adds virtually no time and does NOT require me to think about and decide whether to wear my belt. Likewise, there is no mental check list to verify that I’m wearing my belt because my body is used to the feel of it. If the belt isn’t on, it feels like i’m not all the way seated into the car yet.

        In addition to the wisdom of 100% belt use for other reasons, a crash on a 30mph road can and will fuck you up. The only time I’ve had a broken bone repaired with a metal plate was after some dickhead ran into me in a low speed collision like that on a side road. The bruised sternum from the seat belt fucking sucked for a few weeks, but I bet having a steering wheel ram my own broken arm into my rib cage would have been worse.

        • dadarobot@lemmy.sdf.org
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          3 days ago

          there’s no need to change my mind. there’s a reason i stated everything in past tense. this was several years ago.

          • Zink@programming.dev
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            3 days ago

            Ah, nice.

            I wrote that comment while trying to ignore crazy family members at a gathering, so apologies for not picking up the subtleties, lol.

            Hopefully somebody will still read it and think to improve their habits!

      • Ironfacebuster@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        My friends complain about the seatbelt alarm going off because they don’t wear their seatbelt. Instead of wearing their seatbelt they defeated the safety mechanism, problem solved!