Like so many people I once thought "it can't happen to me". It was in the early 70's when my two friends and I were in an accident. We were all small (around 100 lbs plus or minus a few), and there were no seat-belt laws. My friend in the backseat wasn't wearing hers. As a front-seat passenger I wasn't wearing mine. The driver, mostly concerned with maintaining an image of not wanting to appear ignorant and "dark woods" always wore her seat-belt and shoulder strap. We were hit head on by a speeding, out-of-control, car. My friend (the driver) was killed when she was thrust forward while he "main body" remained fastened to the seat. The injury that killed her was in her neck/spine area and the result of that forward thrust.

My friend in the backseat was thrown on the floor, injured, but without life-threatening injuries. My head and face hit the windshield, and I got LOTS of glass cuts, a moderate concussion, and a bunch of other injuries; but none of it was life-threatening. So, I don't know... I have my own two-out-of-three statistics that still leave me relatively uncertain about exactly how much faith to put in seat-belts.

That aside, I'd previously been in two other "good sized" accidents, one when I was one of three young children in a car with three adult family members. The windows were open (no air conditioning and it was Summer), and the car tipped up so that I could see the blacktop headed for the window before it bounced back on its wheels (and after kind of going in a half-circle in that tipped state) I was thrown on the floor, and my aunt fell on me,, her own baby, and my five-year-old brother. There was talk that my aunt did something intentionally to make sure she fell on us. I don't know. Of course, it could have gone the other way, and we all could been dumped out when the car tipped so dramatically. As I said, I just don't really know what to think. There's a part of me that, of course, goes along with the thinking involved with "what seems to be the best idea based on what we know (or think at the time, anyway".

Then, though, I always have that thing that if something is going to happen it's going to happen. :/