How important is wearing a seat belt in a car?

Seat belts or seat belts are an extremely important passive safety equipment, combined with airbags in cars to help passengers in the car avoid the most impact when an accident occurs. Currently, seat belts have become a mandatory device in every car.

When moving quickly on the road, a car does not need to have an accident, just needs to stop suddenly, the person sitting in the front without a seat belt can be thrown out, the passengers sitting in the back seat can fall out of their seats and roll over.

When the car is moving at 40 km/h, passengers may only hit their faces on the dashboard or the front seat, causing minor injuries, but when they reach high speeds of 60 km/h or more, they may be thrown out of the car, or thrown to the sides, causing very serious injuries, even death.

Many people think that airbags alone are enough to keep them safe. However, relying on airbags alone will not save the lives of car occupants. In fact, the force of an airbag inflating can cause injury or death if not used with a seat belt.

Currently, all car models use 3-point seat belts (belts connected to 3 fixed points on the car). The 3-point seat belt was first introduced by Volvo in 1959, and the Volvo 122S (Volvo Amazon) is said to be the first car model equipped with this belt system. Compared to the 2-point belt, the 3-point seat belt can better distribute the holding ability to parts such as the shoulders, chest, and pelvis.

Federal law has required vehicles to be equipped with seat belts for every seat in the car since 1968. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2016, there were 37,461 fatal car accidents, of which about 48% were not wearing seat belts. And in that year alone, 14,668 people saved their lives by wearing seat belts.

The agency also points out many benefits of wearing a seat belt in a car, such as: reducing the risk of fatal injury by 45% and reducing the risk of serious injury by 50%.

In Vietnam, many road users are not yet aware of the dangers of not wearing seat belts while driving and there needs to be legal regulations regarding this.

In 2016, the Government issued Decree 46/2016/ND-CP with specific regulations on penalties for not wearing seat belts (in positions equipped with seat belts) while the vehicle is moving and carrying passengers in cars without wearing seat belts (in positions equipped with seat belts) while the vehicle is moving.