Such seriousness with the seat belts.
Automotive safety standards have become ridiculous. At least one out of three automobile commercials focus on automobile safety as their main selling points--and each one of these hits on a supposed responsibility of putting your friends, wife, and children in the safest vehicle possibility. Clearly, if you don't buy a full size SUV with the most expensive safety equipment available, you'd be risking your family's life in exchange for saving a buck on a car.
Come on.. That's fear mongering. But it's almost politically incorrect to suggest that auto companies are going too far to protect their consumers. Suggesting that perhaps an extra 30 mpg would be more valuable to some consumers than two dozen well placed air bags would be sheer insanity. Furthermore it turns an excuse--that the drop of automotive fuel economy was necessary due to increased weight needed for added safety measures--into a statement of infallible truth, never to be questioned.
Same deal with CarFax commercials.
Talk about overdoing things.
"OMG, I put my daughter in a SALVAGE vehicle! Had I checked CarFax first, I wouldn't have put my daughter's life in danger!"
Or better go to Iraq.. "...we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
You know, one of the funniest things I ever saw at a used car lot was when a salesman tried to suggest to a ~35ish old woman she buy a compact. He sure got an earful--everything from Styrofoam bumpers, to being mauled over by a Hummer, to conspiring to invoke a 5 count homicide--2 month old infant included of course..
Ah these people and their damn Ford Excursions... They just can't help but run over subcompacts all day..
Not trying to talk anyone else into shredding their seat belts of course.. I am clearly in the wrong, but it's not like my irrationality is challenging an issue any more rational.
My actual logic in not wearing my seat belt is that if I drive my Prius and I wreck it, I would be ejected before I could be protected by any of the safety precautions that I despise so.
What's ironic about this is that I'm boycotting a technology that actually once was dirt cheap, logical, simple and wonderfully effective at its purpose: saving lives. And of course recent safety advancements have been the total opposite--I mean adding 2000 lbs to every vehicle on the road to make them safer does kind of have an effect on the safety of, well, the rest of us on the road.