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>In case of seatbelt laws in particular you have a huge amount of proof/data showing that seatbelts save lives both of the person wearing them and other people
by tsotha 12y ago
>In case of seatbelt laws in particular you have a huge amount of proof/data showing that seatbelts save lives both of the person wearing them and other people in the car[1] and there is also a massive amount of proof/data that [a lot of] people are too dumb to wear seatbelts on their own.
I hate this line of reasoning. People aren't "too dumb" to wear seat belts. They have their own reasons. It's not your place or anyone else's to protect people from themselves. You might be able to make the case for a law requiring seat belts when more than one person is in the car, but not for singleton drivers.
- MaysonL 12y agoIt's not your place or anyone else's to protect people from themselves. It's not about that: it's about protecting the rest of us from them, and from having to pay for their medical care throught higher insurance rates and medical costs. (And posssibly higher life insurance and long term disability insurance).
- tsotha 12y agoYou can use that line of reasoning to impose any restriction you want on other people. I have no problem with insurance companies charging the non-seatbelt-wearers more, but if you're going to force people into a universal health care system you have to live with their lifestyles.
- Swizec 12y agoUnseatbelted people sometimes fly out of cars. And what about the emotional impact of being in a wreck where somebody dies in the other car because they didn't wear a seatbelt? What if you caused a wreck survivable with minor injuries but the other person died because no seatbelt. Now yiu're charged with manslaughter simply because somebody was being libertarian. Yay. We legally mandate airbags, abs, esr, and a host of other safety features in cars because it turns out cars kill a disproportionate number of the population. Why not seatbelts? Mind you, you simply don't have the option to turn off the other safety features. We collectively don't want you to have it.
- discostrings 12y ago> We legally mandate airbags, abs, esr, and a host of other safety features in cars ... you simply don't have the option to turn off ... That's incorrect. New cars can't be sold without some of these safety features, but as far as I'm aware, there's no law preventing a buyer from dismantling them. I think that's an important difference--it's one thing to regulate what a large industry can sell, but a completely different thing to regulate someone's activities with their own property.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoMy airbag has a button on the dash to turn it off.
- Swizec 12y agoNo it doesn't. That's just for the passenger-side airbag and you are only supposed to turn it off if there's something other than a human there (like a rear-facing baby seat).
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoSo.... its a button, and it turns the airbag off.
- tsotha 12y agoYou haven't presented a scenario that tops my desire for personal liberty. I'm not really interested in what "we collectively" wants. People should be able to drink and smoke, play music loud enough to damage their hearing, dance all night in abandoned warehouses with 300 of their closest friends, do their own plumbing, and kill game animals for the sheer fun of it. Because they want to, and being able to do what you want is liberty. I realize we need some restrictions to have a functioning society. But we have far, far too many.