New York State has now made seat belts mandatory for back seat passengers over age 16 because:

[ARPad95]

https://www.syracuse.com/state/2020/10/new-seat-belt-law-goes-into-effect-in-new-york-this-weekend.html

A new law requiring seat belts for all passengers in the back seats of vehicles in New York goes into effect Sunday.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the bill into law in August.

Previously, passengers over age 16 were not required to wear a belt in the back seat.

But the state lagged in requiring belts in back seats, according to AAA. Between 2010 and 2019, 289 unbelted back seat passengers died in New York and over 25,000 were injured.

And yet, look at all the people complaining about having to wear a mask to protect others and themselves from COVID-19 which has killed almost 230,000 in 9 MONTHS (vs 289 in 9 YEARS) and caused chronic health issues for multiples more.

You can't fix lack of common sense in the willfully ignorant.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. When seat belt laws were first enacted, there was a lot of complaining

about the nanny-state government taking away people's freedumb, too; same with motorcycle helmets.

[ARPad95]

2. Add banning smoking in public, too! Those people are too dumb to see that without your health,

you can't enjoy your life/FREEdumb. And if you're dead, well...I guess your loved ones will survive without you.

[Turin_C3PO]

6. Where I live, New Mexico,

there’s still no helmet laws for motorcycles. I think that’s absolutely crazy.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. It is crazy, and it's why ER docs call those vehicles "donorcycles."

[LisaM]

3. People will complain about this, don't worry.

Years ago a group of what we'd now call anti-belters were so outraged by seatbelt laws in Michigan, they came out with a giant seatbelt to encircle the Capitol Building in protest of their "rights".

And relatedly, I was phone banking some years back and was asked if the candidate (this was in Washington state) believed in personal liberty, which was a gotcha question, because his beef was motorcycle helmet laws.

[Marcuse]

4. Remember the good old days of presidential scandals?

[abqtommy]

5. I bought my first car, a 1955 Pontiac in 1966. It had seat/lap belts in the front seat. I wore

mine. I was never in an accident but I'm still here. Here in 2020 I still use my vehicle
lap/shoulder belts and I wear a mask and practice social distancing. I'm still here and plan
to be for a long time. There are positive results for those of us willing to learn, not so much
for those who refuse.

[ARPad95]

7. I'm in New York and have always used a seat belt in the back seat, especially in the center seat.

I have had no desire to make like a projectile and go head first into the front windshield in a car accident.

[Grammy23]

9. Princess Diana was not wearing a seat belt the night of her

fatal car accident in Paris. It was later reported that had she been wearing a seat belt, properly restrained, she likely would have lived with non life threatening injuries.

That was big news for quite a while. It shocked many people into realizing that sitting in the back seat was no protection from the forces of physics during an accident. If you cling to the delusion that you’ll simply hold on tight to protect yourself, you will find out quickly you can’t fight forces from a spinning or tumbling vehicle that far exceed your ability to stop yourself from being thrown around like a rag doll.

A simple demonstration of what happens to unrestrained objects (or people) in an accident should convince you to just wear the damn seat belt. Or make sure your life insurance is paid up.

RIP Princess Diana. Gone far too soon from a preventable death.