Deaths of Math Genius and Wife Show Need to Use Seat Belts in Back, Experts Say

The crash that killed the mathematician John F Nash Jr and his wife, Alicia, on Saturday on the New Jersey Turnpike remains under investigation, but preliminary findings by the police seem to make one thing clear: The Nashes, who were thrown from the back seat of their taxi, were not wearing seat belts.

Their deaths come after years of increased ticket-writing by law enforcement agencies and educational campaigns by advocacy groups to get more people to buckle up. But such efforts have been undermined, in part, by a cultural mindset that not using a seat belt in the back seat is somehow safer and by what some see as mixed messages sent via a patchwork of state laws governing seat belt use.

While nearly all states mandate wearing seat belts in the front seat, only 28 states require it for those sitting in the back as well, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association, a nonprofit that represents state highway safety offices. Moreover, in some states, drivers can receive tickets for a seat belt violation only when they are stopped for another violation. The fines for a first offense can range from $10 to $200, according to data collected by the association.

In New Jersey, where state law requires all passengers to wear seat belts, the crash involving the Nashes happened during the opening weekend of an annual summer campaign by the State Police to enforce safe driving, which included putting more than 200 additional patrol cars on the roads, said Sgt. First Class Gregory Williams, a spokesman for the New Jersey State Police.

"Seat belts save lives," he said. "I'm a veteran of the force for many years, and I can attest to that."

Williams declined to comment on the crash involving the Nashes because it was still under investigation. Law enforcement officials have said that no charges have been filed in the crash.

Nash, 86, shared a Nobel Prize in economics in 1994. His long descent into severe mental illness and eventual recovery were the subject of a book and a film, both titled "A Beautiful Mind."

In New York City, many people routinely ignore seat belts in the back of taxis and livery cars and are legally allowed to do so; the state's seat belt law, which does not apply to taxis and livery vehicles, only requires all passengers in front seats to use them. In a survey of passengers in the 2014 Taxicab Factbook released by the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, 62 per  cent of respondents said they did not wear seat belts.

But some city officials and advocates are supporting legislation to change that, saying that riders are under the mistaken impression that it is safe to go without seat belts in the back seat, and that because they are paying for a transportation service with a "professional driver" nothing will happen.

"It's frustrating," said Michael O'Loughlin, the campaign director for Cab Riders United, an advocacy group that has called for mandatory seat belt use in taxis and for-hire cars. "It's all the more tragic because it's entirely knowable and preventable. This is not new science."

O'Loughlin recalled that after a friend got into a taxi outside Penn Station a couple of years ago, she did not have a chance to fasten her seat belt before the taxi was rear-ended. She was thrown face first into the glass partition, and had to be hospitalized and undergo plastic surgery, he said.

O'Loughlin added that such injuries have become so common at some emergency rooms that the doctors and nurses have a name for it: "partition face."

Earlier this year, the issue of back-seat safety was highlighted by the death of the CBS News correspondent Bob Simon, who was not wearing a seat belt when his livery car hit another car and then struck the median in Manhattan.

Kara Macek, a spokeswoman for the Governors Highway Safety Association, said that the crash involving the Nashes was a reminder that passengers in the back are just as vulnerable, and if there is a crash, can be ejected like a projectile.

"Logical, thoughtful people somehow feel like there's an invisible shield around them when they get into the back of a taxi or a livery car," she said. "The law of physics haven't changed."