Her legs trapped beneath the steering column, Amee Surati lay bleeding and shivering in the cold after an auto accident last month. Emergency crews smashed the windshield and sawed off the roof of the car to free her.
Her wrist was broken, her legs were cut and her head ached from being slammed against the steering wheel. The Des Plaines woman later would spend six hours in an emergency room.
Despite the pain and fear she endured after a car turned in front of her Honda Civic Dec. 27 in Hoffman Estates, Surati felt lucky to be alive. She had escaped a potentially fatal accident with relatively minor injuries.
“If I wouldn’t have been wearing my seat belt, I think I would’ve gone through the windshield,” said Surati, 19. “I could’ve died.”
The Oakton Community College student survived because she remembered to buckle-up, an act that the Hoffman Estates Police Department lauded Thursday when it gave Surati the Saved-by-the-Belt award. The award is given to those who escape death or serious injury through the use of a seat belt. Surati was the first to receive the award.
“The idea is to increase use of seat belts and child restraints,” said Sgt. Steven Casstevens, whose department now loans child seats to parents unable to afford them. “We want everyone else to know it really does work.”
Though seat-belt usage continues to increase each year since the state adopted the law eight years ago, there still is a large percentage of people who don’t buckle-up themselves or their children.
Last year the department issued 30 percent more tickets for seat-belt violations than the previous year. In 1993, officers also handed out 155 tickets for child-seat violations.
Surati recently had her cast removed but still finds it difficult to walk without pain. “Buckle-up. It saves lives. It really does,” she said. “I’m a living example.”