BOSTON, MA — Several years ago Mary Maguire’s 17-year-old son was driving home from a homecoming dance. He fell asleep at the wheel while on I-495 near Wrentham. He woke up while his pickup truck was taking down highway reflectors and over-corrected course, the truck hurdling across all three lanes before crashing.
He was trapped so tightly he couldn’t reach his phone. It took three sets of “jaws of life” to get him out. The emergency crews told Maguire later that it looked like it would be a salvage mission instead of a rescue mission. But her son made it out alive. All because he was wearing his seatbelt that night. Now a more strict seatbelt law is being sought by legislators. One bill was presented this week to the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security. If passed, it would essentially require everyone to wear a seatbelt, allow police to pull over a car for anyone who is not wearing one, and double the current fine for not wearing one.
“Seatbelts save lives. That is a given,” said State Senator Cindy Friedman, who said she wasn’t familiar with the law yet. “In general I agree with mandatory seatbelt laws. We would have to make sure that there are no unintended consequences in terms of how the law would be applied.”
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