STUDENTS SAY SEAT BELTS LIFESAVERS; TEENS SURVIVE CRASH, DISPLAY WRECKED CAR AT CENTRAL

If Annise Maguire ever doubted the effectiveness of seat belts, she doesn't anymore.

Maguire was one of four Cape Girardeau Central High School students involved in an automobile accident Monday along Nash Road. Even though the car rolled four times before coming to rest in a field, Maguire and the other students were able to walk away with just scratches and bruises.

"The state trooper told us that there would have definitely been fatalities, maybe all of us would have been killed, if we were not wearing seat belts," Maguire said.

At the suggestion of Maguire and with the permission of high school principal Randy Fidler, what is left of Maguire's car was towed to the high school campus Wednesday afternoon for students to see. They both agreed that it would serve as a reminder to students to be careful when they drive and to always wear their safety belts.

Maguire and her friends -- Tia Meyer, James Ainsworth and David Koerner -- were in Maguire's car Monday morning following the high school orchestra's performance at the district band and orchestra contest at the university.

Because they had an hour before they were supposed to be back at Central, the students decided to go for lunch to the home of Ainsworth's grandmother off of Nash Road. Maguire was unfamiliar with the road and asked Ainsworth to drive.

When she got in the passenger's seat, Maguire turned around and told Meyer and Koerner that they weren't going anywhere until their seat belts were buckled.

She admitted that Ainsworth was driving fast, nearing 70 mph at times, and the next thing she knew the car was fishtailing and bumping up and down.

When he hit the right shoulder of the road he tried to correct the vehicle but overcompensated, causing him to lose control. The car flipped, rolled at least four times and landed right side up a couple of hundred feet in the middle of a field.

After checking to make sure that no one was hurt, Maguire screamed for everyone to get out of the car. They climbed out the windows with nothing but scratches and bruises.

"We were very fortunate," Maguire said, adding she was certain seat belts saved their lives.

It was a message that Maguire had preached before to her classmates. As a member of the school's Team Spirit club, Maguire has played a role in letting students know the importance of car safety.

The club, started by the Missouri Division of Highway Traffic Safety, encourages students throughout the state in issues of traffic safety, including the dangers of drinking and driving and the need to wear seat belts.

Sixteen members of the club will be giving up one day of their spring break next week to travel to Jefferson City for a ceremony with Gov. Mel Carnahan and a chance to meet with members of the Missouri Legislature to encourage them to support traffic safety issues. One of the members planning on making the trip is Annise Maguire.

"It's such a miracle," said Shiela Maguire, Annise's mother, after seeing the car on the high school campus.

Shiela Maguire will accompany her daughter and the other students to Jefferson City as one of the adult sponsors.

Sharee Galnore, coordinator of Safe Communities and one of the other adult sponsors for the Jefferson City trip, said Wednesday that seat belts provide the ultimate protection in an automobile accident.

Missouri's traffic safety division estimates that a driver not wearing a seat belt has a 1-in-3 chance of being injured in a traffic accident. A driver lowers his chance of injury to 1 in 7 by wearing a seat belt.

When examining driver deaths, the difference is even more dramatic. A driver had a 1-in-85 chance of being killed if he was not wearing a seat belt. In those cases where a driver wore a seat belt, the chances of being killed was only 1 in 1,408.

Maguire was even more convinced, she said, when they found a jacket that had been in between the two back-seat passengers. After the car had rolled and the four got out of the vehicle, they found the jacket 20 feet from the car.

"That could have been us," she said.