THE latest car crash involving young people left an almost-new Mazda RX-8 a mangled wreck, but its four occupants picked up only minor injuries.

The Straits Times understands that they had been wearing seat belts. This could have saved their lives and prevented serious injury.

Associate Professor Gilbert Lau, a forensic pathologist with the Health Sciences Authority, said the four men, who are in their early 20s, had been "terribly lucky".

Belting up appears to have prevented them from being flung forward or worse, out of the car.

Two of the four were treated as outpatients. The other two were kept at Changi General Hospital for observation.

They declined to be interviewed.

Every day, nearly a dozen drivers and their passengers do not belt up and get caught by the Traffic Police. In the past three years, an average of 4,000 writs of summons have been issued each year.

The Traffic Police had no breakdown on how many of these were for drivers and how many for passengers.

A driver who does not belt up or insist that his passenger does so can be given a $120 fine and three demerit points.

Errant passengers can also be fined $120.

If the fine is not compounded and the case goes to court, the driver or passenger can be fined up to $1,000 or jailed for up to three months.

Not belting up, especially among rear-seat passengers, is a transgression that seems to cut across all age groups.

No official data is available, so The Straits Times did an informal survey along Toa Payoh Lorong 1 yesterday.

Of the 140 cars that whizzed by in 10 minutes, 32, or 23 per cent, had drivers who had not buckled up.

Of the 45 front-seat passengers, a third, or 15, had not buckled up. And 21 out of 23 cars had back-seat passengers who did not wear seat belts.

The British have a solid culture of wearing seat belts. A survey by the UK Department of Transport last August showed that 84 per cent of back-seat passengers wore seat belts and almost 95 per cent of drivers and front-seat passengers did so.

Better yet, the statistics over the past 20 years show that these numbers are still rising.

Bad habits can be changed. Miss Sarah Chua, 28, picked up the habit of wearing a seat belt while studying in Australia, where almost everyone buckles up. She said this pressured her into doing it to the point where "it becomes uncomfortable" if she did not.

To get more youngsters here to buckle up, National Safety Council president Tan Jin Thong recommended installing beepers in vehicles which sound if the seat belts are not used.

Most cars have an icon on the dashboard that lights up when the front-seat passenger is not belted up.

Audio warnings are less common. Cars with this feature are mostly high-end makes such as BMWs, Mercedes-Benz, Fords, Volvos, Renaults, Audis and Porsches.

Bukit Batok Driving Centre manager Syed Ismail, 50, thought Mr Tan's idea was a good one. "To get rid of the sound, the driver or passenger would be forced to belt up," he said.

People preferred not to belt up because seat belts restricted movement, he said.

He added: "But in an accident, they would wish they were wearing those seat belts."

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY LEE PEI QI AND AMY TAN

This story was first published in The Straits Times on Feb 26, 2008.