Seat belts save lives.

Buckle up, it's the law.

Only "dummies" don't buckle up.

We've all heard them before. Those cliches that try to get us to obey the law and buckle up. For some, though, seat belts are a nuisance. For others, seat belts are life savers.

I'm one of those people who believe they're life savers. But I didn't always think so.

On Oct. 30, 1997, I was in a rush. Basketball practice was over at 6:30 p.m. and I had to be at a downtown Indianapolis school board meeting at 7 p.m. I was not totally certain where the building was where the meeting was going to be held.

I had directions because I called the school administration office that day to find out where the meeting was going to be. Not that directions are a great help to me, I'm not the world's best navigator.

I didn't want to go to the meeting, but as part of my news media course in college, I was required to go.

The weather was nice. No rain, snow or fog. It was dark. Traffic wasn't too bad. I even managed to get downtown from the Butler University campus in less than 10 minutes without driving excessively over the speed limit.

If you've ever driven downtown Indianapolis, you know that 99 percent of the streets are one-way streets. If you pass the street you need to turn on, it takes extra time to get turned around.

My street was coming up and I needed to turn left. I slowed down, not as much as I needed to, but what I thought was enough without coming to a complete stop. I turned on my left turn signal. The light was green.

I began my left turn.

I didn't see the oncoming car.

It came out of nowhere.

Before I realized what was happening, the oncoming car slammed into me. I felt my body lunge forward, restrained only by my seat belt.

I don't know why I put my seat belt on that night. It wasn't something I did then on a consistent basis. Sometimes I'd go for weeks without even thinking of wearing my seat belt.

That night, I wore it.

So many thoughts raced through my mind at the moment of impact, after the impact. Was I OK? Was it my fault? What now? Who do I call?

I felt in a daze. I looked at the older woman in the other car. She appeared to be OK, but her car was shattered worse than mine.

The only thing I knew to do next was to move my car out of the road, if that was possible. I restarted my car and pulled it over to the side of the road. The lady in the blue car managed to do likewise.

One of the cars was leaking fluid, and glass was all over the road.

I got out of my car, shaken, and went to see how the woman was doing. By that time, eyewitnesses were swarming the scene. A nurse, who just happened to be driving by, was checking on the woman. She and a male eyewitness asked me how I was doing.

Fine, I said. Fine. Was I sure, they asked? Yeah.

Physically I was. But every other way, I was devastated. My car was ruined. I could have died. I could have killed that woman, whose child was at the babysitter's, I later overheard.

Thank God for my seat belt. Thank God she was wearing hers, too. Her small blue car was totaled.

EMS came. The male eyewitness had called 911 on his cellular phone. He wished me good luck. Good luck? That didn't sound very reassuring to me.

The EMS put the woman in a neck brace and took her to the hospital. I never did learn how she was or even what her name was after that.

But I would never forget her face. Scared like a rabbit being chased by a mountain lion.

The tow truck delivered my car to the wreck yard. I rode with him so I could make a phone call for somebody to pick me up.

I was more than a hundred miles from any blood relative, so I called my best friend. He wasn't home. Then I called my roommate. He wasn't there. Then I called my suitemates.

Luckily, Andrew was home. He said he'd come and get me.

For 25 minutes I waited at the wreck yard. Scared. Devastated. Angry. Worried.

What was a bad week turned worse that night.

But without my seat belt, I knew I may not even have been conscious then or alive to remember the bad week I was having.

When I got back to campus, that's when all my anger, sadness and worry came out. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and not ever leave my room again. The next day, though, I made arrangements to have a body repair shop estimate a cost of fixing my car ($3,000). I e-mailed my professor and told her I was skipping my news media course because I wrecked my vehicle and had to try to do something about it. I called my insurance company.

I'm so glad I had car insurance!

Having figured I didn't have the money to get that car fixed, it was not until eight months later that I bought another car. Living in Indianapolis, you almost have to have a car. Two months after buying a used car from my best friend's father, I moved back to Warsaw to begin working as a reporter here.

From that personal experience, I've become a seat belt enthusiast. I always buckle up. If I forget initially, I buckle up as soon as I remember.

And while there is no 100 percent guarantee a seat belt will save your life, I can tell you it probably saved mine and can save yours.

So listen to the "dummies" and buckle up.

You can be the safest driver in the world, but that doesn't mean all the other drivers on the road will be.

They could be having a bad day. They might be drunk driving.

Or maybe they just don't see you.

Whatever reason an accident occurs, taking a moment to buckle up may save your life. [[In-content Ad]]