Fastening an automobile seat belt doesn’t seem like medical treatment, but it is very powerful preventive medicine. Trauma now accounts for 74 percent of all deaths between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, and accidents are the fourth most important cause of death at all ages.
Seat belts interlock devices, speed limits, and drunken driving programs are often considered to be annoying interferences with our personal freedoms. Yet, attention to safety measures is the easiest of all of the personal health habits. Because accidents kill often in youth, the total health impact in terms of years of life lost is even greater than statistics suggest. Young people forget the importance of good health habits because they do not feel threatened by cancer, heart disease, and strokes. But poor driving habits, such as not using seat belts, showing off, and drinking before driving, can kill just as surely as cigarettes, and even more quickly. Young Americans who die on the highway usually perish at the hand of another young American.
Seat belts interlock devices, speed limits, and drunken driving programs are often considered to be annoying interferences with our personal freedoms. Yet, attention to safety measures is the easiest of all of the personal health habits. Because accidents kill often in youth, the total health impact in terms of years of life lost is even greater than statistics suggest. Young people forget the importance of good health habits because they do not feel threatened by cancer, heart disease, and strokes. But poor driving habits, such as not using seat belts, showing off, and drinking before driving, can kill just as surely as cigarettes, and even more quickly. Young Americans who die on the highway usually perish at the hand of another young American.
