This TED Talk features behavioral economist David Ash, recorded live at TEDmed 2018.

It's April of 2007, and John Corzine, the governor of New Jersey, is in this horrific car accident. He's in the right front passenger seat of this SUV when it crashes on

the Garden State Parkway. He's transported to a New Jersey trauma center with multiple broken

bones and multiple lacerations. He needs immediate surgery, seven units of blood, a mechanical

ventilator to help him breathe in several more operations along the way. It's amazing he survived,

but perhaps even more amazing,

he was not wearing a seatbelt.

And in fact, he never wore a seatbelt.

And the New Jersey state troopers,

who used to drive Governor Corzine around,

used to beg him to wear a seatbelt,

but he didn't do it.

Now, before Corzine was governor of New Jersey,

he was the U.S. senator from New Jersey, and before that, he was the CEO of Goldman Sachs,

responsible for taking Goldman Sachs public, making hundreds of millions of dollars.

Now, no matter what you think of John Corzine politically or how he made his money,

nobody would say that he was stupid,

but there he was an unrestrained passenger in a car accident

at a time when every American knows that seatbelt saved lives.

This single story reflects a fundamental weakness

in our approach to improving health behavior.

Nearly everything we tell doctors and everything we tell patients

...