When seat belt laws drew fire as a violation of personal freedom
history.com
history.com
Vividly reminds me of a lot of anti-mask arguments today.
The person who blows their heart out at 53 probably costs a whole lot less VS what they put into society.
Not nearly as long as they live, sucking up healthcare resources.
"Unhealthy" people like smokers and the obese are more cost-effective, because they're nearly as productive per year and they die before needing the absurdly expensive medical care for old age.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230728192509/https://www.nytim...
And some informed folks have even argued that in modern vehicles airbags are so effective seatbelts could be worsening accident outcomes. (Elon Musk made this point in one of his podcast appearances re: Teslas)
If you want to make this argument, you can at least provide some data on how much some police departments make by collecting seat belt fines, and compare it to other fines and cost of operation. I doubt the seat belt fines are significant enough to warrant this speculation.
The airbag argument is even worse. Modern vehicles go through numerous safety standard tests, including real world experiments where test dummies are put in an actual car crash. If seat belts make the crash worse for the dummy than airbag alone, these tests would have shown it, and there would be publications about it in a peer reviewed science journal. If you are so confident, you should be able to find at least one such publication. I doubt you will.
If it is genuine, did you mean motorcycles without helmet enforcement?
I live in Florida, where motorcyclists are allowed to go unhelmeted while car drivers are required to wear seat belts.
Like I said: Most jurisdictions require motorcycle riders to wear pretty through safety gear, such as a helmet and protective clothing.
This is unless you believe the tests don’t really reflect reality, but then you are objecting science accepted by several regulatory bodies. You’ll have to give me more evidence than your word against decades of experiments and expert opinions.
Another commenter pointed out that unhelmeted motorcyclists contribute to the supply of organs (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37027107), so I think it all works out.
I don’t get the impression that neither the commenter, nor the paper cited, thinks this is a good thing.
Regardless, the discussion has come a long way from:
Motorcycles should be banned if seatbelts are enforced
→ But motorcycles have safety laws as well to protect the rider
→ Not where I live
→ But in other places they do
→ Well I’ll imply—but not state—that those safety rules don’t protect the riders
→ But the safety gear does* protect riders*
→ And then something about organ harvesting of accidents.
This is a silly debate. You’ve convinced me of nothing, you had a point there somewhere, but it got lost in irrelevance. Both motorcycle riders and automobile drivers have safety gear for their own self preservation which they are required to use in most places. Yes there are exceptions to this (such as Florida; or riders of scooters/light motorcycles) but also to cars (New Hampshire does not have seat belt requirements to 17+; neither do many states in India; Bus riders don’t have to wear seat belts in many places; tractors don’t require seat belts; etc.)
29 have some age restrictions, where people under a certain age must wear helmets while riding, and only 3 have no laws requiring riders to wear helmets. I think Puerto Rico has a pretty strict helmet wearing law since 2007[1]. I haven’t found any data about the other territories.
1: https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/documents/812397...
Every country in Europe requires a helmet, so does Canada and Mexico.
While I always wear a seat belt and will not even move my car without ensuring that my passengers are wearing their seat belts, I don't feel I should tell other drivers what to do inside their cars.
I live in Florida, where motorcycle riders are not required to wear helmets while those riding in cars are required to wear seat belts. It is silly.
Ignoring delayed gratification or the future could make seatbelts seem like a violation of personal freedom. But living another 40 years because of a seatbelt could enable more opportunities for personal freedom.
[0]https://glofin.com/blog/consequences-of-not-wearing-a-seatbe...
Here's a good wear your seatbelt advert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKHY69AFstE
A violation of personal freedom most of us consider worth it, but a violation one the less.
So yeah on a closed area with no consequence (i.e. no one to rescue you) sure go for your life. But on a public road where people have no option but to rescue you if you fly through the windshield....
The taxpayers have to pay for your care. So it seems like a fair trade-off, if you're going use public roads, wear a seat belt.
Roads might end up being a lot safer.
As you can see, that is not the case.
I think this is commonly called risk compensation, but I prefer the alternative name risk homeostasis [1].
On the flip side, when trucks hauling heavy, dangerous loads have a frontal collision, their loads go forward through the cab, killing the drivers instantly. Makes them think twice before speeding and tailgating.
In an AI future, maybe we'll have cars that purposefully hurt drivers when the AI determines they're driving recklessly. Don't like it? Turn on autopilot.
One bit of context: sky is a rare event, yet driving happens all the time.
Rules are naturally infringements on individual liberty. The question is, which rules can one justify? Put differently, when can the state limit individual liberty? And that naturally raises the question: why is it appropriate in some cases, and not in others?
Your justification points to the consequences to the state in terms of economic cost and I suppose the psychological trauma suffered by emergency personnel.
Let's push your logic further. I understand you're posting from NZ, and I'm posting from America, but we face a drastic obesity crisis here. For the sake of argument, let's stipulate that the main cause of obesity is overeating, and if we restricted the number of calories available to people we'd see a drastic decrease in healthcare costs and so forth. Should the state be allowed to control the food you eat, the number of calories you consume, etc.? If not, why not? Could the state make obese citizens go exercise at state run gyms?
Or consider the effects of social media use on children. There is at this point pretty good evidence that social media use by teenagers, especially girls, leads to negative mental health outcomes (mood disorders like depression, etc.). Can the state limit the amount of time teenagers spend on tiktok or instagram?
My point is, individual choices always have effects on society, insofar as any individual person is a member of a society. The fact that individual choices have negative effects on society broadly cannot itself justify regulating those choices. The justification for state power must be found elsewhere, imo.
I just wanted to share that observation.
Thank god we learned our lesson when it comes to dead school kids.
If this idea sounds radical and needlessly trolling to you, it should. But this is not some sort of straw man. It is literally a popular position in contemporary American politics among those on the right. [1]
For seatbelts we had on one side of the ledger preventable deaths, injuries, and if we're being callous, the economic drain that results from that. We also knew from looking at other countries that had these problems, that seatbelt laws massively reduce those negatives. On the other side we had, "But I don't wanna."
When it comes to mass shootings in America, we've had 427 as of yesterday, the 218th day of 2023.[0] That's almost two a day. The United States is literally the only country where this happens. We know the solutions. We can look at how Australia reacted when they had a kindergarten murdered in 1996, and how they haven't had a similar instance since. When America had a kindergarten murdered in a similar way, the government shrugged it off, and even talking about reform was shouted down, because of "freedom".
That's what I'm talking about. So if putting it out in such straightforward terms makes you uncomfortable, it should, because it's literally people dying and a majority of Americans wanting the dying to stop, versus a small number saying, "I don't care. I don't wanna. Your dead kid is the price I'm willing to pay to keep my hobby."
[0] https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/nearly-half-gop-accept-mass-shootin...
You can think me uncomfortable, but I'm not. Now that you're actually being clear in your words, I can state that we're in agreement. I'd tone down the attitude though.
Anyways this article talks more about the details of events that happened surrounding the regulations.
It is less obvious with seatbelt laws, but the idea is the same. Generally, there are limits to the rights to kill yourself through recklessness.
This is because it impacts much more people than you. If you die in a car accident because you didn't wear your seatbelt, first responders are going to try to save you, traffic will be blocked while the police investigates, your friends and family will be devastated, your employer will have to make up for the loss of an employee, other parties in the accident may be traumatized, etc... All that just for your personal freedom of not wearing a seatbelt.
Lawmakers have decided that wearing a seatbelt does a lot of good to society at large (by not having to deal with reckless deaths) in exchange for a small violation in personal freedom. Sometimes it is hard to find a balance between personal freedom and the harm it may cause to others, but seatbelts are among the easy ones.
If it were really just about containing the mess you make when you are ejected from the car, I'd be in favor of making it personal choice. But it's not.
Something that went largely ignored by the personal freedom crowd during the pandemic is one's right to life. The government is duty-bound to protect your right to life, or at least it should be. And so it's not much of a decision between requiring masks to enter certain spaces versus letting vast swaths of the population die. (There's a great book about this called Emergency State by Adam Wagner).
Here in the UK, the zeitgeist around the seatbelt wearing is different: there's not much, if any objection to seatbelt laws. And no doubt part of that is our socialised healthcare system: you not wearing a seatbelt is a direct burden on the taxpayer. You guys in America don't have socialised healthcare, or at least nowhere near to the same extent, but the question still remains the same... you still have insurance. Are you okay with your insurance premiums paying for stupid people inflicting themselves with entirely preventable injuries from taking an ideological stance against seatbelts? Your premiums will likely go up the more this happens. I remember one rather harrowing conversation with an American who said that, in such situations, the insurance company should be able to deny coverage... and I guess I'm just horrified at what kind of society that is that discards its citizens to die like that.
Another point is that you are infinitely less able to control a vehicle in an accident while flying through the windscreen, so not wearing a seatbelt is not only a deadly danger to yourself, but poses an inherent risk to other drivers and pedestrians. And depending on the accident, you becoming a projectile can and will kill other people in the car (eg: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y3InF19dzlM). Does this not matter?
Of course not wearing one is a terrible idea. But smoking isn't banned, neither is walking drunk in cliff paths. It is also one of those things where the damage is pretty much entirely to yourself.
I see some exceptions, namely mandatory seatbelts for children (who benefit from enhanced protection of the state) and protecting first responders - though if you flew out of your car due to not wearing a seatbelt, I don't think you'll need any aid at all.
There are some comparisons to face masks in this thread, but I don't think they apply since face masks at least in theory protected others, even more than that oneself.
So... Why?
If you are on your own in your own car, I suppose you don’t have to wear the seatbelt. Same as not wearing a mask when you’re alone
So you have a prayer of staying in control of your car in the event you have to execute an emergency maneuver. If you're struggling to even stay in the seat, you are not in control of that two ton hunk of steel hurtling down the road.
1. regulations requiring manufacturers to put seatbelts in cars
2. laws requiring motorists to wear said seatbelts
The former is not a violation of personal freedom, the latter is.
But then for some insane reason corporations got the rights of individuals, and here we are inadvertently defending manufacturers vs. #1 when all we care about is #2.
By forcing manufacturers to put seatbelts in cars, you are, in essence, forcing individuals to buy cars with seatbelts, regardless of whether or not they want them.
Even if you didn't have #2, if you have #1, you are forcing someone who doesn't want to use a seatbelt to pay for a seatbelt.
Like I said, admittedly a much weaker argument than that against forcing people to wear them, but there is a personal freedom argument against #1
You don’t get to treat force as a transitive property when it suits you and isolated when it doesn’t - its one or the other.
You are entirely free to buy cars without seatbelts.
It's the manufacturers who are prevented from selling cars without seatbelts, nor headlights below a certain height, nor unsafe chinesium non-DOT-legal tires. Hell, aren't backup cameras required on new cars sold in the US now?
And I'm pretty sure if a manufacturer sold you a car without seat belts, you could buy it, and it would be the manufacturers problem you could force them to correct at no cost.
But you'd be breaking the law driving it around without wearing seat belts, which is the part of all this I take issue with.
In point of fact I think you are correct. I believe that any manufacturer _can_ make a car without seat belts, and any person can buy it. You just can't register it with the DMV because it won't be street legal, which is indeed a much more nuanced regulation with, at the very least, an even weaker personal freedom argument than previous.
So the actual regulation as it exists is not exactly what was originally stated in the first comment. I was replying to that comment as stated.
No one is stopping you from buying a car without seatbelts. Companies are being restricted from selling a car without seatbelts. Companies aren't people.
If you believe this is a restriction of your personal freedom, then ANY regulation on ANY company that you might interact with, for anything at all is a restriction of your personal freedom as well - because those actions ultimately could result in the company not providing a good or service that you desire.
And if that is your definition of personal freedom, then you should clarify your position as an anarchist.
Very nearly this YES. I don't think it's quite that absolute, but pretty close! Many, many restrictions on personal freedom are entirely justified, and are in fact extremely good, to the point that almost no one disagrees they are warranted, but they are most definitely still restrictions on personal freedom. I am not an anarchist who thinks that the government shouldn't exist or that personal freedom is literally the only value that matters, but that doesn't mean we should lie to ourselves about the fact that, in order to live in a functioning society, countless of our personal freedoms have to be given up. Many of them are so small and inconsequential that most people never even notice, but that doesn't change the fact that we have given them up.
I don't see how this definition is meaningful or useful for society.
We are not. We are trying to help them stay in control of the car so they don't kill us innocent bystanders.
No, that's not how it works. In 99% of cases, being thrown free of the vehicle is a terrible thing to happen. It kind of reminds me of the various "arguments" being made against vaccines- the ones simply ignorant of physics, chemistry, and biology.
Why the past tense?
They still are a violation of personal freedom today.