We do agree here. Increasing seatbelt usage would save lives. I accept that wholeheartedly. I however do not abide by the assumption that lack of seatbelt laws is the reason for these design decisions. Only 1 state in the union lacks seatbelt laws, AFAIK. We do indeed have a lower compliance, this needs to be addressed, and if compliance were better cars could be designed differently. These points I conceed. However, considering the fact that de rigueur since 1985 has been madatory seatbelt usage, I cannot accept that the laws are the solution. They in fact cause more harm than good IMO.
People choose not to wear them and break the law. The laws do not work and are poor ones to boot. Compliance should be driven by education and if needed design.
I can’t see how, with the laws being as established as they are here, you can argue that the legislators have taken the minority of non-seatbelt wearers in account? If anything, they have been largely ignored. This isn’t a problem IMO, but the tactic to make the people comply is a dangerous one.
You’re stating that lack of compliance = unsafe cars. That could very well be true. However I don’t think more, stricter seatbelt laws are the solution. And I don’t believe that civil liberties fundies are the cause of the problem.
Agreed that the rates need to measure both time as a driver and passenger. Difficult to do, but conceptually agreed. Though I would stipulate that the level of urbanization (especially the high quality of mass transit) in the UK vs the US would reasonalby indicate a pretty sizable decrease in proportion of population which spends time in cars.
True enough, though I think calling our performance “poor” when compared to elsewhere is a little unfair. Based on my interpretation of the data you cited I’d call it average, only soundly beaten in all categories by the UK and Scandinavia. And the US has many special circumstances which a detailed analysis might mitigate these shortcomings. Off topic, but I might as well be a little provincial.
Fair enough, this fact honesly does surprise me and I wonder what a well informed contrarian might argue, but I can accept it for the sake of this argument. The one fact I’ll state is that your example, and perhaps the general assumption you’ve used, seems to apply to a length of one trip. Not the total distance travelled annually. In my argument, I was reasoning that the total distance travelled annually would not only measure long trips versus short trips, but also measure the number of trips taken overall. The latter seems to be the bigger factor in my point. I’d argue that people in the UK average fewer car trips than the US by a sizable margin. This factor is why I see the Vehicle-KM measure to be a more accurate one.
This actually is probably a more important measure that the one discussed at the start of this post. While total number of riders per capita is a valuable stat, the number of car trips per capita would be the most informative. I’d guess that the disparity between the two countries in car trips/person out paces the difference between number of riders/person.
The point being, I’m not quite ready to conceed that driving in the UK is markedly safer than doing so in the US due to better designed cars, facilitated by seatbelt complaince. Even if it were, you can see that I don’t agree that seatbelt laws are an acceptable solution.
Argeed that they would not be a challenge to defeat. However, I hope you’ll agree that it’s even easier to defeat the law in place. Which, I think, is a important distinction if you’re trying to argue that a law is better than a mechanical solution.
And while I do admit the previous incarnations of the passive systems were not great, it did illustrate that the concept was not prohibitively expensive like you argued.
A buckle switch would be the minimum legal requirement as I propose it, car companies would be free to try and develop a better passive system if they so choose, and were able to market it as a desirable feature.
None of it’s perfect, but combined with education, they’d be better than a ineffective and suspect law.
But what about a simple refusal to pay out at all?
I know that in Australia, which is the last place i had my car insurance, my policy made very clear that the policy would not pay for anything if my accident was the result of driving while drunk.
Would you support a policy system that refused to pay out if the accident victim was not wearing a seatbelt?
I know you’re mostly joking here, but it does warrant comment.
You’ll conceed that a officer multi-tasking is necessarily less effective at each function? I know, no matter how trivial the task, that when I juggle multiple responsibilities at work they all suffer for it a bit. Reasonable to believe that time a cop spends writing a seatbelt violation is time taken away from catching drunk drivers. Sure, it’s not sizable in each case, but when viewed on the large scale it’s expensive.
It is indeed virtually impossible to measure the cost-benefit there, but certainly there is a cost. If no one breaks the law, let’s take it off the books then. Everyone is happy.
Obviously this is all a secondary argument in my point. The latitude which this allows the cops is a much more serious “cost” to me.
OK Omniscient, I think we’ll have to part mutually unconvinced on this one. I understand that a lawmaking solution to belt wearing is philosophically unattractive to you, and to others in the USA. I don’t think it would be more expensive than effective technological enforcement, but I don’t know, and maybe you are correct.
Since I make some of my pitiful living out of these things being harder to do in the USA I should just say thank you. But please continue to buckle yourself in!
I’d certainly consider it. I’m not sure that it needs to be quite such a radical departure, speaking in absolutes is always dicey. But if the argument was made for it, I’d be interested to see if it were workable.
Perhaps a wiser solution would be to make the deductables substantially higher for non-seatbelt wearing injuries?
That way people aren’t dying and/or declaring bankruptcy due to a fairly moderate injuries. But lets say you have a $250 medical deductable, if you’re injured without a seatbelt you have to pay the first $2500 or $5000 and after that your premiums go up sizably. I’d have to guess such a solution would greatly mitigate the “social” cost of those not buckling up. Bet it’d work better than a law too.
In NH the only law regarding seatbelts is minors must be seatbelted. Likewise, motorcycle helmets are not required. I personally wouldn’t cry if they enacted laws for either thing, because they wouldn’t affect me at all - I wear my seatbelt 100% of the time, require passengers in my car to do likewise, and have no interest in motorcycles - but until then if people wish to natural-select themselves out of the gene pool, it’s there right. Hopefully they do so before they have children. Maybe it’s a cold attitude, but why should I show more concern about their safety than they themselves do?
This still doesn’t get around the problem of me having to pay for someone else’s deliberate stupidity. The only way to do this is to refuse any payment. Surely this then becomes a medical ethics dillema. The doctors at the hospital would have to leave the guy in the gutter, otherwise my tax money is being used. This is something I’m pretty sure they would never do, and rightly so from their point of view.
I understand it is vital not to mess with people’s liberties, but the right to not wear a seatbelt? C’mon, get a grip. If this is really so infuriating to some people, why do they say nothing about the requirement for drivers licences, registered cars, etc?
But they also protect my property, since I don’t have to indirectly pay for the medical costs of the person not wearing a seatbelt in an accident.
If driving was a right and not a privilege, I’d see the liberty issue. I for one would not like to see a law stating pedestrians had to wear crash helmets.
I wear my seatbelt all the time when I’m in the car, but I still don’t think that it should be the law that I have to. I see it as the government overstepping its bounds in trying to compel me to do what’s good for me, which is the role of a parent to a child, not a government to a citizen.
And this, thanks to ABATE, is why the Pennsylvania helmet law has changed. It is now legal for a motorcycle rider with the proper license and two years experience on a bike to choose whether or not to wear a helmet.
And I don’t want some nanny in Washington deciding whether I’m informed enough to make a decision, or deciding that I’m not because I didn’t make what they think was the ‘right’ decision for my personal health/safety. I don’t need a new set of parents telling me to do what’s good for me.
Not necessarily true. When taken as a group, the difference in the deductable as applied to all claims could surpass the cost to the insured as a whole.
Most injuries in traffic related unjuries amount to less than $5000. If all those people who aren’t covered due to seatbelt infractions do not make claims as a result, the money saved would out pace the cost of those relatively few serious injuries which surpass the higher premium threshold. I think it’s probably unreasonable to claim that every unbelted injury would have been cost-free to you had they buckled up.
People who make this argument are being a little hypocritical. While the “cost to me” argument has some merit, the context used here is short sighted.
Everyone makes choices which put themselves in some peril outside of the norm. The concept of shared cost is a fundamental fact of our society.
If you’re going to get all bent out of shape over this, even if I do conceed that it’d be fair to make life more expensive for non-seatbelt wearers, you need to make the same argument against all increased-risk activities.
For example, if you get into an accident while speeding you’re costing more money. If you’re obese, you’re probably going to cost more money. If you indulge in cigarettes or alcohol you’re probably going to cost more money. If you partake in dangerous sports you’re probably going to end up costing more money. If you choose not to have health insurance, you’re costing more money.
Seatbelt wearing isn’t the massive drain on resources to substansiate this line of arguing. Its a pretty thin argument when taken into consideration on the grand scale.
What you’re really saying is “if you’re going to take a risk that I wouldn’t take, I don’t want to pay for it”. Thats a fair argument, but to be so myopic as to apply it only here is unreasonable.
This isn’t just an American issue. A surprising number of older drivers in rural Canada also feel passionately that they should not be obligated to wear a seat belt. They use many of the arguments that have already been expounded in this thread.
Personally, I would have the heeby-jeebies about driving without a belt. My only comment is that a seat-belt that is worn improperly can actually cause significant injury in the event of an accident. Please see here . This is not an argument (to my mind) for saying that seatbelt use should not be mandatory; it is an argument for educating people as to how a seatbelt should be worn.
No. Voting is a right. Driving cannot be a right, since then the drivers license requirement or any subsequent suspension or cancellation would be a violation of your rights.
To be fair, this isn’t really a huge deal to me. I doubt the additional cost due to not wearing a seatbelt is causing a substantial increase in my premiums or taxes. I do tend to lean towards supporting seat belt laws however, since getting irate over losing the right to splatter oneself all over the highway seems somewhat silly to me.
There are requirements for voting. You must be 18 years old, and you must register to vote and keep your registration up to date when you move. If you try to vote when you’re too young or haven’t been registered, you will be turned away. Just as if you try to drive when you’re too young or don’t have an active license, you will be arrested.
Voting rights can be revoked if you commit a felony, and in some states you can never get them back. Just as driving rights can be revoked if the court suspends or cancels your license.
By you logic then, imprisoning a person is a revokation of rights?
Thats fine, but by the same logic, if you prove to be a danger to the community on the road and have your license revoked, therefore having the right to drive suspended, it’s equally as justified.
The point is, you rationale for defining it seems flawed.
The whole “driving is a privledge, not a right” argument strikes me as a heaping bit of semantic masturbation.
