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Focus Turns To Seat Belt Safety After Tragic Crash That Killed John Nash And Wife

By Alexandria Hoff

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- As we watched Tuesday afternoon, the typical cab rider at 30th Street Station grabbed for the door handle, told the driver where they were headed and then… sat back.

"I would buckle up in the front but not the back," said customer Antonio Biagi as he climbed out of his taxi.

Among about a dozen departures, only two customers buckled up while pulling out of the station.

"Especially college students. They don't put on seat belts," said Ishmael Quaye, a Philadelphia cab driver who has been on the job for more than 20 years.

He says he asks his backseat riders to buckle up but isn't required to.

"A lot of people don't put on seat belts even though they know its good," he added.

John Nash, the famed Nobel Prize winner and subject of the Academy Award-winning film 'A Beautiful Mind,' and his elderly wife were not wearing their seat belts, according to police, when they were thrown from a cab and killed Saturday on the New Jersey Turnpike. If they had been stopped earlier by police they couple and the driver could have been ticketed.

That's because New Jersey and Delaware Law requires everyone inside of a moving vehicle to buckle-up. In Pennsylvania that law only applies to children and those sitting in the two front seats.

So while those we watched go belt-free at 30th Street Street were not breaking the law, they were taking a risk.

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