And I am not really buying that. Their “opinion” is dead wrong, the stats don’t bear it out. We have gone from a very low rate of compliance of around 10-15% in the 80’s to a very high level of compliance currently ranging from 85% to 90% depending on jurisdiction, survey method, etc. Yet in the same time period deaths per passenger mile have remained relatively steady. In fact, if you look at the curve for deaths per passenger mile, it has been almost flat for the last twenty years. We really are reaching a point of diminishing returns when it comes to highway safety. As it stands, the death rate is around ONE AND ONE HALF per every ONE HUNDRED MILLION PASSEGNER MILES TRAVELLED, and that is pretty darn good. I can, er, live with that.
What I can’t live with is increasingly draconian laws that have the main purposes of extracting money from the public without a politician having to admit to raising taxes, and cowing us into a state of greater and greater submission to authority over more and more aspects of our lives.
The same can be said of the radically more severe DUI laws we have these days, compared to twenty years ago. Despite the efforts of MADD, the death rate on our highways isn’t budging much any more, we are chipping away at a horizontal asymptote that we will never breach, barring some radical change in the driving paradigm, like robot driven cars.
But I am sure this post will get a similar reaction to one that denies that global warming is caused by human activity, so basically the answer is, politicians know what is best so shut up and pay your taxes, citizen, or we will make life difficult for you.
Is there anything to back up the assertion that the cost savings will actually be passed on to individuals? Seems to me that all of the cost benefits from forcing people to wear seat belts will be enjoyed only by the insurance companies themselves. They’ll increase their profit margins instead of decreasing their premiums.
The insurance industry is competitive. If a company can reduce their premiums because they’re paying out fewer claims, they will do so (“Customers saved an average of $X by switching to InsureCo!”)
ECONOMICS 101: Lowered insurance costs are passed on to the consumer through the mechanism of competition. The insurance market is highly competitive. Just look at a TV ad: they all tout lower rates and invite comparisons.
Folks, seat belt laws should be abolished. You should wear your seat belt. It might even save you money! One night I was tearing around a railroad frontage road chasing a train (I am a railfan) and the railroad had placed a pile of gravel in the road for reballasting. It was the same color as the rest of the gravel on the road so almost invisible until you were right up on it. Although I saw it at the last minute and was able to brake somewhat before impact, we plowed right into it. My girlfriend’s head impacted the windshield and cracked it. Amazingly, she was a little stunned, but fine otherwise, thank OG, but the windshield was a goner. Cost me almost $300 to replace it. If she had been belted, it would never have been broken. Could use that money right about now…
Well, if that is to become the role of government down to the last detail, I don’t think we will get much done in the private sector. And who is to save the government from IT’S stupidity?
But the benefit of that presumes that the propaganda slogan “Seat Belts Save Lives” is true. I have called that into question just a few posts upthread. Perhaps someone can poke a hole in my argument…
I tend to agree with every pro-belt post here. But you could interpret this to mean, why are the cops so heavily enforcing this law compared to other illegal, more serious crimes that are being committed daily. Not a question from me, but an observation.
Included in my upthread post. Fatalities have been pretty flat even as seatbelt compliance, in one of the most swiftly changing behaviors ever recorded in human history, has skyrocketed.
And here is a cite for the compiance rate, and states requiring compliance. Compare and contrast the highway fatality rate in the graph I linked upthread. Discuss…
The gross number of fatalities has been flat, but there are more and more people driving more and more miles every year.
The number of fatailities per 100 million vehicle miles has dropped from 1.73 in 1994 to 1.36 in 2007, a reduction of more than 20%. The number of deaths per 100,000 population went from 15.64 to 13.61, a drop of 13%. Cite.
There’s a problem with any of these data, of course, and that’s the fact that we can’t sort out cause and effect. Are traffic fatalities down because of seatbelts, or because of airbags, or because cars are engineered to absorb crash impacts better, or because highways are designed better, or because cars are engineered to avoid crashes better?
And then there are the countervailing factors, things that might lead to *more *accidents, like more traffic congestion, higher speeds, a bunch of baby-boomers continuing to drive as their faculties decline, more road rage, etc.
Note that the overwhelming majority in the reduction of highway fatalities occurred before seatbelts were widely used. Add in the fact that many other so called safety improvements have been implemented during the period since 1980, air bags, comprehensive crash testing, improvements in roads and the vehicles themselves, and if MADD is to believed, getting those darn “drunks” who blow .08 after two beers off the highway, and any improvement due to seatbelts is marginal at best.
Again, I almost always wear my seatbelt, and I reccomend that you guys do too, but the extra margin it gives you is incremental.
The overwhelming cause of highway fatalities is not lack of seatbelt use, speeding, or even drunk driving. It is driver fatigue and driver distraction. Putting on makeup or eating or changing the radio station, or driving without adequate rest is much more likely to kill you or someone else than any other cause.
And you can’t believe the accident causation stats either. Cops will often put down such a cause as “Following too closely” as the cause of a rear-end accident, when the reality is the guy was changing the station on the radio and didn’t hit the brake in time. Similarly, accidents are chalked up to alcohol, NO MATTER WHO IS AT FAULT. An accident will be blamed on the “drunk”, some guy who had two or three and blew over .08, EVEN IF SOME OTHER BOZO PLOWED INTO HIM FROM BEHIND WHILE STOPPED AT A RED LIGHT.
Thanks a lot, MADD. Or should I say, WCTU of the new millenium. :rolleyes:
And we will never know what proportion of that is due to belt usage or is due to other factors such as cars that are much more roadworthy and crashworthy, air bags, improvements in the roads themselves, etc. It is still approaching a horizontal asymptote, as per my linked graph. Let me ask you, at what point do we stop the craziness? And at what cost? Obama’s choice for NHTSA head supports a return to the 55 MPH speed limit! Almost no-one thinks that is a good idea, outside of the folks that have realized that traffic enforcement is good for revenue. It has been shown that at best, red-light cameras have no effect on safety, and in some studies increased fatalities, but that $400 ticket sure has been shown to increase revenues for the government, so guess what, citizen, those cameras are here to stay.
I could be either mistaken or out of date on my information, but I seem to recall that, a few years ago, South Carolina exempted motorcyclists over the age of 21 from the mandatory helmet law if the cyclist maintained certain higher levels of injury insurance. I, personally, think that’s the way to go: If you don’t want to wear your seatbelt or helmet, fine. Just be prepared to pay the projected extra costs of your accident. Personal freedom is a wonderful thing, but only if one is willing to accept the responsibility that comes with that freedom.
At age 40 myself, I’ve literally never driven without my seatbelt. However, neither of my parents likes to wear belts. I don’t like that, but I accept it, and I’d be fine if the law allowed them to refuse to wear a seatbelt in exchange for paying for higher levels of accident insurance.
My wife witnessed some of the debate in the Michigan legislature over the law requiring motorcycle helmets. From what she saw, the argument that seemed to convince people was that riders wearing helmets were more likely to be able to donate their organs.
The reason helmet and seatbelt use is mandatory is to cut down on the expenses of insurance companies. They’re a tightly focused group that has money and directly benefits from these laws. There’s no effective opposition to laws like this because no group directly benefits from helmets and seatbelts being optional.
Personally I believe that people should be allowed to make their own decisions, even if they make stupid decisions, as long as they alone are directly effected by the consequences. I always wear a seatbelt because I’m not an idiot. But I shouldn’t be legally required to wear one.
