By Buster McNutt
Here in Florida the law says you have to be belted in your moving car or truck, but you don’t have to wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle. Based on the almost daily news regarding AirBagGate, one must wonder if this is because, unlike cars and trucks, motorcycles don’t have airbags, so there is absolutely no chance that during an accident, exploding shrapnel will “redefine your facial features.” Or it could have something to do with our states’ powerful tattoo industry, which is just as powerful as, say, the Tabernacle Choir Chair Seat Covering industry is in Utah.
I get it that the government feels a responsibility to keep its citizens alive and safe, at least until they are over 65 and collecting budget-draining Social Security and Medicare “entitlements,” conveniently forgetting that over the years the payroll taxes those same people paid went to finance any number of buy-the-vote projects, such as a $250 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, where it was projected that each year “no fewer than 1,000 tourists, Eskimos, and reality show contestants” would cross the bridge to see twinkly lights in the sky, Russian sun bathers across the Bering Strait mooning them, and a half dozen or so polar bears drinking bottles of Coke.” (Note: it would later turn out that those “bears” were actually illegal immigrants from the break away Republic of Kapookistan).
This all started in the ’60s when the federal government mandated (men would not legally be allowed to “date” each other until almost two decades later) that all new cars and trucks must come with seat belts in all the “viable seating positions.” Small children, jockeys, and female Olympic gymnasts sleeping on the rear package shelf were obviously omitted. However it wasn’t until the ’80s that individual states started requiring occupants in the vehicles to actually start using seat belts. Today all states require seat belt usage, with possible exceptions of breakaway states such as Kentucky, Nevada, and Puerto Rico — depending on when this article is published, Puerto Rico may or may not be a state, just as Maine may no longer be a state, as it was traded to Canada for two left wingers and a goalie for the Nashville Predators hockey team, which is now owned by one of Sam Walton’s daughters. I’m not sure which one, but I’m pretty sure it is not Oprah.
Seat belts soon became “three-point seatbelts,” which were first offered by Volvo in the 1959 PV544, the model Susan Sarandon drove in the movie “Bull Durham,” which had something to do with baseball, but I just generally fast forward to the scenes Susan is in. I used to have a Susan Sarandon air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror of the 1986 Buick Estate Wagon, which also had three-point seatbelts. I don’t think that was a coincidence. I sent her a picture of it, but I never heard back. I was so disappointed that I stopped going to Rocky Horror Picture Show revivals and dressing up like Dr. Frank-N-Furter. Susan was in the movie, but she never came to the revivals. Unlike some of us, I supposed she’d moved on.
But seat belt usage stayed at very low levels, particularly among women, in a phenomenon which came to be known as the “Playtex effect.” It seems that except for women who were exactly five-foot-six, with a 50/50 ratio of torso-to-lower-body, the diagonal seat belt strap didn’t exactly conform to the undergarment’s “cross your heart” philosophy. This would either be somewhat uncomfortable, or, worse, would look unnatural when viewed through the sun visor makeup mirror — it is no accident that the hinge on the driver’s side sun visor needs to be replaced 86 percent more often in female-versus male-driven vehicles. There was also near zero seat belt compliance among overweight nudist drivers — just try to un-think that picture!
Well, this simply wouldn’t do for the government’s elite safety thinkers (both of them who, incidentally, were not dating at the time). So, in 1973, being the very mature individuals that they were, they eased into partial pout mode and decided, “Fine, if you won’t use your seatbelts, then maybe we just won’t let you start your vehicles,” followed by a government bureaucratic phrase commonly translated as “Nanna-nanna-boo-boo!” They decreed that all 1974 vehicles would have an ignition interlock, so that if the seat belt wasn’t fastened, the vehicle couldn’t be started. Well, talk about the silt hitting the water slide! News Flash: In the battle between safety and convenience, convenience has a better record than the lions did against the Christians, who, technically, both had the same coach. New vehicle buyers were enraged. They started a national “Just Sit On It” campaign, and simply fastened the seat belts behind them. Well, that offered about as much protection as a macramé diaphragm. There was a huge underground market for “rehabilitated” car thieves who, for a small fee, would attach hot-wire leads to bypass the interlock. The fact that 86 percent of such “liberated” vehicles were stolen within two weeks of the conversion went widely unreported by the liberal media of the time. People who had never successfully written their name in cursive were sending letters to their congressional representatives. The national Nanny State government backed down, the law was rescinded, and the two elite safety thinkers were transferred to the Agriculture Department’s Division of Meat and Dairy Goat Standards. And for their government vehicles they were given 1974 Ford Pinto station wagons.
The battle had been won, but the war was far from over. Absent the neck cones that veterinarians wisely put on dogs after certain procedures, the Safety Nannies soon licked their wounds and came up with the most diabolical scheme yet to keep the dumb John Q. Public drivers and passengers safe from themselves. I mean, we’re talking hazardous chemicals and “controlled” explosions just inches from your face — what could possibly go wrong?
Next month we’ll continue our automotive safety-whether-you-like-it-or-not series, and answer the question, “If an airbag explodes in the forest, and no lawyer is around to hear it…” •
