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A real belt in the face Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell It's not Big Brother watching your every move, it's just a film reel of Georgia state police Capt. Pete Collins urging a full house of Jackson County traffic violators to wear their seat belts. "In 19 years, I've never unbuckled a dead person," Collins says of the grisly job of investigating auto wrecks. Seat-belt class scares scofflaws straight By DANI DODGE The pierced, the gray, the tattooed and the suited all walk in hesitantly - glancing furtively to the right and left to see if anyone there will recognize them. They're the unbuckled of society, and they know it. But by the end of two hours, many have had an attitude shift about as seismic as the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. "I will always wear a seat belt and be more cautious when I drive," 32-year-old Gisella Christensen says in a solemn voice lilting with a Peruvian accent. "I don't like thinking about my child without a mother or his own life." Jackson County has offered a seat belt diversion class once a month for four years. The class is for those who get tickets for things like not wearing their seat belt or not fixing their broken seat belts. By attending the $20 class, they get out of paying the $77 fine and the infraction is cleared from their driving record. All of the money collected in the class goes toward children's safety seats for the poor. In four years, the program has donated 2,600 seats. And class organizers say they believe the class is one of the major reasons traffic fatalities are dropping in Jackson County. Still, the class has become nightly fodder for ultra-conservative radio talk show host Roger Fredinburg, whose national show broadcasts from Central Point. "They have all these classes for everything now - you fart in public and you go to fart class," the radio host said in a phone interview. "It stems from this political correctness concept that you can teach people out of stupidity." Fredinburg heard about the class when his friend, 65-year-old Dan Perdue, went there last month. Perdue, though, isn't a complete convert. "If you leave the road into a deep river and your seat belt sticks - what in the world are you going to do?" Perdue asks. "You are going to drown." In the class, Deputy Greg Halley tells a story of two brothers who skidded off a forest service road up behind Trail. The car went into a pond upside down. One brother had his seat belt latched. He was able to orient himself by the position of his seat belt and found the door latch even in the murky water. He unbuckled, opened the door and swam to safety. His brother wasn't wearing the seat belt. He hit the windshield and blacked out. When he came to, he was disoriented and tried to swim out of the back window. He drowned. The story deeply impacted Blaine ViTaris, who attended this week's class. "It would suck to come to and not know where to go," says ViTaris, 23 of Medford. "I absolutely feel for the guy who tried to claw his was out but didn't make it. "This has definitely changed my mind about wearing seat belts," he adds, his yellow-tinted glasses catching the last rays of the sun as he shakes his head. Two hours earlier, he'd had a slightly different attitude. Most of those shuffling into the class - between 150 and 400 each month - just want to get out of paying the fine. But even as everyone is getting seated, a movie is on the screen and a Georgia state trooper is telling people what he sees on the road every day. "In 19 years, I've never unbuckled a dead person," Capt. Pete Collins says in a down-home Southern accent. Once everyone is seated, the doors close and students are told they cannot leave. "The law is not the only reason you should buckle up," says Glenn Adams, coordinator of the Jackson County Child Safety Seat Program. "And we hope by the end of the night you understand that." Through the evening, Halley, Adams and two emergency room nurses take turn telling stories about Rogue Valley residents who died or were seriously injured because they didn't bother to buckle. The nurses explain why the human body is more likely to be paralyzed or seriously injured in an accident where the seat belt isn't worn or is worn improperly. "Dying is the easy part," says Mary Barnum. "It's when you live, or half-live that the tragedy continues." They show a picture of the California judge who was thoughtful enough to buckle up his 10-year-old son, but failed to put on his own seat belt. When he crashed on an empty stretch of Highway 140 near Fish Lake, the judge was thrown through the car window, and then crushed when the car rolled over him. His son - still strapped in -heard his dying breaths. "If they are thrown clear, they need to realize they will go the same direction of the car, " Adams said. There were pictures also of people who didn't strap in their 6-year-old as they drove Little Applegate Road. The picture shows a child, face down in the dirt, dead. "These kinds of crashes affect you every time," says Deputy Halley. "Some things you never get used to: children, the smell of blood ... and going to a crash where the dead body is still steaming." Before everyone is excused from class, Adams asks the students one last question: "How many of you gamble?" "In Jackson County your odds are 1 in 63 you will face serious injury or death if you are unrestrained in a motor vehicle crash." he says. "If you are properly restrained, your odds of being seriously injured or killed are 1 in 1,047." As he leaves the class, 16-year-old Joshua Williamson still has those odds swimming in his head. But more than that, he has pictures of the bloody, twisted bodies. "When I saw the pictures, they creeped me out," he says. "They really got me to wear my seat belt." Reach reporter Dani Dodge at 776-4471, or e-mail [email protected] Anyone can attend You don't have to get stopped by cops to be invited to Jackson County's "Why Safety Belts?" class. Anyone can attend, and better yet, if you aren't ordered to be there by a judge, it's free. The class is presented at the Smullin Center, next to Rogue Valley Hospital, on the second Wednesday of every month. Check in time is 6 p.m. Class starts at 6:30 p.m. For more information, call 774-6809. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.