We give a heartfelt thanks to law enforcement personnel who are encouraging Powell High School students and employees to buckle up when they get behind a wheel.

We hope other community members take notice as well.

Here at the Tribune, we get a press release every time someone dies in a crash on Wyoming highways. Too often, it appears that those deaths could have been prevented, and other injuries minimized, if the driver and passengers had been using their seat belts.

It’s frustrating to know this, and to see it in retrospect, but still be unable to convince people to wear their seat belts as a preventive measure.

Sometimes, perhaps, a person’s hesitance to wear a seat belt is based on overconfidence that there will be no accident. After all, we’re careful drivers, right?

Unfortunately, we can’t base our risk of getting into a crash solely on our own driving skills. Unexpected things happen all too frequently: an animal crossing the road, a flat tire, someone driving in the wrong lane.

When a driver comes upon those circumstances, it’s much too late to decide to buckle a seat belt. As drivers, we’re too busy reacting to the circumstances to have time to buckle up; as passengers, it’s likely we won’t see the hazard in time, or if we do, we already may be tossed around as the driver reacts.

Sometimes, alcohol use seems to factor into a person’s failure to buckle up. A significant number of one-vehicle rollover deaths take place when the driver and/or passengers have been drinking. 

Teens and young adults often seem to feel that death is something that happens only to other people.

As one young man said a few years ago, “If I’m in a crash, I’ll be the one person in 1,000 where it turns out it’s a good thing they weren’t wearing a seat belt.”

After receiving a barrage of forwarded news releases about tragic instances where people died needlessly because they weren’t using their seat belts, this young man said he’d been convinced and would start buckling up.

Sometimes, people fail to wear seat belts because they’re only going across town or a few miles away from home. But that’s no guarantee of safety, either. Frequently, people killed on Wyoming highways die within a half-hour drive, or less, from their communities.

A fatal crash last week in northern Wyoming may have involved several of the above factors. Tragically, a 19-year-old man was killed on U.S. Highway 14, 12 miles east of Sheridan on the night of Sept. 1 or the morning of Sept. 2, less than an hour from his home in Arvada. He was not wearing his seat belt.

Alcohol use, driver fatigue and a possible medical issue are being investigated as contributing factors in the crash.

Another 19-year-old from Castle Rock, Colorado, died in a crash near Green River on Aug. 24. This young man also was not wearing his seat belt when his Ford Escape drifted into the median on Interstate 80. The vehicle rolled several times, and he was fatally injured, even though he was not ejected.

In this case, distracted driving — cellphone use — was being investigated as a contributing factor.

That brings up another safety concern, especially for young drivers: Distracted driving while calling or texting on cellphones.

A 19-year-old woman from Glenrock may face charges after a fatal crash Aug. 24 in which she drove a pickup truck into the back of a line of cars that were stopped at a construction site just 10 miles from Glenrock, causing a chain-reaction of rear-end collisions that involved four other vehicles.

The young woman survived, likely thanks to being buckled in her seat belt. Unfortunately, a 75-year-old woman in the car rear-ended by the pickup was killed despite wearing her seat belt.

According to a news release from the Wyoming Highway Patrol, distracted driving from cellphone use is being investigated as the contributing factor in this crash.

These are just three of the latest examples that we see, far too frequently. So please, for your sake, and for the sakes of those who love you, wear your seat belts and drive with care.

Your life, and others, may depend on it.