Buckle up for safety.

(CBS3/AP) GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Gov. Jon S. Corzine was apparently riding without a seat belt, in violation of state law, when he was critically injured in the crash of his official vehicle, a spokesman said Friday. A state trooper was at the wheel and the governor was sitting as usual in the front passenger seat when the SUV slammed into a guard rail Thursday night, authorities said. Corzine broke a leg, his breastbone, 12 ribs and a vertebra. When asked why the trooper who was driving would not have asked Corzine to put on his seat belt, Shea said the governor was "not always amenable to suggestion."

So, he's a cranky old guy who intimidated a State Trooper into allowing him to ride without his seat belt. Not only is that bad policy, but it is bad police work. If it were you or I in that vehicle, you can be damned sure that the trooper would tell us to wear our seat belt. Either that, or out of fear we would buckle it ourselves. I'm going to try that amenable to suggestion defense the next time one of them pulls me over. How do you think that will work for me?

"Given the severity of this accident, probably no one should have been seriously injured if they were wearing seat belts," said Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "But when your body is thrown around, there are lots of things that you can hit that hurt you."

Without a seat belt to restrain him, Corzine likely was thrown violently about the interior of the vehicle. His broken ribs and sternum suggest he was thrown into the dashboard, said Steven C. Batterman, a forensic engineering consultant and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science and School of Medicine.

There is also a question as to how fast the vehicle was traveling when the crash occurred. The speed limit on that road is 65mph. If my morning commute on the Atlantic City Expressway is any indication, they were probably traveling around 90. Routinely, state police vehicles run down the left lane, scattering cars trying to pass and generally going nowhere fast.

I always wonder why it is necessary for them to go so fast. The answer I give myself is, "Because they can," which is a stupid answer, because they can also go 65 like the rest of us. They can wear seat belts, too, like the rest of us. "Because he is the governor" is another stupid answer. He would probably agree, but he's in the hospital now with a breathing tube, and the seat belt violation will cost him $46.

That sounds like a bargain.

Then comes the stupid comment that always seems to come in these types of situations. To wit:

"Based on the pictures I've seen of the crash, I think he was lucky," said Steven Ross, head of the Cooper University Hospital trauma unit in Camden.

Lucky? Based on the pictures I've seen (and posted) I'd say he's horribly unfortunate. Luck is a by-product of a simple mind, and I have no place for it in anything I think or feel. Frankly, I'm a little surprized that a physician would make such a silly remark. But, they're human, aren't they? I hope he doesn't lean too heavily on luck if he ever operates on me.

Generally, when some unfortunate victim meets a horrible circumstance, some jackass tells the world that he was "lucky" that he wasn't killed or maimed in a more horrible way than he already was. If they truly believe in luck, then the other vehicle would have missed them altogether and they would be sitting at home reading the newspaper instead of lying in a hospital bed with a breathing tube and metal rods in their body.

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