When Germany first made the wearing of seatbelts mandatory in the 1970s, the move caused massive backlash.
My dad still remembers my great-grandma pulling out the seatbelt but then merely holding it in place instead of clicking it into the lock. “I’ll just hold it like this, that should be good enough, no?” “No, grandma,” my dad said, “that’s completely useless in an accident.”
His grandpa went even further. He had a pacemaker and, as a result, got his doctor to sign him a waiver. “Ha! No stinkin’ seatbelts for me!”
Many people protested, complained, and tried to skirt the rule. “They even sold t-shirts,” my dad told me, “where a dark cross-stripe was printed across the front. To make it look as if you’re wearing your seatbelt when, actually, you aren’t.” Can you imagine?
Looking back, it’s the complaints that seem crazy, not the rule. Of course it makes sense to wear a seatbelt! It’s the most obvious safety mechanism in the world! And yet, at one point, it was a change people were hesitant to make.
Sometimes, we get it backwards. Common sense is deemed controversial, and the controversial is actually perfectly reasonable. “Obvious” is a word we can only use after the fact, but change is always coming. Don’t forget to buckle up.
