@hardingar @Unlikelylass And when it came to seatbelts in particular there was this widespread belief, again encouraged by the car companies, that you were actually better off getting thrown from the vehicle or whatever. And especially before shoulder belts there were certainly situations where you might be better off not wearing a seatbelt.

The same was true of early airbags, because they came out of a requirement for "passive restraints" that had to protect people even if they weren't wearing their seatbelt. The result was that they had to deploy way too fast, which could cause grave injury if you were too close. Once they stopped caring about people who aren't wearing a seatbelt, airbags got way safer.

@freakazoid @hardingar @Unlikelylass

I was in a wreck at the age of 3 and change in which I was in the front seat, and thrown clear of my seatbelt.

I was too young to be in the front without a booster, but boosters weren't required yet and I'd outgrown my car seat.

I was thrown clear of the car.

I was told, at length after the fact, that being thrown clear of the car saved my life, and in the particulars of this crash a properly functioning seatbelt would have either killed me or left me paralyzed.

The doctors told me this at 4 years old (I celebrated my birthday in the hospital) and through physical therapy. It was meant to make me grateful I think? "You're so lucky. If your seatbelt had worked, you'd be dead." or maybe it was a reminder to my mother that I should be in the back seat, which would have been safer in this crash and in general.

Either way, I became somewhat obsessed with the history of safety belts and car safety in general. I'm neurodivergent, it was a multi-year special interest.

I always wore my seatbelt.

@freakazoid @hardingar @Unlikelylass

until 1990s seatbelts in many British/European cars (in spite of being legally required, at least in front) were often uncomfortable and in many cases ineffective for anyone other than taller male drivers.

They got refined with better airbags, pretensioners etc around 90s, various child seats mandated for kids even up to their early teens (I had to remember all this for my theory test) and are now much more effective, albeit with the issue that in UK a used car is often totalled for a minor clout if any of the airbags or pretensioners deploy as insurers don't want to shell out for new parts.

The car can often be put back on the road (I see a lot of Youtubers doing this), but will have CAT N/S (salvage title)

@technicaladept @catsalad Yes.

About three dozen people at this point have suggested seatbelts.

The thing there, though, is that seatbelts existed as a technology with proven lifesaving potential for many years before we forced them on car drivers.

They weren't new or revolutionary, they were just safety.

People hate safety. I dunno why, but there's probably a great sociology paper in there.

I've also never met anyone who has survived a major auto accident who is at all hesitant about seatbelts (and, until the modern propaganda campaign against them, I'd never met anyone who had someone survive a serious illness who was at all hesitant about vaccines, which fall largely in to the same bucket.)

In both cases, these are not technologies that we are asking people to use on an ongoing basis, but preventative measures that we're putting in the hands of people who have not been effectively educated about the mechanisms at play or the efficacy of the preventative measures (and, in the case of both vaccines and seatbelts, there was a concerted propaganda campaign against them, so any education that was being done had to fight against anti-education propaganda first.)

I didn't have the energy yesterday to type this out over and over again to the people who said seatbelts, and I still don't, so now everyone else who said (or will continue to say) seatbelts gets a link to this thread.

I got lots of responses pointing out technologies that had to be forced on people. I've thought about them. The ones I agree with are:

- Internal Combustion Cars
- Telephones
- LLMs and GenAI

The internal combustion engine in general didn't have to be forced on to people (farmers, for example, loved it both for their tractors and also for other makeshift machines they'd construct around their farms)

Cars as a class didn't have to be forced on people, high society types in big cities loved having electric carriages. They were clean, easy to maintain, and quiet. They were also reliable enough that they didn't get replaced often enough to become an industry.

But, while the rich were driving around in their electric carriages and the poor were walking, taking horse-carriages, taking trains, and riding cable cars (and people were experimenting with electric and steam cars) Henry Ford decided that, if he could get the US government to heavily invest in a roadway system and trick a bunch of municipalities into giving up a bunch of green space and pedestrian space to cars, he could make a lot of money while also leaving people responsible for both driving (which is dangerous and should be left to those who are interested in learning how to do it effectively, not a requirement for participation in society) and maintenance (which is expensive, and prior to Ford was largely a public expense for a public good.)

Cars introduced a lot of new freedoms for people, but were perhaps the worst of the several available alternatives to do that in dozens of ways, and we're still trying to overcome that fallout. There were significantly more (and significantly safer!) transit options in my region before cars.

Cars, as I've said before and taken blowback from, are usually bad. They are, at best, a necessary evil. There was a time when they were not necessary.