Sunday, June 21, 1998

The habit of safety

For many Texans who are old enough to have been driving most of their lives, using seatbelts has been an acquired taste. One measure of how hard it has been for "old" drivers to develop new habits is that the Texas Department of Public Safety announced earlier this month it will no longer issue mere warning tickets for failing to buckle up, even though the state's mandatory seatbelt law has been on the books for 13 years now.

Texas drivers of the future, however, are growing up with a mindset more inclined to safety, thanks to events such as the recent Progressive Farmer Farm Safety Day Camp.

The day's program included instruction by DPS senior trooper and safety education officer Sparky Dean, who provided physical demonstrations of the difference seatbelts makes in a collision -- particularly when the absence of a seatbelt results in a car's occupant being thrown from the vehicle.

Dean reinforced the demonstration by telling the youngsters that in his more than 20 years with the DPS, "every vehicle fatality I worked was either an unbuckled driver or an unbuckled passenger."

That's the sort of message that makes sense to young would-be drivers. Educational efforts such as Dean's are helping to produce new generations of drivers who will be less likely to die in a car crash. Would that older, more experienced drivers didn't wait to learn that lesson the hard way.