New York Injury Talk Blog

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine has become a believer! Or at least, he's pretending to be one. From an article published this week, we learned that Corzine plans to use his experience as a survivor of a serious auto accident, in which he did not wear a seat belt, to help show others why that's a really bad idea. He taped a public service announcement on May 15 about the importance of wearing seat belts -- which he had to do from home, in a wheelchair, because he broke one leg, 11 ribs, his collarbone and his sternum in the accident, which was caused by another driver who swerved into his lane, forcing Corzine's vehicle into a guardrail. The New Jersey state trooper who was driving wore a seat belt and was able to walk away from the accident with only minor injuries.

"I thoughtlessly had not put on my seat belt, and it's a steep price to pay," Corzine said. While he said he will now always wear his seat belt, Corzine said riding without a seat belt wasn't uncommon for him.
"I'm one of those old guys that grew up where it wasn't a part of the habit, but there's no excuse," Corzine said. "I've been yelling at my kids for years about it. It was wrong, and I'm paying the price."

We're glad he sees it that way. We've handled thousands of auto accident cases, at Wingate, Russotti and Shapiroand we can assure you from that firsthand experience that seat belts make a big difference in the severity of injuries you could sustain in an accident. (Seat belt users show consistently lower rates of death and serious head injuries than nonusers. The federal Department of Transportation has collected a lot of information on the subject here.) Seat belts can also help your case if you should decide to file a personal-injury lawsuit after the accident. New York is a "pure comparative fault" state, meaning that anytime you sue someone for negligence (carelessness), the money you collect can be reduced if the jury decides that you were also negligent and it contributed to your injuries. Even in Corzine's case, where the other driver pretty clearly caused the accident, he wouldn't be able to claim 100% of the damages he could win, because he bears some fault for his own injuries for not wearing the seat belt. However, not wearing a seat belt is a lot less negligent than driving into oncoming traffic, so he'd probably be assigned much less than 50% of the fault -- assuring him of collecting the majority of the money. That's if it had happened in New York; New Jersey has a slightly different way of assigning liability that could have left Corzine with even less money in our hypothetical lawsuit. In any case, Corzine is fortunate enough to have his own resources and those of the state of New Jersey at his disposal, so unlike many car accident victims, he doesn't need to pursue auto accident litigation to cover his medical bills, repairs or time off work.