Just in case you missed it, the likely quote of the year by a firefighter was uttered last week by Mark Bohnenstiehl, a firefighter of a volunteer fire department in Marine, Ill. Mr. Bohnenstiehl was given the option of paying a $55 fine or performing a half-day of community service for not wearing a seatbelt; he was then jailed for refusing to do either. Local media (Channel 14 out of Evansville, Ind.) reported that Mr. Bohnenstiehl stated outside the courtroom that he won’t wear a seatbelt because he’s had to cut too many people out of them.
What a load of crap. I’m 99.999999 percent certain that there are many firefighters out there who have cut many more people out of cars than Mr. Bohnenstiehl and who still wear their seatbelts every day because they know it’s the safe thing to do.
So here we are. We talk about seatbelts all the time. In June we participated in the National Firefighter Safety Stand Down, which emphasized apparatus safety and wearing seatbelts. And fire service veteran Burt Clark recently created the “Brian Hunton National Fire Service Seat Belt Pledge” in memory of firefighter Brian Hunton who was killed after being ejected from a fire apparatus in April. But somehow, some of us never seem to understand the importance of wearing seatbelts.
Even Mr. Bohnenstiehl reportedly said, “I’ve seen where [a seatbelt] helped, and I’ve seen where people would have been better off without it.” We could all say that, and it’s purely anecdotal. But how often could any of us say, “By God, he would have been killed if he was wearing that seatbelt”? Is this statement provable or at all realistic? In any case, I’m willing to bet that Mr. Bohnenstiehl has seen far more people who were saved by seatbelts than people who would have been better off without them.
Additionally, the Belleville News-Democrat reported that, interestingly enough, Mr. Bohnenstiehl races stock cars locally and always wears his restraints (i.e., seatbelt) when he does. He said rescue workers are at the track and can immediately free a driver from a car and extinguish fires.