Posted On: February 28, 2005, 12:36 pm CST

Posted By: Eddie Wren

A major task of our not-for-profit organization, Drive and Stay Alive, Inc., is to help reduce introspection around the world, on the subject of road safety.

Sadly, "introspection" is very much the appropriate word for some NH people's attitudes on this subject. One of your correspondents claimed that the alleged usaged rate of 66% in NH isn't much different from the US national rate of 71%, but that does not help the argument.

Why not look further afield to countries where seat belts are compulsory and there is no such thing as a secondary offence; where failure to use is always citable. Many of those countries have compliance rates in the high 80's and even low 90's of percent.

But much more importantly, the best of those countries also have road-crash death rates up to a stunning 60 percent lower than is found in the USA.

If, for example, the USA were to match the per capita death rate in either Sweden or Britain -- the two safest, developed countries in the world -- then around 25,000 fewer lives would be needlessly wasted on America's roads each year.

Peter Thompson's stance on the seat belt issue in New Hampshire defies belief!

Eddie Wren
www.driveandstayalive.com