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Comment by lvass | Hacker News Reader

Seatbelt laws are still wrong, government has no business protecting me from myself.

But even from an utilitarian perspective, compilers do have warnings and they could just have used that.

> Seatbelt laws are still wrong, government has no business protecting me from myself.

If there are multiple people in a car and some choose to wear seatbelts and some choose not to, those who are not wearing seatbelts become a danger to everyone else as their bodies become in-vehicle projectiles.

Sure, I can understand the debate when it's just a single person in a car. But when a person's decision starts impacting others the debate is going to be very hard to win.

Even if it’s just you, you’d be leaving your mangled corpse on a public road for other people to deal with, which is a nuisance.

Like take the car crash out of the equation and imagine some cars came with an ejector switch that launches you through the windshield at 70 mph. This would not be allowed.

It also protects innocent bystanders from being forced to see your horrifyingly mangled body tossed on the ground in front of them in what could otherwise have either been a crash with no injuries, minimized injuries, or at least contained injuries. Do you still think that law is overstep, if so why? Genuine question, I have no horse in this race and am on the fence myself.

Because any restriction of freedom is bad in principle and acceptance of those tend to create overreaching, totalitarian states/mafias. There are valid arguments for restricting freedom from an individual to harm another, but making sure no one can see your dead body right after you happen to crash your car definitely isn't one. It is very much infeasible and an absolute helicopter mom type of concern.

Keeping with the analogy, yes, you should always wear your seatbelt on public roads (release), but that doesn't mean I feel like I need to buckle up just to move my car while staying in my own driveway (debug).

That's reasonable. I think major restrictions that cause you to need to refactor your code when going from debug to release are a footgun and a half, but that'd at least be defensible.

So proud of all the HN denizens that none of us asked lvass about their stance on mandatory baby seats in cars. Or those bars they use to pin you down in your car on roller coasters.

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