Seat Belts and Second Chances

Abstract

This chapter argues for a potentially high-impact but underutilized strategy: restricting or limiting access to highly lethal methods for suicide, especially firearms. It begins by describing the role of seatbelts in traffic fatality prevention. Prevention through design assumes that injuries, illnesses, and fatalities can be most effectively reduced or controlled by designing and building systems that eliminate or remove potential hazards from the very beginning, before they can cause any harm. If we shifted our mindset surrounding suicide prevention in a way that better aligned with the prevention through design approach underlying traffic fatality prevention, we might reconsider the considerable time, effort, and resources being devoted to the development and implementation of suicide risk identification and detection methods, and consider instead the potential impact of redirecting these efforts toward environmentally focused strategies that are more likely to reduce suicide rates. The chapter then considers the life-saving effects of laws and policies designed to reduce access to firearms, discussing firearm suicide in the United States.