Hurray for the good people of Massachusetts. Buried in the State House News Service report of the Governor’s race poll posted below by rightmiddleleft one finds the following supplemental note:
“Conducted right before the Democratic caucuses, this poll focused on politics, but respondents were asked about one issue: legislation narrowly approved by the House last month allowing police to pull over and ticket motorists if they’re seen driving without wearing a seat belt. By a 59-39 percent margin, respondents said they oppose that legislation, on which the Senate has yet to vote. The state could lose more than $10 million in federal highway money if the legislation isn’t approved, supporters argue.”
People who don’t wear seatbelts have made a personal decision that they prefer the pleasures of beltless driving more than the risk of injury. They should be allowed the freedom to do as they choose. The proposed law is a step in the wrong direction. The legislature should repeal existing seatbelt laws, not pass new restrictions. Folks who are worried about health insurance costs, or car insurance costs, should address their concerns to health care reform or auto insurance reform.
These laws in general are a bossy form of state-enforced moralizing comparable, in this sense, to laws aginst abortion or prohibitions on same-sex marriage. The state should stay out of people’s private decisions about how to live their lives.
If you’re driving on a public road, you’re interacting with other people. You argue that not wearing a seatbelt only puts yourself at risk.
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Wrong.
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1. You can easily injure others in the car with your body being thrown around. This has really happened, and other seat-belted passengers have suffered severe injury from non-seat-belted projectiles. Therefore, you are obligated to mitigate the risk of others.
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2. Ever known someone who was involved in a car accident where someone died? Even if it is truely no-fault*, every single driver in the accident carries tremendous guilt. So, even if you are at fault and you die due to not being buckled in, you’re still (psychologically) injuring others.
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3. Injuries and death are more likely if you’re not buckled in. Given that the state has a financial interest in reducing severe traffic accidents, for even if we don’t get Health Care for All, there are medical costs borne on the state, as well as additional EMS, fire, and police costs.
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I don’t like the idea of cops being able to pull people over [b]just[/b] for a seat belt infraction because I suspect it only enables inforcement of the [i]driving while black[/i] restrictions. However, just like helmet laws for motorcyclists, simple regulations that significantly reduce the risk of severe injury or death make sense even in a libertarian framework.
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I take the points, but I don’t think they are convincing.
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“You can easily injure others in the car with your body being thrown around.” That is a risk the passengers can choose to accept or decline by getting in the car. No one is being forced to be a passenger, except perhaps for children (I actually am OK with child seatbelt laws on the grounds that they can’t decide for themselves).
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“You’re still (psychologically) injuring others.” By this logic, no one should be allowed to do anything that is more dangerous than driving with a seatbelt, like for example go rock climbing or ride a motorcycle — because of the risk than an injury to themselves will make other people despair. More respect for the rights of people to make their own choices in life, even ones that some disagree with — in short, more tolerance, and perhaps more education about the risks of driving — would be useful here.
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“Medical costs borne on the state.” As I said, this is a red herring. If your concern is about health care regulation — a perfectly valid concern — address that directly. There are lots of more effective ways to reduce the burden on the state for medical care than forcing everyone to wear seatbelts. More generally, there is, I think, inconsistency in this argument. People who smoke, for example, impose a greater burden on the state than those who do not — certainly a greater financial burden than beltless drivers — so why not ban smoking. Likewise people who abuse alcohol, so let’s restore prohibition.
I’m suspicious of laws like this, as I’ve noted before. However, I’m definitely opposed to losing millions of dollars in federal highway money. Someone needs to nail down whether that’s really going to happen, or if it’s just a scare tactic.
This may be the stupidest posting I have ever seen on a blog. It was the kind of gibberish that spewed out of Jerry Williams on talk radio a generation ago. It fits in with the lets remove gaurdrails from the tops of tall buildings so that if people want to jump then let ’em. Hey maybe we could even get them to sell one way tickets to the top of the empire state building!
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There are serious issues in the Commonwealth and this ain’t one of them.
If you have a reasoned response to the argument, please make it. If you’d like to share your memories of Jerry Williams, here is the community for you.
I’ll accept your “no seatbelt” proposal if you’ll accept mine.
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First, automobile insurance will have a separate pool for people who don’t wear seatbelts, with rates set accordingly. You can get into the “seatbelt wearing pool” (cheaper rates) if you agree to wear your seatbelt; if you get into an accident with no seatbelt on, but have declared yourself to be in the “seatbelt wearer” pool, you cannot collect on your policy for the accident.
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Second, automobile insurance will be the same as life insurance, separate pool. If you die in an accident without a seatbelt on you forfeit your death benefit.
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Let the market decide and set the rates.
that involves any other passengers in a car, and the other cars on the road that you have to interact with. as such, your responsibility when driving is not just to yourself but to others with whom you share the road. stomv makes excellent points that i think are difficult to dispute. here are some statistics showing why seatbelts save lives.
… predictably. Your car is not your living room, driving is an inherently dangerous activity which is already properly heavily regulated, and indeed the choice to wear a seat belt is one that affects others.
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Now, the issue is whether the cops are allowed to pull one over only on suspicion of not wearing a seat belt. I’m not sure how I lean on this; on one hand, if it’s the law, cops should enforce the law. On the other, it does give cops a pretty free hand to pull over whomever they want. But I’m not sure how different that is from present reality anyway.
By all means, regulate the aspects of driving that affect others, but leave people alone when it comes to their own fates. Driving without a belt primarily affects the driver, so it is not the same as licensing or inspection rules.
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If you support the law in general, however, I do think you should support enforcement of it too.
But anyway, I don’t dispute that seatbelts save lives, but they also infringe on the freedom of millions of people. As I wrote to stormv, we could save a lot more lives if we banned drinking and smoking too — but at a considerable cost.
when someone dies from smoking or drinking, they made a concious decision knowing the high probability of an eventual outcome. They meet their fate without the direct interaction of others.
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Dying in a car accident, however, is much different. The specific actions of other people very often have a direct impact on the fatality. This makes the scenarios much different in my opinion.
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Cancer, heart attacks, liver problems etc. are expected outcomes from drinking and smoking in excess. Dying in a car accident is not the expected outcome of driving. The smoking & drinking illness/death requires no other parties, intentional or otherwise. Many deaths due to no seat belt involve multiple drivers/pedestrians, making the responsibility of the accident — and hence the (unnecessary) death — fall upon people who didn’t get to choose if the driver wore his belt.
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This also makes it different from watching somebody fall off of a rock climbing wall — it’s much more like being the belayer (sp?) for a rock climber. We’re talking about participants in the accident, not casual observers.
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And it’s stomv. No ‘r’.
I suppose a lot more people are hurt by exposure to second-hand smoke than are hurt by non-seatbelted passengers/drivers in their cars.
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Anyway, I suppose we can agree that everyone should try to be careful when they drive đŸ™‚
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And sorry about mis-spelling your tag. Got it now.
First off, your argument does not address the potential loss of $10 million in federal funds. This is a significant chunk of change.
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But to the main point: I think you already know the response to your argument that seatbelt laws affect primarily the driver. This is simply not true, as pointed out by others here. Accidents can affect health care premiums, auto insurance premiums, and represents potential costs to the state (i.e. the taxpayers) directly if the person doesn’t have health insurance.
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You respond that this is irrelevant because we should tackle those issues directly if we are concerned about them. I don’t see this as an adequate response. Given that health care is a problem, why can’t we pursue small pieces of legislation that have minor (but still existing) positive affects on reducing costs, while at the same time looking at larger-scale solutions? You present it as an either/or, which is a false dichotomy.
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But the main point nobody else has made yet is this: a primary seatbelt law does not reduce your freedom! You can still choose not to wear a seatbelt if you wish. The only difference is that if you are caught, you have to pay a fine. You know about this potential fine before choosing to drive, and risking paying a fine is only fair if you are risking increasing the costs of your fellow citizen and taxpayer by driving without a seatbelt.