Deerfield, Wis. ? The car was racing down a country road at speeds well over 100 mph, even though the cop who’d been chasing it had given up. So when the young passengers saw the “T” in the road ahead, they knew there was no way driver Matt Hotmann could stop or make the turn.

Passenger Kyle Smith uttered a swear word. In the back seat, Mary Reinhart squeezed her friend Jeremy Budahn’s hand and told him she loved him. “I love you, too, sweetie,” he said.

Then Reinhart — knowing that a night of partying with a few friends was about to take a tragic turn — made a last-minute decision that probably saved her life: “I clicked my seat belt and covered my face.” She heard the sound of cracking plastic and shattering glass as the car rolled several times into a frozen farm field.

Budahn and Hotmann, who was her boyfriend, died instantly and Smith a few hours later in the hospital. All three were not wearing seat belts and suffered extensive head injuries when they were thrown from the car. Meanwhile, 17-year-old Reinhart walked away from the December accident with bruises on her hands, a few scratches and a black eye.

Motor vehicle crashes remain the nation’s leading cause of death for 15- to 20-year olds and in many cases, experts say, seat belts could have made a difference.

‘It’s such a waste’

The aftermath of a crash of a Chevrolet Tahoe on Interstate 84 east of Boise, Idaho, killed one teen and seriously injured another. Neither wore seat belts. The two front-seat passengers -- who were wearing seat belts -- received minor injuries. According to the most recent statistics available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, of the 5,341 teens killed in crashes in 2001, two-thirds were not wearing seat belts.

Of the 5,341 teens killed in crashes in 2001, two-thirds were not wearing seat belts, according to the most recent statistics available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

“It’s such a waste,” Reinhart says as she sits in her family’s home a few miles east of Madison, clutching a small urn that holds some of Hotmann’s ashes. “So many people could be saved.”

With the help of tougher seat belt laws and young accident survivors such as Reinhart, that message appears to be getting through to some.

Statistics improving

Overall, about three-quarters of Americans say they wear seat belts, according to national safety surveys. Among those ages 16 to 24, 69 percent say they wear their seat belts — an improvement over years past.

But experts say those numbers are still not good enough. And some wonder how many young people, even if they say they’re wearing seat belts, are doing so regularly.

“When kids are very young, their parents faithfully put them in car seats — and as they get older, their parents buckle them up,” says Kathy Swanson, chairwoman of the Governors Highway Safety Assn. and head of Minnesota’s traffic safety program. “But when these kids hit 15, many stop wearing seat belts.”

“Uncool” choice

A classroom survey released this year by car maker Volkswagen found that about a third of high school students deemed seat belt use “uncool.”

Another 30 percent said belts were uncomfortable or would wrinkle their clothing, while 20 percent said they thought seat belts were unnecessary on short trips. And 18 percent said a feeling of invincibility — “nothing will happen to me” — stopped them from regularly buckling up. The survey had a margin of error of 5 percentage points.

In a different deadly wreck, Mary Reinhart, 17, visits a roadside maker near Sun Prairie, Wis., where her her longtime boyfriend and two other friends were killed in a car crash Dec. 1, 2002. Reinhart was in the car with her three friends, but she was the only one wearing a seat belt.