blamebrampton | Finally saw an episode of Hawaii Five-O

I can see why people are loving the buddy relationship between the two leads, and there was some clever writing in there, as well as gorgeous scenery and some quite decent cinematography. I'm not convinced it will be a show that I watch, but I understand the appeal for those who do. But I have one thing ...

There are all these scenes where they are driving around like maniacs, and the leads are clutching the steering wheel or door handgrip for grim life, clearly acknowledging that at any moment things could go horribly pear-shaped, but not once are they shown wearing seatbelts.

Did Princess Diana's tragic death teach Hollywood producers nothing? And don't believe the bullshit that it takes time too much time to get out of a belt, I have done it upside down in an instant and I am not a professionally trained law enforcement officer. Every time I see this on a show I want to slap people. Unless the driver is belted up and the passenger isn't and the passenger is a serial killer with a gun and the driver is about to crash into something. Then I can cope with it as a narrative necessity.

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There seems to be this strange notion that insisting on seatbelts is an infringement of the rights of the individual.... So the Darwin Awards will continue to have a meaningful place in modern society, for those incapable of observation and deduction.

Yes, I've cringed at that kind of thing for years.

I just stop believing people are cops the minute they do that. Maybe American policemen are odd (the ones I have met and the ones I have seen on the news have all seemed perfectly sensible, though) but English and Australian police always wear seatbelts and shout at people about the horrible injuries that will be incurred if others don't. Surely if you have a job that spends the first few years scraping bits of brain off bonnets, you learn?

And you did make me laugh wryly by reminding me of a Senior Sergeant in the Sydney Water Police. I was looking at a speedboat in the yard, its bow horribly crushed in. He came up behind me and told me that two young louts had crashed it into a cruiser in the middle of the night. 'But it all turned out all right,' he assured me.

I looked at the blood over the upholstery, and what could have been dried brain matter, and doubtfully said to him: 'Really?'

'Oh yes,' he replied. 'They both still had pulses when the ambulance got there, they were young and healthy and had both signed their organ donor cards.'

Cop humour. It's bleaker than the usual variety ...

We had several talks from a local police officer in secondary school. He dwelt extensively on how he had once gone to tell the parents of two boys that their children had been killed, and only then recieved the phone call saying: "We've found another one. Under the front passenger seat."

I wondered why police officers on Southland don't wear seatbelts. Somewhere out there in the wild, wild Internet I read that "police officers were slow to adapt to wearing seatbelts, and some still don't do it..." Or something like that. What on earth is that even supposed to mean?

I'd get it if wearing a seatbelt was against some unspoken code of badassness in the US police. Weirder things exist in specific environments.

Not wearing seatbelts has been a controversy with American cops for a long time. I've been told it's because it makes it harder to reach for their guns in their holsters. They feel its another step or could hinder them in jumping out of their car quickly when they need to. It's all bullshit though. Because the chances they are in a car accident are far greater than those two scenarios.

I was 'slow to adapt,' as someone says below, to seatbelts. I hate them, a lot. Still. They have been required for nearly 25 years in my area, but I was in the car and free to move about a LOT as a child, and my body still expects to be able to reach for things at will. So I mean, they feel like an infringement to me every. single. time. This doesn't mean I don't generally wear them, but I hate them every day. Just saying.

I have literally been in more car accidents than I can remember*. The difference between wearing a seatbelt and not is the difference between going through a windshield at comparatively low speeds** and being perfectly fine aside from a few minor bruises in a freeway-speed accident that ended up with a roll.

I grew up in Jags that you could have a party in the back seat of, and I know what you mean about space, but I promise you that the minute a seatbelt stops you dying, you are filled with love for it and stay in love forever.

*Cars hate me. Or every motorist hates me. It's the only possible explanation.

** I did once as a child, luckily I was asleep and therefore floppy, so only a broken arm and cuts and bad bruises, but I also concussed my seatbelted father as I hit him flying past, bodies become projectiles when not restrained.

Well, as noted, I do by and large wear them. And my kids, having never known not-wearing them, are unbothered by the restriction, so I suspect that this is a problem that will die out as my generation, which is probably more or less the last to remember cars not even having seatbelts, ages out.

This doesn't mean I don't hate the damn things, though.

My car accident history is short. I was (unbelted) in an accident that totaled the car I was in when I was under a year old. I wasn't in a carseat, either, just being held. Went flying, no damage. And I got gently rear-ended by someone last year; my seatbelt didn't do anything (didn't even lock), but I hit my knee/shin on the dash hard enough that it took many months to stop hurting at all times. So, I mean, I believe you, but my experience is short on the evidence.

Hm, I was forced to wear them from childhood on and I still hate them. I feel suffocated and extremely uncomfortable. I always have to have one arm inside the belt to give me some breathing space, though I fear for it being snapped or squashed in an accident. Somehow I'm the wrong shape even for seatbelts.

I'm not fond of the struggle to reach the spare water bottle or the heavy book of maps (which I usually lose), or even to take off an outer layer while remaining belted; and seatbelt anchors always seem to be located where the belt cuts across my neck and I have to hook a hand through to hold it down; but it just seems worth it to have that better survival chance. Maybe racing driver belts (one down over each shoulder) would be easier to live with. If one could afford them or get them installed...

Verdict: unsatisfactory, but unavoidable.

Finally saw an episode of Hawaii Five-O

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