On some routes you see lots of loose seatbelts (Middle East, Africa). On European flights, everyone has the seatbelt on for the entire flight.

But to play your game, Switzerland and Italy, especially southern Italy, are very different.

And going back to the original intent: would you say driving in Zurich and driving in Naples are two distinct experiences?

I mean, Europe had an iron curtain for decades and that shows at the boundaries.

It’s not uncommon to see a parent riding around with a kid attached to the bike and neither are wearing a helmet.

I think it is kind of a cultural thing as well as convenience. If you ride a bike to the station to catch a train, then you might need storage or to carry it with you.

The bicycle seats for kids are designed in such a way that the only real danger of a head being hit is in the frontal collision, or in a really forceful side one. The design of Dutch streets makes the chance of either happening small enough that the helmets are widely seen as not worth it.

Part of the reason is that because bike usage is so common and the infrastructure is very separate (bike lanes everywhere, no mixed traffic on eg roundabouts), and bikes almost always have right of way and are not to blame in an accident, that drivers are very aware of them. I noticed in countries like Ireland with much less bikes that bike lanes sometimes just end in the middle of a high speed roundabout. And most drivers there have no clue which is in part because until 10 years ago you could just buy a driver's license at the post office. It was a "learner's permit" but it was normal practice to just go and drive.

So yeah in Ireland I wouldn't even ride a bike with a helmet. In Holland I'm much safer even without one.

Whereas you’d be someone with a death wish to be riding without a helmet in most places in the US.

The belt doesn't need to be on tight, but it should be relatively snug.

It's just one of those things that is trivial to do, with a very, very low probability to save you from injury, but costs nothing, so why not...

I don't see any interpretation of that that makes it true.

A belt simply takes that force and redistributes it into the seat frame, if the belt is not worn the force is not redistributed by the belt but rather by your head into the overhead bin

More precisely, while I am falling, my velocity and consequently my momentum relative to the Earth steadily increases, which is analogous to debt because I will eventually need to restore the situation in which my momentum relative to the Earth is zero (because that is how people live their lives: at rest relative to the surface of the Earth rather than for example in orbit).

In the same way, the passenger in the airplane must eventually go back to being at rest relative to the airplane, but if the seat belt is very loose, "debt" (momentum relative to the airliner) can be accumulated before all the slack has been taken out of the seat belt.

Yes, the total amount of impulse (change in momentum caused by the environment's pushing on the person) integrated over time is the same regardless of how tight the seat belt is, but it matters whether that impulse is spread out over time or comes in one big jolt.

The ground opposes the force produced by gravity, there is no accumulation of anything. Gravity accelerates mass when it is pulling it in motion unless there is an equal and opposite force which is the normal force exerted by the ground (or airplane)

If you're harness is loose, or your line is slack without an energy absorber, it'll break your back when you fall!

This may just be me becoming more aware of it, but, if so, I'm also becoming more aware of more passengers actually heeding the advice. I remember, not that long ago, most people removing their seatbelts as soon as the light went out. Not so common now.

It makes you wonder why they ever even turn off the seatbelt light. Just keep it on the whole time, just like the equally anachronistic no-smoking light.

I feel like the light is just there to mollify the older generations who didn't grow up with mandatory seat belts wearing in cars, fought those laws loudly, and are still bitter that the government makes them take a sensible safety precaution. Are there enough of those people still flying that it makes sense to keep that light in use?

Of course they don't always get it right both ways: Sometimes reports of turbulence ahead turn out to be false positives, and at other times, strong turbulence can happen without any warning.

There are entire states in the US that take that approach. Live free or die and all that.

So free.

Which ones? Rust belt? Flyover zone (or some such term)?

To tell you when it's relatively safe/not so safe to use the bathroom.

Might not be great for my thumbs in that kind of situation though...