Safety recall

Nope, the risk is that you get killed or seriously injured by the shrapnel when it goes off in a serious collision with something

But would you be prepared to be (one of) the first to have such a car, whilst everyone else drives more typical models?

It's a bit like the proposal for unilateral nuclear disarmament - it's a great moral argument, but it leaves you entirely at the mercy of everyone else.

But the airbag would protect you from harm. (Not really)

As the Ukraine has just discovered

Airbags may go off in collisions which are not serious, e.g. scraping the car along a motorway barrier.

Indeed, they weren't a legal requirement - but my mother insisted.

I am just old enough that when I took my test, I did not need to wear a seatbelt. However my instructor (my Dad) made me wear one as the change in the law was signalled, and there were warnings that if you forgot your belt on your test after the law change you'd fail (the examiner would not remind you).

Of course the sky was falling in at the time. And now no one even talks about it infringing their yuman rights.

Yes, the argument that 'without nuclear weapons, no one will want to attack us' worked well for Ukraine, didn't it?

-- “People believe certain stories because everyone important tells them, and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them. Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, one’s agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of one’s suitability to be taken seriously.”

Paul Krugman

There was quite a gap between seat belts having to be installed in new cars (fixings allowing installation compulsory in 1965, having seat belts pre-installed in cars in 1968 and having to wear the seat belts in the front seats in 1983) and the legal obligation for every adult in the car to wear the seat belts fitted, in 1991.

The legislation is not retrospective. It is perfectly legal to drive a pre-1964 car without wearing a seat belt, provided no seat belts have been fitted.

Indeed. I saw someone killed like that.

Wasn't manadatory when I passed my test - but I don't rememember any objection to wearing one, it was pretty much universally adopted without complaint.

Except by my grandad. He wouldn't wear one on a point of principle: he wouldn't be told what to do by the government. At least I think that was the essence of his argument. Never got nicked though, and he was driving well into his 80s.

I always wore one (it was a fixed over-the-shoulder and lap belt. Were retractable ones available then?) from day one in my 1967 HB Viva. About a year after I bought it in 1972 a Ford Escort pulled out in front of me when I was doing 35 - 40mph on a wet road, and less than 5 yards way. I hit the car just behind the driver's door, which flew open. The driver wasn't wearing a belt and he was thrown out of the car as it spun round. I never found out what happened to him (my insurance company said that I shouldn't ask). I broke a bone in my hand with the shock which was transmitted up the steering shaft and onto the wheel. I hate to think what would have happened if, like most drivers at the time, I hadn't been wearing the seat belt.

I've always been surprised that the authorities didn't make use in a road safety campaign of the awful example of the crash that killed Princess Diana. There were four people in that car, two were wearing seat-belts and they were the two who survived.

Yes, they were. I bought a set to go into my Anglia. The Ford dealer "lost" them when I changed cars - 1965.

Bad taste. But it illustrates the point. Can you imagine the Peoples Princess 'too dumb to wear a seat belt'...

I don't believe that was the reasoning.

The reasoning was:

NATO: We'd really like you to give up nuclear weapons. Ukraine: No thanks, we're good. NATO: Please, we'll look after you and ensure you never regret it. Ukraine: Are you sure ? NATO: Of course. Pinky promise.

I have often wondered how much nuclear engineering Ukraine held onto. It's not like they'd need the launch system. Just a bomb and a truck ....

Yes, along with the smoking ban, the sky is still in place.

Funny how no one is campaigning to reverse that now we are out of the EU ....

Incorrect.

I had to fit seatbelts to at least one car that had been registered after

The tester was going by his book o'rules which specified date of registration, not manufacture.

I also had to fit a rear foglight (high intensity rear light as it's technically known) as the MOT demanded it but the car was not fitted with it.

From those figures:

But…

The requirement to wear seat belts by rear-seat passengers became compulsory in 1991. So perhaps the figures for the reduction in deaths due to all seat-belt wearing should be compared with the period before compulsion.

So comparing before and after gives a fall in numbers of 1125-461 = 664 or