But you’re into “alternative restraints”, so seatbelts aren’t a worry for you, no?
Oh, I’ll get you for that!! You just wait…
Psst! Hey everyone, I need to borrow the squid! And maybe the ladle too.
In an argument of logic I always like to run it out to the point of ridiculous to see where it goes. I’ll give an example. When they outlawed smoking at work the slippery slope argument was made that this was an attempt to outlaw smoking would not be possible in restaurants, bars, or any public place eventually outlawing it in your house. This was shouted down by the proponents of the law as not the intent of the legislation. I don’t want to get in a discussion about smoking, this is just an example of the slippery slope concept. The point I wish to make is that laws beget more laws and this applies to laws restricting personal freedom.
Seat belt laws are a government intrusion on personal safety. There is no justification as a mechanism that prevents accidents or in any way adds to the safety of others on the road. The slippery slope side of this is that there is no litmus test for the application of such an intrusion so lets run it out to what would appear to be ridiculous. I just invented a safety device. You insert it in your ass before buckling up and it operates by sensing the level of sleep hormones in the intestines and shocks the person awake. The government steps in and mandates this devise in every car. Sound ridiculous? What if the devise is inserted in your nose and senses the hormones that are exhaled? Still ridiculous? How about safety goggles that sense your head nodding? Patents exist for such a product. In fact, there are a dozen patents for similar products. Why not mandate them all? What’s the litmus test that justifies government intervention? There are none which means any device, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient, can be mandated by law.
That’s why I am opposed to seat belt laws. I will always wear my seatbelts and choose my cars based on how functional and comfortable they are. But that’s my choosing. I didn’t like the ones that ran on a track and automatically buckled the front passengers in. I’d be really pissed if these had been mandated for all cars. Don’t get me started on airbags.
Just challenging a few fundamental assumptions here:
Why is “socialism” always regarded as definitivly BAD!! ? Aren’t certain socialist policies, like public schools, good things?
If you cause your own death by your actions (directly by suicide, but indirectly by smaller actions, like not wearing seat belts), why is this assumed to not directly affect people. It affects anyone you’ve ever come in contact with, as well as all the people they’ve come in contact with, as well as anyone who would be affected by the job you can no longer do, etc… There’s a good reason we have anti-suicide laws. Just sayin’.
I don’t think the argument has been made here that all socialism is bad. We act collectively to aid people in time of need. But you’re not the boss of me and neither is the government. They serve me, not the other way around.
Um, what was the good reason for anti-suicide laws? Seriously, I’ve never heard a reason that wased based on religion.
-Eben
If it saves only one life…
But seriously, the pro-seat belt people will tell you that you are being ridiculous. They will say that nobody is proposing that you have to stick a device up your ass to be safe. A simple click of a seatbelt, and you are trying to cloud the issue, blah, blah, blah…
Now, it’s the year 2035, and we are debating a mandatory year in prison for driving without the ass device installed, and the same people (now 25 years older) are telling you that you are being unreasonable in opposing the law. “What is the minor discomfort of having the device in your ass vs. saving a life?” they will ask.
You will then argue, what’s next, a safety device that goes under your fingernails like a bamboo shoot? That is crazy, they will say, nobody wants that law.
The year 2100, the bamboo shoot law is being debated…
Seriously, the existence of a patent is no indication that the product is effective, efficient, novel, or indeed anything of value whatsoever. All it means is that someone passed a very low hurdle at the patent office.
Well good grief, it’s not like my anal probe was meant to be taken seriously. I listed the site as an example that such products are possible and within the bounds of current technology to exist. It doesn’t matter whether you believe each item is functional nor is that the focus of the discussion.
There is no constitutional mandate nor is there any criteria for government intervention in managing personal risk. All it takes is a politician to enact a law.
Exactly - the first criteria for a government restriction on personal liberty (though by no means the last) should be that there are benefits flowing from that restriction. And whether a patent has been issued in no way indicates whether there are benefits from it.
How would I determine what restrictions should be placed on individuals in this manner? Well, I would weigh the costs and benefits of the restriction, and add a pretty heavy finger to the scale against said regulation of the individual. And if the benefits of the regulation were solely to the individual, I don’t think I would ever impose the restriction. Seat belts are a tough one to me - the overwhleming majority of the benefit is to the individual, so I would find it very difficult to justify banning driving without them. But I will admit I don’t know the figures to know whether the danger caused to others on the road by not wearing a belt is sufficient to justify such a regulation.
In my annual defensive driving refresher (required by my employer) last spring, the trauma nurse who spoke showed us a slide show of what happens if you don’t wear seatbelts or helmets, as well as if you wear a seatbelt incorrectly.
I’ll spare you the scare tactics and morality issues.
She had several images and stories of young adult drivers who are in semi-vegetative states for the rest of their lives because they weren’t wearing seatbelts. Since their health insurance (if they had any at all) ran out long ago, these twenty-somethings in nursing homes will live another 30-40 years, at a cost of about $25-30 million a piece, all paid for by the taxpayers.
I resent paying for someone else’s stupidity and self-righteousness. But I’m resigned to accept it in a society when its members think of themselves first, foremost and almost all the time.
No one can argue the value of seat belts. They are the best safety dollar spent for cars. But if you want to legislate personal choice then what are your terms? I think anyone who tries to climb tall mountains is a world class dumbass. Working down the food chain of stupid human tricks we get to billybob joe who orders his value meal 2 at a time because he doesn’t have the energy to make 2 trips in the car (the cigarette induced oxygen tank is too heavy to drag around).
But to your example. for every vegetable sucking your hard earned dollars there is a Darwinian crowd of flower fertilizers who didn’t use seat belts (or ate themselves to death). If you want to talk dollars than they have to be factored in as a savings.
Well, if truly a “dollar savings” then we need to annually allocate the dollars for potential numnuts and return any unused funding (because they didn’t survive) back to the taxpayers. The sad truth is the number of taxpayer-supported seatbeltless and helmetless victims grows every year not just because they are more of them, but because our technology keeping them alive gets better every year as well.
Since when did any aspect of driving regulations become a matter of personal choice? When did driving become a right, for that matter?
The second point has been addressed already – this thread is not a matter of right vs. privilege, it’s a question of opinion. Namely: Seat Belt Laws: Good or bad?
As to your first point, what aspect of any regulation is a matter of personal choice? As a truism, your point stands, but it completely avoids addressing much of anything (which, as explicitly asked by Magiver is, “what are your terms?”).
I’m not following this. So, if a 25 year old male dies in a car accident and he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and was killed instantly because of it, then his estate must pay the government big bucks because of…what exactly?
The “dollar savings” would be in the medical care that he did NOT receive in his 70s and 80s when he got a myriad of illnesses and stayed in a long term care facility for the last 15 years of his life on the taxpayers’ dime.
This is my basic problem with this “social cost” argument for safety laws. Everyone, no matter the lifestyle they lead, in the best of circumstances they can hope for, will get old, sick, need care, and die. If you drop dead of a heart attack at age 48 from smoking 4 packs of Camel non-filters per day, or if you die at age 31 from eating a windshield, then you save society these costs.
I’m curious as to any studies that have been done about the savings vs. costs of poor choices.
I’m not talking about any moral judgements about how your family needs you, so you should buckle up. I’m talking economics because that is what many of these arguments hinge on: That society can tell you what to do because your choices cost us money…
A few quick points - the government owns the road. Within that they have some ability and responsibility to determine what is and is not allowed on their roads. This kind of law is legal, so I know of no objections to it other than annoyance and other factors.
I also think that if you don’t buckle up, and do incur any form of injury or death (or your child does) then all of that cost is on you - including the Social Security you just gave up as that disability claim isn’t the gov’t’s responsibility. No medical care until you can prove that you’ll pay for it. (I don’t really think this, but it’s how I feel.)
It’s unfair, imo, to expect the medical establishment or the government to foot the bill for the sometimes very expensive repairs to you body. It’s like helmet laws for motorcyclists…
Add in that if I’m in a wreck, you die, and weren’t buckled - I’m still likely to feel some survival guilt or anger. Regardless of who caused the accident.
This is tangential to the discussion, but I just have to ask; laws aside, why in the name of Christ would anyone NOT wear a seat belt?
I find debate over seatbelt laws histrionic. The “personal freedom” involved in choosing whether to wear a seatbelt is, in my mind, so minor in the grand scheme of things, it’s utterly pointless to consider.
The fact is you can demonstrate either way that seatbelts save lives and put drivers at risk. I’m personally convinced that they more beneficial for individuals than hazardous. I can’t think of any other reason not to wear one than mild discomfort, which any reasonable adult should be able to deal with. As for the law, it’s encourages people who might be lax about it to take seatbelt wearing more seriously. Prior to the law, in my youth, I was lax about it. Sometimes, I wore them (as a passenger with a driver that made me nervous) and sometimes I didn’t (on short trips or if I was behind the wheel). Once the laws were in place, I valued my driving record and budget more than the freedom to choose when and if to buckle up. Having been a passenger in a truck that slid off an icy road into a ditch and rolled over, I’m thankful I was wearing it. I walked away from an upside down pickup truck without a single injury. That experience changed my motivation from practicality to safety. I feel safer with my belt on and I’m not at all opposed to requiring my passengers to wear their seatbelts, as well.
As far as legislated loss of ‘personal freedoms’ go, I feel there are way bigger fish to fry. The right-to-die issue is much more significantly intrusive, IMHO, than a measly seatbelt law. (Just don’t try killing yourself by driving your car into a tree.)
Please note that my interest in making this response is to sharpen debate, as I think the self-professed quickness of your points have led to them being unsubstantive. In the short time you’ve been posting, I’ve appreciated your contributions; in another thread, I believe you mentioned disappointment with the signal/noise ratio in many threads. My interest in this thread is due to the fact that I’m on the fence about seatbelt laws (though I come down on the side that rejects them).
With that said, I wonder – does the idea that: no, the government doesn’t own the road (they maintain it) but “the people” do make a difference? I don’t think so myself, as it seems to me that “government” in this case ends up being a semantic proxy for “the people”. Perhaps, giving the matter a little more thought and contrary to my initial reaction, the idea actually does lend some support for incorporating societal (i.e., indirect) cost/benefit into the balance with personal liberty.
The first sentence and first clause of the second are truisms and thus not really up for debate. The second clause of the second sentence is slightly better, but not by much. “Other factors” is so vague that it adds nothing, and “annoyance” is, all other things being equal, enough of a reason by itself to not pass a law. Of course, all other things are not equal, but you need to make that case – hopefully outlining exactly where the inequality lies and how you weight the “other factors”.
Speaking strictly in finanical terms, you assume only cost and ignore possible benefit. In the case of injury, I think that’s acceptable – I think it’s incontestable that medical bills will cost more than no medical bills. But you included death in there, and that’s arguable. I only bring this up because, if I’m reading you correctly, “the Social Security you just gave up” is not a cost at all, but a savings that can be allocated to someone else.
So, is it your opinion that as long as one can afford to pay any/all medical bills they might incur (or, at least they can pay for their own medical insurance), it’s OK to not wear a seatbelt? Does that extend to any and all risky behavior? Or, taking a different tack, should laws that “protect people from themselves” be written in a way that accounts for personal wealth?
I don’t see this as being a legitimate point in any way, as I feel that it truly does put us on a (non-fallacious) slippery slope. If you think I’m wrong, I’d be happy to hear why.