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When Wearing a Seat Belt Was a Sign of Good Sense

This story was originally published in The Hartford Courant on January 26, 1986, not long after Connecticut passed a mandatory seat-belt law.

People who just started to buckle their seat belts because of the new law drive me nuts.

I decided to buckle up one day many years ago. My first car had been an enormous, paint-chipped, white-bodied, black-capped, go-anywhere-anytime 1962 Chevy Impala. Since it was a convertible, the only type of accident I feared was a rollover. I figured most of them were the fault of careless drivers who went too fast and turned too hard. So I bought big tires.

I kept the hood clean enough to catch the reflections of envious onlookers who could but wish they owned such a gem. Sure, the back window was held together by bailing wire, and yes, the engine guzzled gasoline, but it was mine, and it was safe.

Safety you could feel from all sides. It had thick, heavy doors, a wide chassis, and a slant-six engine sure to take the brunt of any front-end collision and emerge with nary a dent. And of course, there was the hood.

It protected me from harm, and I felt at ease in its presence. It was a buffer against reality, a denial of my own mortality, a reflection of my youth and naiveté. That wonderful front end was a symbol of omnipotence and a fitting crown to a car I truly adored.

There came a day, though, when I simply could not keep my beloved on the road. Gasoline prices were rising nearly as fast as the mileage. I sold it and bought an aging 1965 Volkswagen Beetle. Black. With a sunroof. Nifty.

I drove home in awe of its miraculous shifting lever, comforted by the coziness of its interior, and delighted by the pure scruffiness of its speed. Vroom, it lurched forward, leaving larger cars struggling against the weight of their engines. Vroom, it zipped around corners like a Maserati, only cheaper, and if it rolled over, so what? It would keep on rolling until it stopped, and it didn’t even make a difference which side it landed on. It would always look pretty much the same wrong-side down or right-side up. Yes, it was a nifty little automobile.

I think it was about a week before I looked for the hood. There wasn’t one.

The windshield, all 4 inches of it, stopped at a pair of non-functional wipers. Then there was a metallic blur fading into the roadway. The blur was supposed to be the front end.

It suddenly occurred to me that the safety I had so cherished was gone. I was driving to my doom. Doors a hundredth of an inch thick and a wheel base the size of my shoe were no match for the grill of an 18-wheeler and the driver’s get-out-of-my-way grin.

Any collision would send me careening through the windshield and onto the pavement below. I decided to avert such an outcome by keeping myself in the car, safe from harm. I would wear my seat belt.

Ah, for that sense of security again. Sanity would prevail, life would be worth living, and all the world would finally know of peace and brotherhood. Well, not quite, but close.

That’s why I started wearing a seat belt, and out of respect for that little VW and my beloved Chevy, why I’ve never stopped. I was, in a word, enlightened, while the remainder of the motoring public went about its travels in blissful ignorance.

But that is gone now. Everywhere I drive I see these people, for lack of a better term, buckled securely in their seat belts. I see them being watched and counted at stop signs by clipboard-wielding statisticians who sit with clever smirks, wondering how many more have finally "arrived." These drivers are declared heroic for their bravery, even interviewed on television. They are asked, "Why are you buckling up?" They answer, "It’s the law."

Big deal.

I have listened to them describe the virtues of this new law on the radio, at the laundromat, even at the local delicatessen. I have seen their smiles, vicious little grins, proclaiming before the world their pride in being believers. Bunk.

They have done nothing more than snip away at my self-respect. I was once in the vanguard for a cause seemingly destined for the second-hand shop. I was living freely, carelessly, even tempestuously on the edge of self-preservation and machismo. I reveled in the task of wearing the belt, basking in my ability to whip the buckle around my torso and snap it into the receptacle with the speed and ease of a talented, if sometimes clumsy, athlete. I displayed the belt as a status symbol, a mark of maturity. I was unique and clearly ahead of my time.

Not anymore. No, now I am like all the rest. I am counted among the converts. I am thought to be buckled up because "It’s the law," when in reality I do it for my former automobiles, the sanctity of my face, and — dare I say? — a certain amount of pride.

But do I get credit for this foresight? Am I saluted for a deep-seated commitment to the "safe" way? Do I get interviewed by Mary Ollie Newman? Noooo.

Instead, my fate is to fall helplessly into a crevasse of sameness. I am just another law-abiding citizen looking to avoid a fine. A robot in a land of machinations.

Just what I always wanted.