Here is a follow-up story from the New York Times, printed today, to the story I posted earlier.

April 14, 2007

In the Spotlight, the Politics of Buckling Up

As constituents and public officials wished Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey a full recovery from his injuries in a car accident, many were shaking their heads that someone who is so smart, and has so much to lose, would put himself at risk by apparently not wearing a seat belt.

Such was the surprise that the issue became an instant corollary to the main news that Mr. Corzine had been so seriously injured, with multiple broken bones, that he needs help breathing from a ventilator and faces months of rehabilitation.

In interviews and on the Web, people in New Jersey and from around the country expressed incredulity over the state police superintendent’s statement that the governor routinely refused to wear a seat belt. Some accused the Democratic governor of hypocrisy, even arrogance. A few called for his resignation.

Many said that if it turns out that Mr. Corzine was not wearing a seat belt when the crash occurred, he should receive a citation for violating the state’s mandatory seat belt law. The fines are $20 and court costs are $26 per violation. Others wondered why the state trooper driving the car did not insist that he wear one.

“What is he thinking?” asked Marsha McMillan, 22, a worker at a store in the Hamilton Mall in Mays Landing, N.J., several miles from the crash site. “It’s almost bizarre. I bet even the strangest of rappers and punk rockers wear seat belts.”

Comments in a similar vein appeared on popular political blogs and local Web sites, like Baristanet.com in Montclair, N.J., as well as the reader forums of several local newspapers.

Jon Rantzman, 67, of Walnut Creek, Calif., who posted a critical comment on the Empire Zone blog of The New York Times Web site, said in a phone interview: “A governor, any governor, should be a role model, not a scofflaw. How can we pass a law and fine the citizens of New Jersey for not doing something” that the governor “gets away with”?

Safety organizations, in the meantime, cited the severity of Mr. Corzine’s injuries as further evidence of the importance of seat belts.

“It’s unfortunate and tragic and another very high-profile reminder that we still have a ways to go to convince some people to wear their belts,” said John Ulczycki, executive director of transportation safety at the National Safety Council.

Even though New Jersey may be perceived as a dangerous place to drive, traffic statistics tell a different story.

According to figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the number of traffic fatalities in New Jersey is well below the national average. And a record-high 90 percent of drivers and front-seat passengers in New Jersey wore seat belts in 2006, the eighth-highest rate in the country. (The state of Washington is No. 1, at 96 percent.)

Statistics show that 46 percent of passenger vehicle deaths in New Jersey in 2005 involved people who were not wearing seat belts, according to state police records.

While mandatory seat belt laws were strenuously opposed in many quarters when states first started enacting them in the mid-1980s, they are now so much a part of the culture that even toddlers know to buckle up before a car starts moving.

So what might cause Governor Corzine and the others to break the law in such a risky way?

“Even the worst nervous Nellie in the world has some glimmer of a sense of invulnerability, and all of us have some of that,” said Dr. Tony Stern, a psychiatrist in Westchester County, who admits he does not wear a seat belt “100 percent of the time” himself. “And someone who is a doer and an alpha male and a multimillionaire is going to have more than the average sense of invincibility.”

The former governor of New York, Mario M. Cuomo, said in a phone interview yesterday that he, like Mr. Corzine, preferred to sit in the front seat. And while he initially found seat belts somewhat uncomfortable, he said he wore them out of a sense of duty, given the fact that he had signed the nation’s first mandatory seat belt law in 1984.

“I remember the violent opposition it received,” Mr. Cuomo said. “People didn’t like the idea of being forced to strap themselves in. When we adopted the seat belt law, it was the most unpopular thing I had done as governor.”

In New Jersey, which passed its own law shortly afterward, the use of seat belts has been on the rise. The rate was 74 percent in 2000, when New Jersey made the law stricter, allowing police officers to pull over vehicles to issue seat belt citations. Previously, they could issue such citations only if the car had been pulled over for a separate offense.

About half the states now have the stricter form of the law, and organizations like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, a nonprofit group, are pushing for the rest to follow suit.

It is not clear whether the governor will get ticketed. New Jersey State Police officers have the discretion not to issue citations for seat-belt violations.

New Jersey’s Seat Belt Law applies to drivers, all passengers between 8 and 18, and all front-seat passengers. The law makes the driver responsible for proper seat belt use only by those younger than 18.

Few people interviewed suggested that Governor Corzine would suffer any lasting political consequences.

“Whenever there is a tragedy like this, I think whether it hurts or helps in the long run has a lot to do with how the victim handles it,” said Peter J. Woolley, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “Corzine could become an apologist and a spokesman for traffic safety and seat belt use.”

Robert Strauss contributed reporting.