Purely for debate purposes, any number of reasons: stupidity, annoyance, discomfort, not thinking about it, fear of being trapped, principle, etc.
I think you need to qualify your question like so: “Accepting the safety benefits of wearing a seat belt, why would anyone NOT wear a seat belt?” Clearly, there are people that use a different cost/benefit calculus and do not place as high a premium on safety as you do.
In 2001 USA fatal crashes
75% of passengers were ejected from their vehicles
1% of those who used restraints were ejected
12,144 lives were saved by seat belts (those over the age 4)
16,754 passenger vehicle occupants could have been saved by wearing seat belts
Good idea.
Cite?
Those are good statistics to have on hand. Thank you for doing some legwork and then posting them.
However, while they do make a case for Seatbelts: Good or bad? (and I don’t think anyone in this thread has posted otherwise), they do little to make a case for Seat Belt Laws: Good or bad?.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that there’s no such case to be made, simply that the stats alone don’t make it.
Well, I believe there is still a case to be made for seat belt laws benefiting society as a whole, in that one of the functions of the seat belt is to help keep the driver stationary in the seat, especially during crash avoidance maneuvering. Lateral g forces can impair the ability of the driver to control the car effectively during accidents and could therefore be responsible for crashes that might have been prevented if the driver wasn’t dividing effort between controlling the car and bracing against g force. Given this reasoning, seat belt laws are no more invasive than cell phone use laws–drivers should be giving their attention to driving, and anything that furthers that end is a justifiable abridgement of personal freedom.
I asked my dad once why I should use seat belts and he pointed out that there is no reputable form of automotive racing that allows participants to forego not only restraint systems, but also protective gear and helmets. Anyone who can’t stand Nomex, helmets or five point restraints is more than welcome to watch the race from the stands. That made good sense to me then and still does to this day.
I know that someone up-thread mentioned that also, but I’ll admit that I didn’t give it much thought. I think it’s a point worth considering, but I’m a bit sceptical about how often a seat belt plays a substantial – or even any – role in retaining driving control. Especially now that bench seats are a rarity. While I’m sure that many can supply anecdotes about being kept from slipping out of their seats, it’s not clear to me at all how one would gather objective statistics about it. And I’d hazard a guess that outfitting a racecar with seatbelts has virtually nothing to do with retaining driving control, but only driver safety in the event of a crash – particularly when one considers the liability aspect of a sport.
Bringing in cell-phone laws is a good comparison to me – I’m very much in support of them. So then I have to question: why support one and not the other? ISTM that it’s a very good example of the slippery slope that has been mentioned – I think that if you search past threads, you’ll find many who think cell-phone prohibitions are outrageous. Even though they’ve been shown – conclusively, IIRC – to have as substantial an effect as driving drunk. Clearly, if driving ability is affected enough by not wearing seatbelts to justify a law mandating their use, cell-phone usage while driving should be totally banned.
As I said above, however, I don’t think that non-seatbelt wearing comes anywhere close to posing the same risks as cell phones, at least as it concerns endangering other drivers. Again, I’d be interested in seeing some stats about that.
I actually mentioned this because of my own experience–I’m a fanatic seat belt wearer, to the point that I won’t even drive across a parking lot without my belt on. I’ve also spent a lot of time behind the wheel, much of it as a professional driver and I’ve had to take some pretty extreme measures to avoid collisions with other vehicles as well as single car incidents due to weather and other adverse conditions. I’ve always been aware that I rely on my belt to keep my hips and upper body firmly in the seat, allowing me free rein to use my arms to manage the steering wheel and gearshift, and my legs to use the gas, brake and clutch. I REALLY noticed it the one time it wasn’t there–I had a dicky seat belt assembly in my car which would release at inopportune times. A car dodged out of the lane next to me, requiring me to juke hard to miss it and as I did so my seat belt popped open. Suddenly my whole body was in motion from lateral g force and I lost my pedals and also overcorrected the wheel. I was incredibly lucky that we weren’t moving extremely fast and that the belt didn’t pop until most of my maneuvering was already done but it was disconcerting as hell and I fixed that belt the same day. I truly think the only reason I didn’t go caroming all over the car was due to the six inches of upholstery I sucked up my asshole in that split second!
I also support cell phone laws, along with any other sensible laws that enforce driver attention. On the other hand, I most emphatically do NOT support open container laws, as those seem to me to be a clear infringement of personal liberty. There is nothing intrinsic to passengers drinking in a car that affects the driver’s ability to manage the vehicle–it’s just a stupid “feel good” law that accomplishes nothing but giving probable cause for search to snoopy cops. On the other hand, noise ordinances controlling “boomer” stereos in cars are sensible as well because excessive noise from other cars is a factor in driver stress and distraction.
I really feel that seat belt laws do meet the criteria for reasonableness due to the undeniable success in minimizing crash risks to drivers and passengers and that a strong case can be made for greater social benefit by decreasing driver distraction and maximizing driver ability to control the vehicle. That reasonableness extends to requiring seat belt use by passengers as well, since during high speed maneuvering the driver does NOT need a passenger sliding into their arm while trying to avoid a crash.
Well, that depends on what laws are actually for - a much deeper subject. If laws only exist to protect individuals, then maybe you have a case. But if laws exist to benefit sciety as a whole, then I think people not dying in car accidents is a net benefit to society.
From a societal perspective a 20 year old dying in a car crash does not save any money.
Our consumption and production is not evenly distributed over the life cycle. When we are young we consume more than we produce. When we grow up and enter the labour force we generally produce more than we consume. Finally when we grow older and retire we produce less and often start to consume more healthcare.
Over the total life cycle it balances out though, perhaps even a surplus production.
So when a 20 year old dies in an accident society loses everything the 20 year old would have produced during his life.
While there’s no doubt in my mind that part of seatbelt design concerns keeping the driver in place and does so, my anecdotal experience is very much different than your anecdotal experience. Besides riding in my mom’s '72 Plymouth Fury and a high school friend’s '77 Monte Carlo (both long relegated to the scrap heap), I’ve never felt that wearing a seat belt has done anything to improve my driving control. Note that both of those cars had pleather bench seats – it didn’t take much more than turning at 10mph to lead to a slip’n’slide situation. (One of my friend’s great high-school joys was to take a turn at speeds high enough that his girlfriend would slide over next to him. Smooooth.)
I find these compare and contrast examples to be most illuminating. If one accepts that “societal benefit” can be valid justification for creating laws, they serve to sharpen the lines. As I said, I’m all for cell-phone restrictions. I’m against seatbelt laws.
I’d never really thought seriously about open container (OC) laws. Ideologically, I’m with you; but I would guess that there’s a practical grounding for OC laws – namely, that a driver can simply hand the container to a passenger, which makes drunk driving enforcement more difficult. Now that you’ve brought me to think about it, I disagree with OC laws as well – in and of itself, an OC (in a passenger’s possession, anyway) doesn’t strike me as being sufficient for penalty. The best I can imagine is that it might contribute to a justification for a breathalyzer test for the driver…but not without some other contributing evidence also.
As to laws concerning noise, I again disagree with you. I can’t recall a single instance where stereo noise from another car has affected my driving. Sure, there’ve been plenty of times the noise has been a nuisance – but those have been cases of the idiot living a few apartments down from me coming home at 3am. In other words, no affect on others’ driving ability, only on neighborhood peace and quiet.
There are two things here that I think need to be disambiguated: (A) whether laws should be enacted that reasonably put a higher value on “societal benefit” over restrictions on personal choice and (B) what the “criteria for reasonableness” in such cases are. It seems to me that the bar should be set pretty high for (A) – personal choice really is a form of liberty, and should never be restricted lightly. I accept as a guiding principle the premise underlying “your rights end at the tip of my nose”; this entails the corollary that one does not have the right to restrict my actions if they do not affect anyone else.
So, I reject advocacy of any law that attempts to save me from myself, thus I reject the (proven!) safety aspect of seatbelts as justification for mandating their use. It may be universally acknowledged that not wearing a seatbelt is stupid, but that just brings up the point I made earlier, the difference between Seatbelts: Good or bad? vs. Seat Belt Laws: Good or bad?.
Thus far, as far as I gather, the arguments in support of seatbelt laws have been: (1) personal safety, (2) higher medical costs and their associated effect on collective insurance rates, (3) driving is a privilege and thus any restrictions are acceptable, (4) there is no reason to not wear a seatbelt, (5) mental anguish of the other driver in an accident, (6) being better able to maintain control of the vehicle, and (7) they save lives, which is inherently valuable. Standard disclaimer about errors being mine and mine alone; in other words, if I’ve missed any, please feel free to point them out.
As I see it, only (2), (5), (6), and (7) have any “societal benefit”, so I’m not gonna address the others more than I have already. I’ve already given reasons to reject (5) at the end of post 100. I don’t think (6) is reasonable, but would amenable to considering statistics that make the case. So, that leaves application of (B), the “reasonable criteria” to (2) and (7) – medical costs and inherent value.
Personally, I reject (7) as a restatement of (1) – if a person does not place enough inherent value on their own safety to wear a seatbelt, there is no reason for others to do so, but YMMV. As to (2), I’ve not yet seen statistics and/or costs that convince me that the high bar set by (A) has been exceeded as I have with laws restricting cellphones and drunk driving.
Whew. That took awhile longer than I expected, but I hope it added substance. Oh, and I want to acknowledge Brown Eyed Girl’s post, which led me to look up “histrionic” (thanks for that). I think it’s a terrible debate point – the fact is, I consider it important enough to argue about it, as I view it as an example of a much larger ideological point. And I too was in a pickup end-over-end accident just last year – no seatbelt (IN doesn’t require their use in pickups), but no injury beyond a stiff neck from tensing on impact. I should’ve been more worried about the battery-jumper loose on the floor of cab that whizzed by my head as the world turned upside down. So, according to my acecdotal lesson, there should be a law against keeping any unsecured items in the driver/passenger compartment of one’s car. Would that be a good law to enact?
You’re welcome. And you’re welcome to take it more seriously than I do. I don’t see a slippery slope, really. I was also one of those people who didn’t jump up and down in rage over the requirement of airbags; I just put my kids in the backseat, instead. I’ll get back to you when they start requiring full body armor in cars. The point is I feel my personal liberties by other, say, ‘life & death’ and personal privacy intrusions.
Well… I did lose a homemade pumpkin pie that had been sitting on my lap in the accident. That was mildly depressing (yum, pie!). It’s a good analogy from the standpoint that flying objects, especially bodies, within a vehicle that’s flipping/spinning/crashing are hazardous for occupants. I think you were lucky. I was probably, too. However, it also stands to reason that seatbelts are safety devices required by law to be installed in cars. It’s not much of a leap, in my mind, from requiring auto manufacturers to equip them to requiring auto operators and passengers to use them. Hmmm…I’m sure there are analogies in which the government hasn’t gotten involved past requiring manufacturers to implement safety equipment, but protecting end-users is the goal here. What’s the point of implementing such restrictions and requirements on industry if the general population is going to be stubborn about their own safety? I also think that fire alarms should be required in every building, including private residential homes, in order to pass inspection.
Why should the government care about the safety and well-being of its citizens? Well, where would they be without those citizens? Maintaining productivity and self-preservation of the republic seems reasonable. And, frankly, some people clearly need that paternalistic oversight to get through life without stabbing themselves in the eye with a spork.
Maybe, I’m just idealistic. If everyone would just wear their seatbelts, I don’t think a law would be necessary.
For those who say, “Why should I?” My reply is simply, “Why shouldn’t you?” The potential benefits of doing so more often than not outweigh the immediate benefits of not doing so. I haven’t seen a decent argument not to as of yet.
Let me add in a new (to this discussion at least) argument against the mandating of seatbelt use. It violates mankinds basic right to gamble. Fundamentaly, the vast majority of people in the world gamble that what they are doing will make their life better in some way. This might be in choice of entertainment or career choice. Mandating that instead of gambling, everyone follow the statisticaly likely decision removes a great deal of the things that people consider to be worthwhile. Without gambling on your life, almost no one would be an artist or musician or use the bathroom or drive, for that matter.
It seems obvious that the small discomfort someone may feel from wearing a seat belt is a negligible price to pay for the safety gains of being mandated to do it. But out there are people who statisticaly will never be in a situation where a seat belt has any impact on their safety, ie: they never get in an accident. For that individual is the small cost worth zero benifit? That’s the basics of the gamble, the thought that an individual is not the statistical whole and so must make their own decisions.
For those that support the cell phone ban idea, do you also support a ban on having a heated conversation with a passenger? How about simply driving while angry? Those both have the same effect as being emotionaly engaged in a cell phone conversation.
For those who don’t support open container laws… is it okay for a driver to drink alcohol while driving if they don’t go over the legal blood alcohol limit?
-Eben
The problem here is enforceability. What you seem to be suggesting is that if you cannot ban all distracting activity, you should not ban any distracting activity. That doesn’t make sense to me.
There may be strong reasons not to ban cell phone use in cars, but I don’t think this argument is one of them.
In this paragraph, you’ve told us that seat belts never made you feel like you had more driving control, and immediately afterwards, you’ve explained for us how seat belts nevertheless do give you more driving control, whether you feel like they do or not.
-FrL-
Sorry, but :rolleyes:.
Even granting you this rather dubious point, what exactly gives you the right to gamble with my money?
This brings up an interesting point that I’ll get to in a moment.
Thank you about the analogy; as I said, I find that they’re often extremely useful, perhaps the best way to quickly boil a debate down to its salient points. Of course, the analogies have to meet some level of similarity, which is often the failing point. Since you acknowledge that loose items in the driver/passenger area (the cab, for brevity) is dangerous, should there be a law prohibiting such? What are the “criteria of reasonableness” that should be applied? In what ways is it different from seatbelts?
And yes, thankfully, I was lucky indeed, as were you.
So, this is the point I alluded to above. I have very little problem with laws mandating that manufacturers install or make available safety devices. I say “very little problem” because there is a point where (1) cost overwhelms benefit and (2) the device may actually hinder operation. For instance, airbags are a fairly good example of (1) – they cost, what, $500-1000 for replacement? That’s an onerous expense, but one that is likely dwarfed by medical savings due to an accident. (Assuming, of course, that they work properly and do not deploy in non-serious circumstances.) For (2), consider mandating a governer that limits the top speed of any and every vehicle to 25mph. While they would certainly do much in terms of safety, they would interfere with the purpose of driving (to get somewhere relatively quickly). For any particular mandate, I’d ask that some cost/benefit analysis be presented – i.e., the “criteria for reasonableness” mentioned previously.
One way of looking at production mandates might be: they increase an individual’s choice, as the manufacturer of the product ends up potentially being the sole arbiter of choice (one can’t choose to use a feature that isn’t in the product). That’s pretty weak, though, I’ll admit. Rather, I’d look at it in terms of product liability. Taking (1) and (2) from the previous paragraph into account, do the cost/benefit analysis. Add in an element of lowering the “bar” due to the difference between personal and commercial liberty, of which the second seems to me to be less deserving of consideration.
But it is exactly the step that you so easily grant from requiring availability to requiring use with which I disagree. At least, that is, until I’m convinced that there is overwhelmingly good evidence/proof of a “societal benefit” that outweighs an individual’s choice (again, as in the case of cellphones).
Stubbornness about one’s own safety (or lack thereof) is something to which I feel every member of our society is entitled. Again, I fundamentally reject advocacy and enactment of laws that protect people from themselves. The difference with fire alarms, at least in public buildings, is that the choice is imposed by the owner on the public. In a residential home, the justification is weaker; however, I could see an argument being made for the potential damage of neighboring property (after all, fire spreads rather easily in many circumstances, and can have truly catastrophic consequences).
Now that, as stated, is a non-fallacious slippery slope, due to its general nature. Clearly, there is some point at which laws enforcing safety and well-being are unacceptable. And, while I appreciate your working the term “spork” into it, I disagree on a fundamental level that paternalistic oversight is (almost) ever a good justification. Yes, I’ll grant arguments made for special cases, e.g., children. But, applying the oft-used “reasonable person” legal standard, one must assume that the overwhelming majority of people are indeed reasonable, which entails that they are able to make their own decisions. Simple disagreement with those decisions should not warrant a law.
And that’s all well and good, but I’m flummoxxed by the insistence of people on imposing their own cost/benefit values on others without (adequate) justification. I fully accept that if I were to freely choose not to wear a seatbelt, others would think I eat stupid food for breakfast. It’s irrelevant – not only do I do lots of things that others consider stupid, there are a vast number of things that others do that I consider stupid. And again, to be clear, it’s not that I’m dogmatically against any and all “infringements on personal liberty”; rather, I think that the “why don’t you just …, it’s not much of a burden” isn’t a sound basis for enacting law. Any burden, no matter how small and assuming no other factor, is enough to make a law unjustified.
Bad wording on my part, I think. Sorry; try this:
Was that more clear?
Additionally, each of those cars had pleather bench seats, which I think are now a rarity. In other words, to be honest and debate fairly, I’m obligated to acknowledge these cases. But, in the only instances where I feel that seat belts have indeed improved driving control are now not really worth considering because the design is a historical anachronism.
That does make a lot more sense.
-FrL-
That’s the flaw in your argument - not wearing a seat can and does harm others. Not just physical harm because you lost control of your car, but financial harm because the medical system has to try to save you as a result of your own stupidity, resulting in higher medical costs for everyone else.
Even if – and I do mean IF – there’s a nugget in there somewhere, I think it’s very poorly worded. Perhaps you’d like to modify it?
But along similar lines, I think that one point not mentioned is that there is a penalty involved in enforcing seatbelt laws. And of course there should be – a toothless law is a waste of everyone’s time and effort. But thus far, the fact that a financial penalty is imposed has nowhere been factored into the cost/benefit analysis. Actually, now that I think about it, I have to take that back; someone upthread mentioned a $10 per incident ticket and how that was inadequate to force behavior modification.
At any rate, my point is that the greater the penalty imposed, the higher the bar should be set for mandating the imposition in the first place. Again, that’s not to say that there shouldn’t be a penalty, which would be dumb. I’m only pointing out another item to bring under consideration.
If you could establish some objective measure for determining when someone is “driving angry”, in addition to making a case that it is actually a problem, perhaps I’d support such a thing. As things stand, no. Although I’d point out a similar item – NJ passed a law not very long ago against driving while sleepy. I have no idea how that’s measured, nor whether it’s enforced, but it makes for an interesting compare/contrast point.
This puts me on unsure footing. Personally, I stopped drinking but for the occasional beer (maybe 1 or 2 every four months, less now that I’ve moved someplace where the local liquor store doesn’t carry Smithwick’s) about 4 years ago. If I go out and I’m driving, I will not drink any alcohol. This is a win-win situation: I have an excuse to decline alcohol, and my companions get a designated driver. So, since I’m never in a position where it would be an imposition on me, I’d have no problem with a zero-tolerance (no pun intended) approach.