Seatbelt Laws

Pennsylvania just started giving tickets out to people who are not wearing their seatbelts. I don’t think anyone should be fined for deciding not to buckle up. It is your life you are putting at risk. It seems like a money making ploy so the state can take more of our money away for doing nothing wrong. What do you think?

Well if you are not wearing a seatbelt, because ‘. It is your life you are putting at risk’ why should your health insurance pay for your medical costs if you don’t pay a premium for driving belt-less? Also if you are killed in an accident where a belt would have saved you, the other party should be able to sue your estate for the mental trauma of being innocently involved in your death.

I agree, seatbelt laws are stupid. But, I think you should be denied insurance coverage if you’re in an accident without wearing one.

You may be risking your life, but you’re also risking the public’s money, whether it be directly if uninsured or indirectly if insured- the public subsidizes the education of doctors and nurses, pays for hospitals and ambulances, etc. Please buckle up, if not for yourself then for those that love you.

Good points, but that isnot the issue. I don’t think the state should be able to fine you for not wearing a belt. Being denied insurance coverage, and getting sued by the other party would be factors in deciding to wear, or not to wear, a seat belt, but the state should not be able to impose a fine on you for no reason.

Don’t worry MSU…I do buckle up alomost 100% of the time

Even if it is just “a money making ploy so the state can take more of our money away for doing nothing wrong,” I much prefer it to the other ways the state takes our money away for doing nothing wrong (income taxes, sales taxes, etc.). This one’s strictly voluntary: if you don’t want to contribute, just buckle up! Think of it as another “stupidity tax,” like the state lottery.

While operating a vehicle that is in multiple collisions (not uncommon in a crash) a seatbelt helps keep you in the seat and able to manoever your car instead of flying about the inside (or out the window). For this reason, all drivers should be belted.

That is a reason why it should be illegal to drive while unbelted. You can come up with counter arguments, but raising money isn’t the only rational for this law.

I know seat belts are supposed to save lives…and I’m sure they do in certain situations. But both me and my brother have been involved in accidents where seatbelts would have been the death of us.

My brother was side-swiped on the driver’s side, ended up sitting in the passenger seat when it was all said and done, with the driver seat completely destroyed.

I got into a roll where my seat belt would have dutifully kept my head and torso up when the roof came down after I landed upside down. I actually slipped out of my seatbelt in mid-air to get into a lower position.

I’d like to see more accurate studies done as to what types of accidents seatbelts truly work and what accidents are they liabilities. I’m not sure what more they can do with seatbelts, technology wise. Maybe we need to go to something like the big burst of foam from the movie Demolition Man :slight_smile:

I can’t help but notice that states seem more concerned about my safety when they are having a budget crisis.

But I’m SURE money has nothing to do with it…

Unlikely events are bound to happen. Specific unlikely events are not. The fact that you & your brother just happened to be in unusual accidents in no way diminishes the need for people to wear seat belts. Having an unusual event happen to you does not change the physics of automobile collisions. If you & your brother won the lottery, that wouldn’t make playing the lottery sound investment advice.

If you want more detailed evidence, go look it up. You can start with the basic physics.

By not wearing a seatbelt one is merely putting oneself into a different category of risk. The extra cost to the insurance company can be pretty easily calculated and accounted for. There is absolutely no reason for that to be an issue since crash investigation will be able to tell whether one was wearing a seatbelt. Those who fall for the moral hazard can be treated appropriately by the insurance company. That’s no reason to advance the cause of the Nanny State. Indeed, your reasoning clearly advocates the prohibition of ice cream, or any number of the myriad goods and services we enjoy that aren’t particularly healthy.

As to your second point, when society reaches a point that it can seriously consider such an unhealthy attitude toward death legitimate grounds for litigation, then the time has come for it to severly reassess its value system. Everybody dies. The idea that one shouldn’t be allowed to make one’s own decisions regarding the risk one wishes to take with one’s own life because a bystander might feel bad is repugnant in the extreme. Perhaps in addition to the DEA we could have the ADE–the Authority of Diet and Exercise.

Seatbelt and Helmet laws run against natural selection and are thus against public policy, as they hinder the advancement of the gene pool. If the only thing keeping someone in the gene pool is a law, we’re doomed.

And sure, insurance should not pay if they’re in an accident and get hurt when not wearing their seatbelt.

I think we should encourage people NOT to wear seatbelts, helmets, etc. We should have TV commercials saying helmets are for pussies and seatbelts make you fat. Not only should we not force flawed genes to remain, we should encourage them to be removed.

I disagree. Insurance companies should be free to offer policies that require, or don’t require, seatbelt use. The individual can then choose which type to buy. If they buy “seatbelt only” coverage at the cheaper rate, then have an accident while not wearing a seatbelt, then tough on them: they are not covered.

Oh well sure, I agree with that. I was just talking about by default. The parties should be free to bargain for whatever contractual terms they want for the policy.

The state already imposes fines on companies who don’t install (and train their employees to use) basic safety equipment on their machinery, so it’s not too much of a logical stretch for me to say they should have the right to fine citizens who are also operating heavy machinery (i.e. a 3000lb vehicle) without the benefit of a pretty trivial but effective safety device, namely a seatbelt.

Balancing individual rights vs. state interest is usually tricky business, but considering that the seatbelt take two seconds to put on, does not interfere with the enjoyment of your vehicle, and can double your chances of surviving an accident, I’d say the personal intrusion is pretty damn trivial and the cops should be able to encourage use through fines.

Years ago, back when Lizzie Dole was running the DOT, she had a series of ads which stated that everyone would be involved in one serious accident. That’s it, just one. So, the odds are, that if you survive one serious accident, uninjured, then you’ll never have to worry about another one again.

Insurance companies make money by betting you won’t have a car wreck. You have insurance because you’re betting you will. Who has more money, you or the insurance company?

The problem with releiving your insurance company of the liability and transferring it back to you is that when you die, and you have no insurance, then NO ONE pays the bill and in order for the paramedics, ambulance, hospital, doctors, etc to recoup their losses they raise everyone else’s fees and taxes. So, we still pay for your stupidity and selfishness whether it’s through higher insurance rates or higher medical costs and taxes.

Net effects of mandatory and educated seatbelt use seem to be:

People are now more likely to live through crashes.
Thus, people drive more recklessly than they did.
Thus people get in more accidents.

Net road deaths stay the same.
Pedestrian deaths, however, go up slightly (since they get no benefit from anyone wearing seatbelts).

The net effects are: people gain happiness from being able to drive more recklessly per given level of risk aversion, and pedestrians lose hapiness from there being more reckless drivers.

I have little symapthy for arguments that our freedom to make our own decisions about our own lives should be restricted because some people may not be able to pay (or have assets to be seized). On that basis, we should ban people from rock-climbing, motor sports, football, equestrian sports, cycling on highways, using a chainsaw and many other things that are more dangerous activities than the norm.

Anyway, are you even sure that there is a net loss? Every person who dies in a traffic accident (not just the uninsured ones) potentially save the government, and therefore the taxpayer from social security payments. And many of them would need significant healthcare expenditure when old.

I guess this means that I should go out right now and ram my car into someone. Might as well take care of that one serious accident now. Hell, why wait for random chance, when I’d be less prepared for it?! :smiley:

Yeah, when I click on that belt, I get a full sense of my Godlike control over life and death.

Oh, wait, you said “educated”. I sense a contradiction.