Indeed that is so. We had give way signs on the junctions entering the road through the village so PaD definitely didn’t previously exist. Now it does, and the signs basically are a warning that PaD now exists rather than the yellow diamonds. This is what annoys me, PaD didn’t exists before and much cost has gone into reversing it. The money would have been better spent doing what most people wanted and that is putting in permanent calming chicanes and/or speed humps.
The measures haven’t changed behaviour so far and I don’t think they will. Even our Maire speeds through the village and it’s him that instigated this.
Sounds like he’s a bit of a nightMaire. 
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He’s actually, generally, not a bad Maire, and his wife makes gorgeous cakes 
. He’s better than the last one, that’s for sure.
Because I have practised defensive driving in a professional career spanning 63 years and have never had a single instance where one would have saved me from anything, and certainly not death, despite having been in several accidents non of which were my own fault.
An example of this is while driving my Zephry 6 uphill on an icy road I spotted a Mini come over the top ahead completely out of control. I tried to interpret which of his wild swings he would be on when he reached me but got it wrong. (A mate in Australia when I was a passenger in his car correctly calculated much the same from an oncoming drunk driver and, by reducing speed and changing down to first, proceeded slowly in the centre of the road and then was able to accelerate out of his way to avoid an impact).
In the case of the Zephyr, in the days before seatbelts were normally fitted I came to a halt on the pavement where he hit us head on at speed. Both cars were written off and I had my then wife alongside with the baby on her lap, and 3 others in the back. None of us was hurt or even bruised but the young driver in the Mini was only alive because he also did not have a seat belt. The impact threw him forward and sideways which saved him from decapitation from the bonnet which scythed through the windscreen over the top of his head.
I am only against banning compulsory seatbelts and only for drivers, not seatbelts per se because I know that they can be life savers, but almost always what they save you from is a violent deceleration caused by sudden impact in which the body is otherwise thrown forward. They will not save you if the car is stationary, or going slowly and, even if you have to brake violently but even then if you expect it feet and arms braced can reduce the forward motion of the body to lessen the impact.
I resisted wearing them for years but, fed up with stupid cops putting me and them at risk in order to give me a lecture at the side of a very busy motorway (admitted to be dangerous in itself, hence the advice always to get out of the vehicle to await rescue) I have for many years now worn one only with a clip to keep it slack but visibly legal.
As the only person at risk, and one who finds them so uncomfortable as to make wearing them normally impossible, I feel it should be my choice to take such a small risk to my own life. Passengers are different, they are not always alert to what is happening in front and their bodies hurtling forward in an accident can cause injury to others.
If skydivers, sub aqua divers and mountain climbers are permitted to risk their own lives in pursuit of their chosen recreation or profession, why should I not be accorded the same privelege with my life too?
May I ask @DrMarkH the circumstances of your own experience. Were you a driver and what happened to make your impact so serious?
I’m not sure that 60’s car design is really relevant to wearing a seat belt today and it’s hard to deny that, overall, they have saved many, many lives.
My personal experience is having a face/windscreen interaction because I hadn’t repaired a faulty seat belt buckle and the belt came loose. At any higher speed I suspect it could have been a lot more unpleasant.
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But what was the nature of the accident from which you were saved?
I agree that they have saved many lives, all I am saying is that I should have the choice to risk or not with my own, and I have judged that the risk is so minimal as to be not worth the extreme discomfort that I feel by their restriction on me.
BTW, what has 60s car design got to do with it? Are you saying that modern cars are less safe in some way?
But the risk isn’t just your own, it’s also that of society which is going to be paying for patching you back up if you’re seriously injured but not killed and potentially caring for you in the long term.
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Quite the reverse, it’s highly unlikely that the bonnet of a modern car is coming into the cabin. Compared to the 60s, the cabin of a modern car is a very safe place to be.
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Easy… An alternative already exists - they’re called simply voitures. Alternatively, a bicycle. Or public transport.
So what is your solution in areas like this one which is at the very least 15 kms from the nearest bus stop and a bus that only runs 3 times a day? And why are you against sans permis for people without a driving licence, but not against cyclists who are similarly unrestricted?
A car. 
I don’t mind cyclists cause they’re not a menace. But you should really have asked me about scooters (as opposed to bicycles or motorbikes) or those pesky electronic trotinettes… They’re on my hit list too 
Get you with your ‘only three times a day’… I don’t think there are any scheduled bus services (apart from Scolaire) within 25 km of our village!
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But that goes for everyone else in society who risks being in need of such services just by walking out of the door, or not in some cases. But why pick on drivers when there are lots of people doing risky things, and sometimes much riskier, who may be in need of such services. I remember the last time this subject came on on here and only a few days afterwards a caver was trapped for many days underground in the Brecon Beacons. It took dozens of volunteers risking their lives underground before he was rescued.
I don’t think a careful driver without an effective seat belt comes into that category.
Anyway, I see that you still haven’t explained the circumstances of your own accident where a seat belt saved you serious injury, or worse.
OK, but I was merely explaining what could have happened to him, but my main thrust was that I, driving responsably, suffered absolutely no injury at all, despite the fact that the damage to the front of my car was such that it couldn’t be repaired. If it had been demolished further and we had been crushed, no seat belt in the world would have prevented that.
May I ask [@DrMarkH]the circumstances of your own experience. Were you a driver and what happened to make your impact so serious?
I don’t remember much, probably hit some black ice while driving through a forest on a sunny Sunday morning in Northumbria. Car spun (mid-engined rear wheel drive ) must have gone over a bank 'cos I remember it sailing through) the air). Apparently it hit a large Scots pine. Came round in the wreckage with a paramedic asking me questions. Horrendous pain at the base of my skull, thought I might have broken my neck, tried to wiggle my toes and thankfully they worked. Spent the next three days sedated in a N/c high dependency unit. It was only then that they discovered that I was wearing hard contact lenses. By then both cornea were badly scratched.
When I came out of hospital I was an out-patient at all three of Newcastle’s hospitals for the next six months. One for an ear that was partially severed, one for the eyes and one for eventual decompression of the damaged facial nerves that had paralysed my faced. Eventually made a pretty good recovery, apart from no longer able to whistle, but in retrospect think there should have been some facial physiotherapy …
Car was a write-off, but had a PC in the front luggage compartment and a monitor strapped in the passenger seat. Both survived undamaged apart from the CD drive had become disconnected. They don’t build computers like that anymore.
One last thing, driving over the Pennines on the A66, I was overtaken by a matt black D-type Jaguar have ever since thought that car was a harbinger of misfortune, like Friederich’s raven in the foreground of Der Chasseur im Walde. A chasseur was a lightly armed Napoleonic soldier whose role was to chase the enemy. You know it’s not going to end well
Not if it’s a TVR. Bought my first Alfa GTV from a guy who’d lost both legs when his TVR’s V8 had done exactly that.
I can understand why you are so keen to keep the habit of wearing a belt, but really that was a bit of a freak accident, such as doesn’t happen too often in a motoring lifetime. All I am saying is that it should be up to me to decide whether or not to take that risk, not somebody else, just as other risk takers are allowed to continue doing what they do. 
All I am saying is that it should be up to me to decide whether or not to take that risk, not somebody else,
There’s two principal arguments against compulsory seat belts and yours is the libertarian one, OTOH the other is a Darwinian one!
There’s actually a very significant difference, because practitioners of extreme sports do everything possible to minimise risk, whereas, I’d argue you’re actually making it less avoidable.
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Wearing a seat belt can reduce the risk of death in a serious crash by up to 50%.
Reference: McCarthy, M. & Seidl, M. (2014), CLIENT PROJECT REPORT CPR1818: Benefit assessment for fitment of Seat Belt Reminder (SBR) systems to M1 passenger seat positions and to other vehicle types, TRL for European Commission
On average more than a fifth of car occupants killed in road crashes in Britain are not wearing a seat belt.
Reference: Department for Transport (2018) Reported road casualties Great Britain, annual report 2017, table ras41001
Half of young drivers aged 18–24 admit being in a car with someone who wasn’t wearing a seat belt.
Reference: Brake (2019) Half of young drivers admit to being in a car with someone not belted up
Darwin says “wear a seat belt”. Anecdotal evidence that you got away with not wearing one in an accident years ago is not proof that making them compulsory is a bad idea, given the evidence that even with compulsion some people are dumb enough not to wear one.
Sorry @David_Spardo - I sympathise with your discomfort and follow your reasoning, but in this case the science is against you.
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I’m pretty sure I said a modern car
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