Students Take 2022 Seatbelt Challenge

Car accidents can be very traumatic, but without a seatbelt, they can become gruesome and deadly.

Just in 2017, around 17,000 people died from not wearing a seatbelt, according to The Zebra.

As soon as you choose to not wear a seatbelt, the chance of you surviving is 47 percent, and this is not including the life-altering injuries surviving can give you.

The importance of buckling up could not be unstated, which is why Susquehannock High School and other schools participate in the Center for Traffic Safety’s York Adams High School Seat Belt Challenge.

The challenge has two phases: taking surveys and declaring a winner.

Missy Sweitzer is an employee for the Center for Traffic Safety or CTFP; she is one of the surveyors and a moderator for the challenge.

“Examiners attempt to be inconspicuous and choose a location that is optimal for viewing vehicles as they pass,” Sweitzer said. “We look for shoulder harness placement in determining usage. If it’s clear that the driver is wearing the shoulder harness correctly across their shoulder, that is a yes. If we clearly see the shoulder harness hanging from the door pillar, that is a no.”

The school with the highest end result will be awarded a $500 grant, provided by Statefarm, and a complimentary photo booth that can be used at school events.

For the first year of the competition, the overall score was 77.1 percent and last year it was 94.7 percent, which shows improvement and a close competition.

Even though it is a competition, winning does not mean everything.

“I believe the surveys are effective because the most important aspect of this campaign is that there are no losers in this competition,” Sweitzer said. “Schools that don’t receive an award from the competition are still winners simply by participating in the challenge by raising awareness.”

When someone gets into a car collision, they can experience G-force. According to the Merriam- Webster dictionary, G-force is the measurement of gravitational force. It is used to see how much force something experiences when it accelerates.

A 160-pound person can experience around 46 G or 7,000 pounds of force from a 30 mph accident, but without a seatbelt, that’s around 230 G or 37,000 pounds of force.
The moment of impact is short, but with such a high level of force, injury or death can occur.

According to Science Focus, the human body can receive fatal injuries from 6 G of sustained force.

Officer William Hanson, a former Baltimore city police officer, recalls an accident where someone was not buckled in.

“There was a guy that wrecked his car down by [Walmart and 83],” Hanson said. “He had rolled his car, and we found him in the very back of his car because he had been thrown around inside the car.”

Luckily, the man in the accident lived, but he suffered serious injuries.

Some do not walk away from these types of accidents.

Officer Hanson is a graduate of Susquehannock High School, and during his junior year, he witnessed tragedy.

“When I was a junior here at the high school, one of my classmates was killed in a car accident out on Country Club road,” Hanson said. “He was actually thrown out of a car, no seatbelt, and the car rolled on top of him, and he was killed.”

Seatbelts can save lives and within this district there are people who have been saved by buckling up.

Susquehannock senior Brianna Vance is one of the people that was saved by wearing a seatbelt.

“Me and my friend were driving in a Jeep together, and we ended up getting into a crash,” Vance said. “We rolled down a hill six times. I cracked my ribs, she broke her leg. If we wouldn’t have had our seatbelts on, we would have been cut in half. We were in a jeep, and it didn’t have a roof on it… Honestly, I could have went through the windshield.”

The main focus of the challenge is to spread awareness for seatbelt safety.
Right now is a great time to start wearing a seatbelt, especially if you want the school to win the challenge.

“For those drivers who are already in the habit of buckling up, this serves to reinforce their good decision,” Sweitzer said. “For those who don’t normally buckle up or those who don’t make their passengers buckle up, they may start doing so throughout the challenge and hopefully develop a new habit that will last a lifetime.”