Seatbelts are far from a personal choice

In my early career I worked as a medical officer in an emergency department in Britain. This was before Britain had compulsory seatbelt legislation. In fact, for a number of years after other countries including Malaysia implemented seatbelt legislation, Britain had none, because they believed wearing a seatbelt was a personal decision.
My experience in the emergency department convinced me that not wearing one is not a personal choice but a societal issue. 
We often had to deal with road-accident victims who were not wearing seatbelts. 
Our task might be to spend the night picking slivers of broken glass out of a person’s face after they had gone through the front windscreen. Or we might have to send the patient straight to the operating room because of a serious head injury that, even with surgery, might leave the patient brain-damaged.
We might also have patients going straight from the emergency department for spinal surgery which, if unsuccessful, would leave them paralysed from the waist, or even neck, down.
We doctors asked, if patients were not prepared to wear seatbelts, should they expect healthcare, which was largely, if not completely, funded by the taxpayer?
Our salaries were paid by the taxpayer and we too were taxpayers. And our tax was being used to pay for the care of patients who felt it was their personal right not to wear a seatbelt. 
Of course, there would always be other patients waiting, some of whom we felt were more deserving of our time, while we dealt with these accident victims. 
They might include young children with breathing difficulties.
The other aspect was that some of these accident victims did not recover from their injuries and were left brain-damaged or paraplegic, and the cost to society of looking after these people for the rest of their lives was huge. 
They often went back to the hospital for rehabilitation or with recurring medical complications from their accident, and many were never well enough to work and contribute to society (meaning they were never able to pay back the cost they incurred to society in exercising their personal right).
Fortunately, Britain did eventually enact seatbelt legislation after their effectiveness and cost benefit was clearly shown.
Failure to wear a seatbelt, as Yong states, doesn’t cause accidents, but it is more than a personal matter. Society bears the brunt when a person is injured or dies due to this failure.
Prof Dr Jacqueline Ho
Penang Medical College
The Star/ANN