Do You Seat Belt in Cabs?

washington dc by wayan
Photo by Wayan

DC requires seat belts in taxi cabs, but I do not think they mean back seats, only front seats. Why? Because I have never heard of anyone getting a $50 fine for no seat belt in the back seat. Have you?

Then why do taxi cabs have these seat belt stickers in the back windows?

Married, mortgaged, and soon to be a father, Wayan Vota is in the fast lane to mid-life respectability – until the day his brood finds his intimate journal of global traveling and curses him with the ever-eternal reply “I’m gonna be just like you, Dad!”

9 thoughts on “Do You Seat Belt in Cabs?

  1. I wear a seat belt in cabs, and not because of the threat of a fine. Taxis aren’t somehow exempt from the laws of physics which can lead to you being killed or maimed in an accident in your own car.

  2. Starting Oct 2000, Taxis can be fined $100 for failing to post a required seat belt use sign.

    Back seat law is a secondary violation, meaning law enforcement cannot stop a vehicle solely for a seat belt infraction. If a driver is pulled over for another reason, non-buckled occupants of the back seat could face a $10 fine.

  3. @mariana The driver is fined $100 for failure to display the sticker. The sticker seems to imply that it’s the passenger who is fined for not wearing the seatbelt.

  4. And the winner is–Police. If there’s no sticker they fine the driver, if there’s a sticker-the passenger. With all this said i never heard of anybody being fined for not wearing seatbelts on the back seat of a taxi.

  5. Hm. A driver told me a few weeks ago that he was pulled over and the rider was fined $50. He said DC police were really cracking down on it. Maybe he was bs-ing me, but drivers usually know what’s up.