Lack of clarity

A report in today's The Daily Telegraph tells of a car accident in Victoria where, with a learner driver at the wheel, a two-door vehicle hit a pole but none of the eight people in the vehicle were killed. Rescue workers at the scene branded the act of cramming that many people into the vehicle "sheer stupidity", but the Victorian Police Commissioner is reported as saying "the six men and two women were not breaking the law as long as all the seat belts were being used". It may be that the laws differ between Australian States, but I thought that here in NSW each person in the vehicle had to be wear a seatbelt - therefore only as many people can be in the vehicle as there are operating seatbelts - as opposed to it's okay for some people in the vehicle not to be wearing seatbelts as long as all the available seatbelts are being used by someone. Having been involved in a couple of vehicle accidents (thankfully none serious), my preference is definitely for seatbelts - and certainly having anyone unrestrained in a vehicle in a crash becomes a hazard to everyone else, never mind what damage they might do to themselves. I have just finished reading "Rant" by Chuck Palahniuk and one of the key characters is in a vehicle accident with her mother and father. She is lying on the seat at the back at the time, not wearing a seatbelt, and it is her body, as it is thrown forward to hit her parents, that causes the injuries that lead to their deaths.