Last week's National Roads Authority study came as something of a shock. Not the fact that people are still habitually speeding - anyone who drives anywhere, even intermittently, could tell you that for nothing, Kilian Doyle.
No, it's the seatbelt wearing - or the lack thereof - that disturbs. While figures for drivers belting up show a marked improvement in the past few years, one in seven still aren't cottoning on.
One would have thought always belting up is up there with never brushing your teeth with a chainsaw, and not wearing an Osama Bin Laden costume to a 9/11 commemoration on a Marines base in Hicksville, USA. Evidently, one would have thought wrong.
Have you free-riders never watched telly? Do you not know what happens to your face when you go through a windscreen? It's not a pretty sight. Sorry to be so graphic, but if you think of raw mince, you're pretty close.
You may think being forced to belt up is another Nanny State-ism, one that impinges on your personal freedom to kill yourself. While I'm all for natural selection - and Lord knows we don't need people stupid enough not to wear belts reproducing - it's not just about you.
What if you hit someone head-on and fly through the windscreen towards them in a Supermanesque glide? I think they'll be a bit miffed you weren't strapped in, don't you?
Or consider the fact that each road death costs an estimated €1 million to the Exchequer, money that could be well spent on sick pensioners lying on trolleys or kids fighting off rats in their classrooms if you hadn't splatted yourself.
There's a few exemptions to the seatbelt law - pre-1971 cars aren't legally required to have front belts, and pre-1992 don't need rear ones. But, as the Government website notes, fitting them is cheap. What price you or your passengers' pretty faces? You don't have to belt-up while reversing. But, be warned - reversing down a motorway is an offence. I checked.
You also don't have to wear one while giving a driving lesson. The Government website quips that this is "a case where it might not be so wise to avail of the leniency of the law". How very droll.
Worse is low compliance by children. Only 68 per cent of primary pupils in front seats wear belts, while a scandalous 48 per cent use them in the back. Why are they in the front in the first place? Isn't it illegal for an under-12 to be sitting in the front?
I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here - I believe not ensuring your children are wearing seatbelts should be a criminal offence - technically it's child neglect.
Every parent has a duty of care towards their child - if you haven't the regard for your offspring to strap them in, you're unfit to be a parent in my book.
If you're so selfish that your child's safety isn't enough to convert you, maybe you'll consider your own. A Japanese study last year said 80 per cent of front seat deaths, and 50 per cent of serious injuries, in crashes where rear seat passengers weren't wearing belts could have been prevented if they had been.
Another study found that an unrestrained child involved in a head-on crash at only 30 mph will hit the front seat occupant with the force of a baby elephant.
How they worked that out, I don't know. I can only hope they didn't use real baby elephants.
Bad enough as this is, the fact that 86 per cent of people speed in 30 mph zones makes crashes at that relatively slow rate far less likely than one at higher speeds. And at 40, the child presumably reaches teenage elephant velocity. At 50 and 60, we're talking full-grown bull.
The lesson in all this? If you don't want a Dumbo silhouette permanently implanted in the back of your head, cop on. Strap 'em in.