'Wearing a seatbelt could have saved my sight'

A man said he would still have some of his vision had he been wearing a seatbelt during a car crash.

Graham Waspe, 75, from Stowmarket in Suffolk, lost sight in his right eye while in his 20s when he was thrown through a car windscreen during a collision.

He had previously lost sight in his left eye at the age of 10 while playing with arrows.

After Suffolk Police said it was working to target drivers who fail to wear a seatbelt, Waspe said anyone who did not wear one was "absolutely stupid".

Waspe said that as a child he had been living on a small farm with his family.

While playing with his siblings, an arrow was shot into his eye and he was rushed to West Suffolk Hospital where he remained for three weeks.

"They said I was lucky to have any eyesight left at all," he told BBC Radio Suffolk's Sarah Lilley.

Then when he was aged 24, he was in a friend's car travelling to go swimming at the leisure centre in Bury St Edmunds.

He said they had been "laughing and having a joke", and he had forgotten to put his seatbelt on.

While travelling along a quiet road and on a sharp bend, Waspe said he suddenly saw another car heading straight toward them "going too fast".

"I said three words in a few seconds and they were, 'Oh God, no,'" he said.

"I went quickly to pick up my towel and trunks up to put over my face, [but] before I could do it there was a horrendous crash.

"Metal crunching, glass shattering.

"I was thrown through the windscreen and it was when the old windscreens weren't laminated and they broke up into little nuggets of sharp glass.

"Of all the things to happen, I lost my good eye, my right eye.

"It was unbelievable."

Waspe said he recovered, but had lost the majority of his sight.

Over the years he has had several guide dogs which he described as "marvellous".

"For people who don't believe in [seatbelts], why would Formula 1 racing drivers wear a harness if they weren't any help," Waspe said.

"It's so important.

"On that day, had I put the belt on immediately, I would have had some bruises and I wouldn't have lost my good eye."

Ch Insp Gary Miller from Suffolk Police's joint Roads and Armed Policing Team said it was hard to believe people when they said they had forgotten to put their seatbelt on.

"I think with seatbelts sometimes people think it's only me that I'm putting at risk," he said.

"Invariably you are the one that's going to be suffering that level of injury, but because you've not taken account of that you're likely to require an ambulance response, end up in hospital, all those other things that knock on from that.

"Society is then paying the cost for it because you haven't taken that safety measure that you should do."

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