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Beaver Township resident honored with certificate for wearing seat belt in traffic crash
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
After veering off the road and striking a tree, Turner Curry was thankful all he suffered in the July crash was a bruise.
That was from where his seat belt went across his body and stopped him from being ejected from his truck off state Route 7 in Beaver Township on July 10.
“If I didn’t have the seat belt, I probably would have been [ejected] through the windshield and on the ground,” Curry said.
The second-year Youngstown State University student recalled he was driving home at night from the Niles area and he fell asleep at the wheel. “I slid off the road, woke up and I was driving through a whole bunch of weeds and hit a tree,” Curry said.
Curry, 19, of Beaver Township, was presented with a “Saved by the Belt” Club certificate from Lt. Nakia Hendrix, commander of the Canfield Post of the Ohio State Highway Patrol, during a news conference Tuesday. He was also given a “Saved by the Belt” license plate bracket. Beaver Township Officer Tracy Polak, who responded to Curry’s crash, was at the ceremony.
“We’re very thankful that we went out and there was only damage to the property,” Polak said to Curry during the presentation.
“We recognize people that make good decisions. Although he crashed the vehicle, and there was significant damage to the vehicle, you’re OK because you took the two seconds to put your seat belt on,” Hendrix told Curry.
“The good decision here was that he wore the seat belt. He probably should have stayed where he was – that way he wouldn’t have fallen asleep – but he made the good decision to put the seat belt on,” Hendrix added
Of the award, Curry said it meant a lot to him because “growing up it was pounded into my head to wear a seat belt, wear a seat belt. Be safe. And then to have an accident, you would never think that something like that would ever happen to you, but it’s good to know that you were wearing a seat belt and you were being safe,” he said.
According to a patrol news release, the “Saved by the Belt” Club is a joint effort by the Ohio Department of Public Safety and more than 400 Ohio police agencies and features stories of people using seat belts.