Since the thread relates to safety belt use, I don't think it is hijacking the thread.

when my kids were 3 or 4 and not wanting to use the seatbelts, i said "let's do a test first."

This was before airbags with a front facing carseat.
I would hand them an empty soda can. They had to hold the can on their palm without gripping it. When I hit the brakes, they had to "hold on to the can".
I had a deserted straight road near our house. I'd take the car up to about 70 and stand on the brakes.

Needless to say they couldn't hold onto the can and it would go bouncing off of the dashboard. This was their introduction to physics. I then explained simply objects in motion tend to stay in motion. if they didn't have their seatbelt on that they would be just like that can, bouncing off of the dashboard. I wasn't instilling fear, just fact.

we only ever had the discussion once for each child.

in fact the lesson took so well that I ever had started to move the car before they had buckled in, they would yell for me to wait.

 

Dean: You're right on the "Spencer" family.
Still believe that adults wearing seatbelts in backseats is not very common. Laws in most, if not all states, don't require the aforementioned, right?

 

Like many have stated already, the fascination with the Royals and with celebrities escapes me. But on the matter of why Diana wasn't made the poster child for seat belt usage, my guess would be that the Royals want her memory to fade as fast as possible and there was no money in it for her brother.

 

Well the REAL issue is not seatbelts. I mean seatbelts are the law for passenger vehicles. They are NOT the law for passengers in the back of limousines, taxis, and busses (at least in most of the United States). The entire layout of a limo is very dangerous, you have a very very long way to fly in a limo. IMHO they should mandate these passengers sit facing the rear at the front of the limo.

I think it was that year (or near it) that members of the Detroit Red Wings were hurt badly in a limo as well. I have always thought that a limo/luxury bus manufacturer could make a mint selling safety to these rich clients, with interior padding, safety bars, huge crumple zones (within these huge vehicles).

2 years ago on a trip to Vegas, I found myself in a taxi with a Russian driver. He was a madman. We got on the highway and he was using it like his own personal slalom course. I reached, looked, and could NOT find any seatbelts in that taxi, quite scary.

Trivia question....
What is the full name of Diana's first son (I will tell you in a day and the reason I still know it 24 year later).

 

oh SNAP!!

 

I always sit in the back of a taxi and buckle up.

 

For some odd reason, the name "Darwin" keeps popping into my head every time I read a story about someone dieing from not wearing a seat belt.

 

William Arthur Philip Louis

The only reason I remember this is because when he was born, my favorite local radio station thought they named him after them. The stations call letters are WAPL (Appleton WI). They sent the family a prize package including a "hot rocker" t-shirt, which was promptly refused.

 

I just don't understand?

 

I don't think,a seatbelt could have saved her life.!!!
Was'nt she assasinated...???