By Allen Van Hoosier,
Vehicular Enemy of the State
When you are driving down the freeway with a car full of kids going 90 mph, there are so many placed in jeopardy - EVERYONE MUST WEAR A SEATBELT. When you are driving down the hwy going 50 mph and you have a child who is not wearing a seatbelt - there is an adult who has placed a helpless child in jeopardy.
When you are an adult, driving down a side street putting along at 25 mph, and you forgot to place your seatbelt on, exactly who is in jeopardy? Even if you are hit by another car who hits you head-on in going 60, you will be thrusted with reverse force to the backseat and get a broken back. If you are the one going 50, and you hit a car head-on going 25, then you will be the one with the forward thrust, and you possibly, only if the points of impact are just correct, will you be thrusted through the window of your car. In any of these scenarios, the only one in danger is the driver of the car, unless by some weird one in a million chance that you are thrusted through the windshield of the car you hit, and have a body-to-body impact with the on-coming car.
My car is an extension of my home, and I think most Americans feel this way. They don't come into your home and make you NOT smoke in your house - hell- they do not even come in to your car and make you NOT smoke in the car, kids in the car or otherwise!
Ahh - but the State can come into your car and make you not wear your seatbelt. Don't get me wrong - I think all adults and children should be made to wear their seatbelts until the age of 30. Only by that age, can someone be trusted enough to have their head out of their ass enough to be a good driver. And let me refine that - this only goes for men over 35, and women over 50. Only women over 50 can be trusted enough not to have a *&%#$& phone up to their ear - not paying a damn bit of attention to what is going on around them.
Their are female exceptions to this rule: Married women over 30. It's only married women over 30 who categorically NEVER answer their cell phone. I know this because I have sisters-in-law, a mother-in-law and the queen of the cellular-inhibited herself, my wife. Never answers. Nope. Not gonna happen.
But it never fails - when I see a woman under the age of 30 driving down the highway - bam - talking on her cell phone. About what - Who gives a rat's ass? Just please try to drive with at least one hand!
My car is an extension of my home. HOW DARE any governing body impose what I can and cannot do in the extension of my own home. Unless I have k
ids in the car, drunk or high, my decision to wear or not to wear is mine to make and mine only. The cause of all this privacy invasion? Mourning mothers who have lost children car wrecks.
Let it be said that I do not wish to take anything away from their grief, but it is them that started a letter writing campaign proposing statues to enforce on NOT wearing one. Many people would be inclined to say it was the insurance companies, but let's face the facts: Insurance companies do not benefit from dead children and adults from NOT wearing them. and have more of a potential of having to pay something a large sum of cash if anyone is seriously injured.
But when a few thousands grieving mom’s start writing, look out. Soccer moms move slow, but they do arrive at a pace, there's no stopping them.
But the state of
As stated - if you are a child, LAW! You have to wear the belt. Period.
If you are a young adult (and by young adult I mean anyone under 30) Then LAW! You have to wear the belt.
If you are 31 and above and have a child or children in said car then SOL. LAW! All passengers including drive have to wear the belt. And hey - here's a novel idea - if you are seen talking on your cell phone without bluetooth or a mic headphone, Throw them in jail!
But if you are a solo driver 31 years and up, what you do in your car is your own business.
Lunch cancer and emphysema kill 25 times more people that car wreck-deaths as a result of no seatbelt in this country, and no one passes a law stating one cannot smoke in his or her own car!
WHAT????????????? Congress won't pass a law forbidding the use of tobacco in the car? You can get pulled over with a cancer stick in one hand, a cheeseburger in the other, an american flag in your foot, texting with your other foot, and "Proud to be an American" (someone shoot Lee Greenwood) blasting through the speakers.... and what will you get a ticket for? THE F%^$#@!* SEATBELT!!!
The fact that an entity of the state (the police ran by the state legislature) can pull you over and delegate by law what you can and cannot do in your own car is totalitarianism. Now remember - I am only speaking to the "single passenger over 31 in the car group" now, is an example of Big Brother imposing the idea on you that "The State knows how to care for you more th
an yourself."
The state sounds like a dipshit to me. They care that I wear a seatbelt, but it's no problem if they pull me over wearing my seatbelt but I'm sucking down a Camel no-filter with the tenacity of a fluffer-girl.
Here's a noble idea. Since the State (Zig Heil) has taken upon themselves to protect me from myself, then they have assumed responsibility of controlling what goes on in the inside of my car (remember I am talking about single passenger over 31 crowd) then I demand, as in all totalitarian-communist-banana republic-dictatorships, that they also assume part of the responsibility of my car payment.
What goes on in my car (remember I am talking about single passenger over 31 crowd) is my business.
We worry about seatbelts? What about women the phone glued to the head? The ingrate fools whom I beg NOT to reproduce who drive with one hand and text with the other?
Yeah - I'll pay my ticket, but - my strap is off. And the deputy sherrif and Governor Mitch Daniels can keep their "strap on."
PUN INTENDED.
I do not have to wear my eyeglasses at home but I do while I am driving. It says so on my government issued license. And that is the problem using the car as a extension of the home arguement. Driving is a government sanctioned privelage with a set of rules that we must follow to keep that privelage. Wearing my eyeglasses is one of those rules. Driving within posted speed limits is another. Wearing a seat belt has become one more of many in the last decade. While some of these rules may seem arbitrary they are there to protect the driver, other drivers and pedestrians.
ReplyDeleteOn a separate note I love the solo under 30 rule. That would be so much fun for a cop to enforce. And I can imagine when a person reaches the magical age. Getting in the car and not clicking the seat belt in glee and then get killed in a head on while driving 50 miles and hour near their home. The irony would be so rich.
Allen,
ReplyDeleteWhile I am steadfastly opposed to the provision of the seatbelt law that allows law enforcement officers to pull drivers over based solely upon suspicion that the driver (or passengers now) is not wearing a seatbelt, I agree 100% that dumbasses that don't buckle up should be ticketed each and every time that an officer pulls them over for another offense and then discovers that they are not wearing a seatbelt.
It takes less than 5 seconds to buckle your seatbelt. It takes years of smoking to kill you, but one lapse in buckling up can be fatal. Call it Big Brother if you want, but mandatory seatbelt laws have likely already saved thousands of lives, and saved billions of unnecessary healthcare expenses. That is justification enough for requiring their use.
As I have explained previously, I was on the Attorney General's study committee years ago when this law was in the preliminary stages. I opposed the portion allowing officers to stop vehicles for seatbelt violations alone - which I argued would be used as a fishing expedition for unconstitutional searches and seizures (and which has proven true, but that's a separate issue) - but the statistics were very clear even then. Seatbelts save lives, even in slow-speed collisions.
Government can be evil and intrusive. Government can be maddeningly stupid (don't get me started). But sometimes Government gets it right. Requiring seatbelt use is an example.
Now lets screw those damn smokers!
I agree..I also think you should be a land owner, and at least age 30 before you can vote!!
ReplyDeleteA counterargument to Jeff: Why exactly does the government have the role of imposing conditions which save the lives of people not intelligent enough to use safety equipment installed for their benefit. Lack of intelligence would only be passed on through brain transplants, which would be interesting but which currently is not possible. What is possible, however, is using the generally-unscathed other valuable internal organs of stupid people killed when their neck is broken from hitting the windshield or headliner of their auto, or the skull fracture from being ejected. (Don't even ask me about "donorcycles" and the requirement that riders wear helmets -- if they want to be a donor, let them). I say we have a population problem in this world. Why waste our precious air (and allow them to pollute and continue to increase global warming) on stupid people. By all means, let them go belt-less. Let them ride motorcylces without helmets. Let them go hill-jumping in the back of a pick-up. Let them base-jump and hang-glide. Let them eat at questionable mexican restaurants.
ReplyDelete