Editorial: Buckle up to save your life on the road

Once upon a time, the device called a seat belt was regarded with scorn from within the motoring industry.

Because, they argued, it effectively meant there had to have been something wrong with the car if you had to install such a thing.

And no manufacturer was keen to put forward the notion that there may be a safety issue with their finest tin-tops emerging off the production line.

Until a pesky chap by the name of Ralph Nader entered the picture and began offering up damning statistics which showed many of the great machines out there on the great highways and the quiet streets were deadly if they hit something.

Simply because they had no safety back-up system - no safety net when things went wrong.

And things did go wrong and people died - so many of them unnecessarily.

In the United States, it was not until 1968 that federal seat-belt legislation emerged ... for front seats.

In this country, seat belts had to be fitted in the front of cars from 1965 although it was not until 1975 that it became compulsory to wear them, and it was not until 1979 that they had to be fitted and worn in both front and back seats.

So you'd think by now the message may have got through, but just like cellphone use in cars and cyclists wearing helmets ... mmm.

Our children all learned that the first thing they did when they got into the car (in the post car-seat days) was to put the seat belt on.

It was purely and simply an automatic thing which they did without prompting or even thought.

It was what you had to do.

And it was not hard to do, but still the clicking sound of a belt being coupled too often goes unheard.

New Zealand Transport Agency figures show that in 2015 there were 92 road fatalities as a result of seatbelts not being worn, and that is both unsettling and sad.

I mean, you get on a plane and you put on your belt. Yet on the most dangerous part of the landscape (the roads) that too often does not happen.

So if you got pulled over for not wearing a seat belt last year, I hope that instead of sneers of frustration you said, "I could have been number 93."

Put 'em on.