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Why You Have to Wear a Seat Belt, but Can Drive a Motorcycle

35 points by Mitchhhs 11y ago

Karunamon 11y ago
can’t we agree that the law should at least strive to be consistent with itself when possible? No, because putting consistency over correctness means instead of some right and some wrong, you've either got 100% right (not possible in our world) or 100% wrong. Besides that, consider that a state's laws are supposed to be an expression of the values of their people, and it's entirely reasonable that a state might tax cigarettes and alcohol differently, or have different laws for cars and motorcycles. Depends on what the people want.
- jrlocke 11y ago
  Inconsistency implies falsity
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    Humans are not logically consistent animals.
    - imaginenore 11y ago
      Some of us try to be.
      - loco5niner 11y ago
        Not one succeeds.
      - AlexandrB 11y ago
        You'd have to be omniscient first. Otherwise you may always be inconsistent when judged against context you're not aware of.
  - njharman 11y ago
    Nope, it doesn't. Things can be inconsistent and/or false there is no inherent correlation.
    - JadeNB 11y ago
      But a collection of true statements cannot be inconsistent, so inconsistency does imply falsity. (Perhaps you are arguing against the converse, that falsity implies inconsistency, or against the claim that inconsistency and falsity are equivalent?)
      - njharman 11y ago
        Less arguing and more curious about your logic. Maybe I don't understand definition of inconsistent you're using. I'm using informal, layman's definition. To me True and Inconsistent must have nuances of meaning or there wouldn't be two words. Here are two true statements that seem inconsistent to me. "Norm said 2+2=4" "Norm said 2+2=5" It is true Norm said both those things. Norm's ability to do arithmetic (or possibly tell the truth, or etc) is not consistent.
        JadeNB 11y ago
        The statements "2 + 2 = 4" and "2 + 2 = 5" are not consistent (unless 4 = 5), which is OK; the second one is not true (unless 4 = 5). The statements "Norm said '2 + 2 = 4'" and "Norm said '2 + 2 = 5'" are consistent. (A sufficient but not necessary definition of consistency of a collection of statements is that there is a model—let's leave the meaning of that vague—in which they hold. If we are sufficiently vague about what 'model' means, then we may take the real world to be one.) As you say, together (if true, and if taken to be true expressions of Norm's beliefs) these consistent statements imply the inconsistency of Norm's beliefs. That is a good thing; it is useful to be able to judge the consistency of statements about inconsistency, just as it is to be able to judge the truth of statements about falsity. (For example, I think that you will agree that the fact that "2 + 2 = 5" is false does not make "Norm said '2 + 2 = 5'" false.) To me, the nuanced distinction between truth and consistency comes in the facts that (1) the latter is weaker than the former ("Norm said '2 + 2 = 4'" and "Norm can do basic arithmetic" are consistent, even if they are not both true), and (2) that the latter is of interest mainly about collections of statements; the truth of a group of (non-mutually referential) statements is determined by the truth of each individual statement, but the same is not true for consistency.
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    I think that this is Karunamon (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534654)'s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534654)'s point: an inconsistent collection of statements contains at least one false statement; but a collection of statements, all of which are false, is guaranteed to be consistent, so consistency is no guarantor of truth (and indeed may obtain with more falsehood in place than inconsistency).
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > a collection of statements, all of which are false, is guaranteed to be consistent "Hillary Clinton is exactly 8 years old", "Hillary Clinton is exactly 9 years old". A collection of statements, all of which are false, is not guaranteed to be consistent.
      - JadeNB 11y ago
        > A collection of statements, all of which are false, is not guaranteed to be consistent. Hmm. You are right, to be sure. I guess I was carelessly generalising from the fact that anything follows from a false statement.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        I think you are misremembering the rule that any statement of the form if X then Y is true if X is false as "anything follows from a false statement" which isn't correct.
        JadeNB 11y ago
        > any statement of the form if X then Y is true if X is false This is indeed precisely what I meant by "anything (Y) follows from a false statement (X)"—although maybe "everything follows from a false statement" sounds better. This is precisely why an inconsistent logic can prove everything. This principle is sometimes also called ex falso quodlibet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_falso_quodlibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_falso_quodlibet). Of course, giving it another name doesn't make it any more (or less) true, but it may make it sound more familiar and less dodgy! I know I muffed up the first statement pretty badly, which doesn't inspire confidence; but, as a mathematician, I'm pretty sure about this one. :-)
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Laws are not claims, so "inconsistency implies falsity" is irrelevant in the context of law, however accurate it might be in terms of the truth values of a collection of claims. (And, anyhow, what actually is being discussed isn't actual consistency or inconsistency in the law, but the ability to construct a consistent set of principles supporting the law that is more general than the specific laws that the principles support. The issue isn't that the laws at issue are actually inconsistent, is that the author feels that the specific laws should be justified by more general principles than the laws themselves, and that (for the laws in question) those principles should address only the degree of danger of the activity, and the more general principles the author infers from each of the laws in question, based on the premise that the justifying principle must consider only safety, are when taken together, are inconsistent. This isn't really about consistency, its about whether the actual content of the law fits a particular preference of the author which involves more than just logical consistency.)
rifung 11y ago
I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with higher mortality rates. I thought the trend was to increase speed limits, and I remember reading that at least for one of the states where they increased the speed limit, people were still pretty much driving at the same speed. It seems that the general consensus is the speed limit should be at the 85th percentile to minimize accidents. However, this just considers minimizing accidents, and I suppose I can see how we can lower the number of accidents but also increase the mortality rate. Also, I suppose it's not completely fair to compare different states, as what works in one might not work in another and vice versa.
- lenzm 11y ago
  My guess is that higher average speeds are the confounding factor and that the speed people drive is mostly independent of the speed limit.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/ http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/
- ska 11y ago
  > I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with higher mortality rates. This really shouldn't be surprising: higher speed limits correlate with higher average speeds, and while energy goes as the square of the velocity, mitigation efforts do not. No matter how well you engineer crumple zones, improve traction, give automated braking responses... if you are going fast enough when you actually hit something, it's the kinetic energy that is going to kill you. Bear in mind that mortality rates and incident rates don't really reflect the same things here.
  - njharman 11y ago
    It has a lot to do with reaction times as well. At higher speeds you've already run into the idiot swerving into your lane (or whatever) by the time your brain processes image.
JoeAltmaier 11y ago
"its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as a result of people not wearing seat belts. " Its easy to argue. Society spends 10's of thousands of dollars trying to rescue and heal those that don't wear seat belts.
- Mitchhhs 11y ago
  Or do we bear less cost because these people die, which saves heath care costs over their lives? Similarly, you could also argue than lack of sunscreen use leads to massive costs to society, so why not mandate that we all wear sunscreen at the beach and fine those who don't?
  - melling 11y ago
    Who said that they would have died without a seatbelt? Maybe just severe bodily damage, crippled, etc. You also make it sound like people are only a cost to society. Lost taxes, scientific discoveries, families, etc., depending on their vocation. A lost parent can hurt a family, for example.
- rcthompson 11y ago
  Also, if seatbelts weren't mandatory, it's conceivable that, in the event of a collision, you could be found liable for injuries that would have been prevented if the person wore a seatbelt. So yes, depending on the law, you could be personally affected by someone else's decision not to wear a seatbelt.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Victim-blaming is usually considered obnoxious. (It certainly is when newspapers opine that cyclists run over by automobiles should have been wearing helmets.) I wonder why that isn't the case here?
    - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
      Lawyers are involved?
ck2 11y ago
You'll still have to wear seatbelts in a driverless car. In fact it probably will refuse to go anywhere unless you do. I think the seatbelt laws are to get federal funding, while motorcycles have little political persuasion.
- DrJokepu 11y ago
  Just curious, I know nothing about these things, how would it know what's a human and what's e.g. a dog? It couldn't even rely on the fact that there must be a human sitting in the driver's seat because the concept of the driver's seat is meaningless in a truly self-driving car.
  - Nadya 11y ago
    FRS is always a possibility. That being said - self-driving cars will likely allow manual overrides or require a driver in the case of a manual override for the same reason space shuttles have a cockpit and give astronauts the ability to manual override the controls. People will want the ability to have control just in case. If a system fails, or says it is failing, and you feel you know it will work or have an alternative that might work. Having manual overrides as a fail safe for software failure can be life saving. For example, what if your brake sensor malfunctions and your car ceases to be able to operate it's brakes? A manual pedal to brake the car could save your life. Although arguably redundant it will likely remain as part of the car until enough time has passed that such fears are considered completely unfounded. "There hasn't been a brake sensor failure in over 25 years." Such a statement could probably convince people a manual override brake system isn't needed and they can save money by ditching it.
    - mod 11y ago
      Not to mention there will always be situations where you need to take control. A flooded (but passable) road is an example that comes to mind--I don't envision us programming our way out of that one. Surely there's dozens of similar examples.
  - tthayer 11y ago
megaman22 11y ago
What states, outside of New Hampshire, don't require wearing a seat belt? Live Free or Die, motherfucker :-)
- rcthompson 11y ago
  > Live Free or Die Or, as the evidence seems to show in this case, both.
  - fleitz 11y ago
    That's why it's or not xor :)
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    You can still wear a seat belt if you want to.
  - pandler 11y ago
    I like the full quote better: > Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils. Given that John Stark is the attributed author of the quote, I like to imagine that his sister might have added, "Valar morghulis".
herbig 11y ago
There's a lot of extremely biased assumptions going on here. All of the numbers here are correlations only. No definition is given for what "consistency" means. Taxing cigarettes but not alcohol because of health is not, in my opinion, even remotely inconsistent. Lastly, the article starts out asking a number of interesting questions and answers none of them, including the one in the title. If you go digging for statistical confirmation of your biases, you will find it.
tghw 11y ago
The argument that I've heard is that seat belts keep the driver in the seat, making it more likely that he or she will have some control of the vehicle after an abrupt maneuver, lowering the chances that the car just becomes an unguided missile, which is more likely to hit something or someone else without a driver. Motorcycles don't really have the same issue, as they generally do a lot less damage than a car since they weigh only a fraction as much. So helmet laws are more a question of personal choice and how much influence the state government wants to have over those decisions.
- sparky_z 11y ago
  If that's the justification, then shouldn't the law only apply to the driver and not the passengers?
  - loco5niner 11y ago
    Here's an argument for that: Just like the car can become an unguided missile endangering others, an unseat-belted passenger can become an unguided missile endangering fellow passengers/driver.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      Are we going to legislate that all of the potatoes in the back seat are secured against becoming missiles as well?
      - loco5niner 11y ago
        Hardly a worthy comparison. How about this comparison instead? If I were to transport my 25 lb kettle-bell, you can bet it will go in the trunk, legislation or not.
  - rakk 11y ago
    Unless one of the passengers knocks out the driver while bouncing around in the car.. The argument mentioned by tghw is the only reason I agree with the law on this point. Considering law's meant to protect people from themselves (and only themselves) in general I'd pick freedom over mandatory safety any day.
alkonaut 11y ago
Seatbelt law without helmet law is a bit inconsistent as far as driver safety goes. Banning motorcycle riding outright is a much more invasive law than requiring a seat belt. Costs vs benefits.
eximius 11y ago
Well, there is an incredibly easy and obvious answer to this. Mothers. Mothers of dead children have been a huge force is traffic policy in the US.
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TrevorJ 11y ago
It's all about reasonable safety balanced with freedom. Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on freedom. There's no equivalent on a motorcycle that checks both those boxes other than the helmet laws we already have in many places. There's no inconsistency here, it's the same philosophy but the outcomes are different because the situations are different.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  >Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on freedom. I don't agree with that at all. There are too many opportunities for police to stop motorists, which they use to pivot and further impinge upon peoples' freedom. It is a common tactic for police to stop motorists for any of a number of reasons such as this reason as a tactic to initiate a search of their vehicle, and record the identities of driver and passengers. I am glad that cars are equipped with seat belts, and of course it is wise to use them; but I disagree that the state has much or any legitimacy in stopping a motorist who was causing no negative effect on other motorists simply because their seat belt was not visible. At its worst (and commonly) the seat belt requirement is abused by greedy entities to drum up extra revenue to which they would otherwise not be entitled.
  - TrevorJ 11y ago
    I see what you are driving at and I agree, the laws do get abused. I think though, you may be slightly misunderstanding my point: Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way. It's not hard to comply with the law, it doesn't cost you time or money and it doesn't effect any of our other freedoms significantly. To your point though: NOT wearing your belt is something that can land you in situations that put you at risk of abuse to your freedoms.
    - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
      >Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way. I agree. I wear my seat belt. I think it is foolish not to do so. I also think it is a driver's right to decide that; and that a driver's failure to wear the seat belt does not harm others in any appreciable way. It's also not a requirement to fail to wear your seat belt in order for an officer to stop you, s/he only needs to fail to notice your seat belt.
jgroszko 11y ago
The author here seems to be making the assumption that all these laws are considered purely from a 'public health/safety' standpoint, without ever being weighed against something else. If we wanted to evaluate laws purely under a 'health/safety' aspect we'd be scrutinizing the 2nd Amendment a lot more too, or even car ownership in general. Luckily legislatures weigh these things against other interests. People weigh gun ownership, motorcycles, and smoking against their public health, because despite the risks these activities are fun to do, make you feel good, etc. Additionally, these issues aren't evaluated in isolation, there's lots of competing interests. Auto manufacturers and consumer interest groups have influence over seatbelt laws. For motorcycles there are ABATE groups in many states that tend to lobby against motorcycle helmet laws. How much influence these groups have may not necessarily be related to how safety conscious the state is in other areas.
asuffield 11y ago
Every time I see an article like this, it advances the "principle" that your own death has no effect on anybody else in the world. Never have I seen this justified in any plausible sense.
- mod 11y ago
  Perhaps so, but to say that seat belt laws are to protect the society from those who don't wear seat belts is equally unjustified. Not to mention they can, and do, find all kinds of other ways to kill themselves, both accidentally and intentionally--and almost none of those are regulated in a similar fashion.
  - njharman 11y ago
    There are innumerable and obvious societal impacts to your personal death/injury. From direct costs of EMS/Fire/medical care, to the minor economic disruption/traffic, to the esoteric person who kills themselves not wearing seat belt cut short their potential contribution to society.
    - mod 11y ago
      Right, my point was that I don't believe that's really the impetus for the law.
- derefr 11y ago
  If you assume otherwise, you get into all sorts of weird utilitarian edge-cases where your friends and family should be able to force you (or at least have a vote in) whether you're able to do things like eating candy or taking on a career in Fire & Rescue. It's not that that value is incoherent or anything—it's actually not a bad idea in isolation—it's just that we seem to value self-determination strictly more.
vacri 11y ago
> If the repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision maker, its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as a result of people not wearing seat belts. So... occupants of cars aren't mothers? Or fathers? Or run businesses? Or manage church bake sales? They aren't students with promising careers in medicine ahead of them? They aren't passionate lovers or mentors or good friends or musicians or even civil liberties lawyers? When someone dies or is badly hurt, it doesn't affect just them. The author has a pretty disturbed view on human interaction to make this assertion in the first place. The argument that 'harm due to speed also hurt other people' and 'harm due to lack of seat belts only hurts the non-wearer' is specious.
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njharman 11y ago
Can't imagine how author pulls out of his ass the notion that speed limits are less impinging on liberty than seat belts. I also find it hard to believe author is not being disingenuous stating "repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision maker". The last couple paragraphs are opinions stated as facts and very much want the reader to agree with them I can't help but feel the whole article/data was just a means for author to push his opinion.
derekp7 11y ago
The big thing that a lot of these articles overlook, is that seatbelts keep the driver in front of the steering wheel and potentially in better control of a car during an accident -- whereas without one, it is possible to be thrown to a different part of the car, and it keep going in a random direction (thereby affecting others).
eweise 11y ago
Comparing wearing a seat belt to driving a motorcycle is not really a fair comparison. One is used for safety and the other is a transportation device. If the comparison is between cars and motorcycles then clearly cars are safer. If the comparison is between safety devices then seat belts are better than helmets if you are in a car but worse if you are on a motorcycle.
tzs 11y ago
This submission raises an interesting question about HN submission policy with regard to titles. The actual title of the article is "Drive In A Red State? You’re More Likely To Die. Here’s Why" (and there is an earlier submission using that title [1]). However, it appears that the submitter may be the author of the article. Does the rule about not changing titles apply when it is the author of the article doing the submission? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196
- dang 11y ago
  The HN guidelines ask a submitter not to use the original title when it's linkbait, so the point seems moot in this case. In general, though, we're a bit more tolerant of title alterations when the author of the article is the one posting it, because the concerns around editorializing are less pressing.
leni536 11y ago
What about public transport? We don't have seat belts, we can even travel standing on a crowded bus. It doesn't seem to bother anyone apparently.
shalmanese 11y ago
What I find is that people tend to vastly underestimate the role that path dependence has on explaining history and then work to come up with just-so stories that explain the result, absent path dependency. Nobody ever sat down and rationally assessed the relative risk of motorcycles vs seat belts and crafted a law to take the two into account. Instead, what happened was at one point in time, a group of people lobbied and succeeded in changing one status quo and at another point in time, some other group of people lobbied and failed to change another status quo.

35 points by Mitchhhs 11y ago

can’t we agree that the law should at least strive to be consistent with itself when possible? No, because putting consistency over correctness means instead of some right and some wrong, you've either got 100% right (not possible in our world) or 100% wrong. Besides that, consider that a state's laws are supposed to be an expression of the values of their people, and it's entirely reasonable that a state might tax cigarettes and alcohol differently, or have different laws for cars and motorcycles. Depends on what the people want.

jrlocke 11y ago
Inconsistency implies falsity
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Humans are not logically consistent animals.
  - imaginenore 11y ago
    Some of us try to be.
    - loco5niner 11y ago
      Not one succeeds.
    - AlexandrB 11y ago
      You'd have to be omniscient first. Otherwise you may always be inconsistent when judged against context you're not aware of.
- njharman 11y ago
  Nope, it doesn't. Things can be inconsistent and/or false there is no inherent correlation.
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    But a collection of true statements cannot be inconsistent, so inconsistency does imply falsity. (Perhaps you are arguing against the converse, that falsity implies inconsistency, or against the claim that inconsistency and falsity are equivalent?)
    - njharman 11y ago
      Less arguing and more curious about your logic. Maybe I don't understand definition of inconsistent you're using. I'm using informal, layman's definition. To me True and Inconsistent must have nuances of meaning or there wouldn't be two words. Here are two true statements that seem inconsistent to me. "Norm said 2+2=4" "Norm said 2+2=5" It is true Norm said both those things. Norm's ability to do arithmetic (or possibly tell the truth, or etc) is not consistent.
      - JadeNB 11y ago
        The statements "2 + 2 = 4" and "2 + 2 = 5" are not consistent (unless 4 = 5), which is OK; the second one is not true (unless 4 = 5). The statements "Norm said '2 + 2 = 4'" and "Norm said '2 + 2 = 5'" are consistent. (A sufficient but not necessary definition of consistency of a collection of statements is that there is a model—let's leave the meaning of that vague—in which they hold. If we are sufficiently vague about what 'model' means, then we may take the real world to be one.) As you say, together (if true, and if taken to be true expressions of Norm's beliefs) these consistent statements imply the inconsistency of Norm's beliefs. That is a good thing; it is useful to be able to judge the consistency of statements about inconsistency, just as it is to be able to judge the truth of statements about falsity. (For example, I think that you will agree that the fact that "2 + 2 = 5" is false does not make "Norm said '2 + 2 = 5'" false.) To me, the nuanced distinction between truth and consistency comes in the facts that (1) the latter is weaker than the former ("Norm said '2 + 2 = 4'" and "Norm can do basic arithmetic" are consistent, even if they are not both true), and (2) that the latter is of interest mainly about collections of statements; the truth of a group of (non-mutually referential) statements is determined by the truth of each individual statement, but the same is not true for consistency.
- JadeNB 11y ago
  I think that this is Karunamon (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534654)'s https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9534654)'s point: an inconsistent collection of statements contains at least one false statement; but a collection of statements, all of which are false, is guaranteed to be consistent, so consistency is no guarantor of truth (and indeed may obtain with more falsehood in place than inconsistency).
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > a collection of statements, all of which are false, is guaranteed to be consistent "Hillary Clinton is exactly 8 years old", "Hillary Clinton is exactly 9 years old". A collection of statements, all of which are false, is not guaranteed to be consistent.
    - JadeNB 11y ago
      > A collection of statements, all of which are false, is not guaranteed to be consistent. Hmm. You are right, to be sure. I guess I was carelessly generalising from the fact that anything follows from a false statement.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        I think you are misremembering the rule that any statement of the form if X then Y is true if X is false as "anything follows from a false statement" which isn't correct.
        JadeNB 11y ago
        > any statement of the form if X then Y is true if X is false This is indeed precisely what I meant by "anything (Y) follows from a false statement (X)"—although maybe "everything follows from a false statement" sounds better. This is precisely why an inconsistent logic can prove everything. This principle is sometimes also called ex falso quodlibet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_falso_quodlibet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_falso_quodlibet). Of course, giving it another name doesn't make it any more (or less) true, but it may make it sound more familiar and less dodgy! I know I muffed up the first statement pretty badly, which doesn't inspire confidence; but, as a mathematician, I'm pretty sure about this one. :-)
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  Laws are not claims, so "inconsistency implies falsity" is irrelevant in the context of law, however accurate it might be in terms of the truth values of a collection of claims. (And, anyhow, what actually is being discussed isn't actual consistency or inconsistency in the law, but the ability to construct a consistent set of principles supporting the law that is more general than the specific laws that the principles support. The issue isn't that the laws at issue are actually inconsistent, is that the author feels that the specific laws should be justified by more general principles than the laws themselves, and that (for the laws in question) those principles should address only the degree of danger of the activity, and the more general principles the author infers from each of the laws in question, based on the premise that the justifying principle must consider only safety, are when taken together, are inconsistent. This isn't really about consistency, its about whether the actual content of the law fits a particular preference of the author which involves more than just logical consistency.)

rifung 11y ago

I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with higher mortality rates. I thought the trend was to increase speed limits, and I remember reading that at least for one of the states where they increased the speed limit, people were still pretty much driving at the same speed. It seems that the general consensus is the speed limit should be at the 85th percentile to minimize accidents. However, this just considers minimizing accidents, and I suppose I can see how we can lower the number of accidents but also increase the mortality rate. Also, I suppose it's not completely fair to compare different states, as what works in one might not work in another and vice versa.

lenzm 11y ago
My guess is that higher average speeds are the confounding factor and that the speed people drive is mostly independent of the speed limit.
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/ http://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/
ska 11y ago
> I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with higher mortality rates. This really shouldn't be surprising: higher speed limits correlate with higher average speeds, and while energy goes as the square of the velocity, mitigation efforts do not. No matter how well you engineer crumple zones, improve traction, give automated braking responses... if you are going fast enough when you actually hit something, it's the kinetic energy that is going to kill you. Bear in mind that mortality rates and incident rates don't really reflect the same things here.
- njharman 11y ago
  It has a lot to do with reaction times as well. At higher speeds you've already run into the idiot swerving into your lane (or whatever) by the time your brain processes image.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

"its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as a result of people not wearing seat belts. " Its easy to argue. Society spends 10's of thousands of dollars trying to rescue and heal those that don't wear seat belts.

Mitchhhs 11y ago
Or do we bear less cost because these people die, which saves heath care costs over their lives? Similarly, you could also argue than lack of sunscreen use leads to massive costs to society, so why not mandate that we all wear sunscreen at the beach and fine those who don't?
- melling 11y ago
  Who said that they would have died without a seatbelt? Maybe just severe bodily damage, crippled, etc. You also make it sound like people are only a cost to society. Lost taxes, scientific discoveries, families, etc., depending on their vocation. A lost parent can hurt a family, for example.
rcthompson 11y ago
Also, if seatbelts weren't mandatory, it's conceivable that, in the event of a collision, you could be found liable for injuries that would have been prevented if the person wore a seatbelt. So yes, depending on the law, you could be personally affected by someone else's decision not to wear a seatbelt.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Victim-blaming is usually considered obnoxious. (It certainly is when newspapers opine that cyclists run over by automobiles should have been wearing helmets.) I wonder why that isn't the case here?
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    Lawyers are involved?

ck2 11y ago

You'll still have to wear seatbelts in a driverless car. In fact it probably will refuse to go anywhere unless you do. I think the seatbelt laws are to get federal funding, while motorcycles have little political persuasion.

DrJokepu 11y ago
Just curious, I know nothing about these things, how would it know what's a human and what's e.g. a dog? It couldn't even rely on the fact that there must be a human sitting in the driver's seat because the concept of the driver's seat is meaningless in a truly self-driving car.
- Nadya 11y ago
  FRS is always a possibility. That being said - self-driving cars will likely allow manual overrides or require a driver in the case of a manual override for the same reason space shuttles have a cockpit and give astronauts the ability to manual override the controls. People will want the ability to have control just in case. If a system fails, or says it is failing, and you feel you know it will work or have an alternative that might work. Having manual overrides as a fail safe for software failure can be life saving. For example, what if your brake sensor malfunctions and your car ceases to be able to operate it's brakes? A manual pedal to brake the car could save your life. Although arguably redundant it will likely remain as part of the car until enough time has passed that such fears are considered completely unfounded. "There hasn't been a brake sensor failure in over 25 years." Such a statement could probably convince people a manual override brake system isn't needed and they can save money by ditching it.
  - mod 11y ago
    Not to mention there will always be situations where you need to take control. A flooded (but passable) road is an example that comes to mind--I don't envision us programming our way out of that one. Surely there's dozens of similar examples.
- tthayer 11y ago

megaman22 11y ago

What states, outside of New Hampshire, don't require wearing a seat belt? Live Free or Die, motherfucker :-)

rcthompson 11y ago
> Live Free or Die Or, as the evidence seems to show in this case, both.
- fleitz 11y ago
  That's why it's or not xor :)
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  You can still wear a seat belt if you want to.
- pandler 11y ago
  I like the full quote better: > Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils. Given that John Stark is the attributed author of the quote, I like to imagine that his sister might have added, "Valar morghulis".

herbig 11y ago

There's a lot of extremely biased assumptions going on here. All of the numbers here are correlations only. No definition is given for what "consistency" means. Taxing cigarettes but not alcohol because of health is not, in my opinion, even remotely inconsistent. Lastly, the article starts out asking a number of interesting questions and answers none of them, including the one in the title. If you go digging for statistical confirmation of your biases, you will find it.

tghw 11y ago

The argument that I've heard is that seat belts keep the driver in the seat, making it more likely that he or she will have some control of the vehicle after an abrupt maneuver, lowering the chances that the car just becomes an unguided missile, which is more likely to hit something or someone else without a driver. Motorcycles don't really have the same issue, as they generally do a lot less damage than a car since they weigh only a fraction as much. So helmet laws are more a question of personal choice and how much influence the state government wants to have over those decisions.

sparky_z 11y ago
If that's the justification, then shouldn't the law only apply to the driver and not the passengers?
- loco5niner 11y ago
  Here's an argument for that: Just like the car can become an unguided missile endangering others, an unseat-belted passenger can become an unguided missile endangering fellow passengers/driver.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    Are we going to legislate that all of the potatoes in the back seat are secured against becoming missiles as well?
    - loco5niner 11y ago
      Hardly a worthy comparison. How about this comparison instead? If I were to transport my 25 lb kettle-bell, you can bet it will go in the trunk, legislation or not.
- rakk 11y ago
  Unless one of the passengers knocks out the driver while bouncing around in the car.. The argument mentioned by tghw is the only reason I agree with the law on this point. Considering law's meant to protect people from themselves (and only themselves) in general I'd pick freedom over mandatory safety any day.

alkonaut 11y ago

Seatbelt law without helmet law is a bit inconsistent as far as driver safety goes. Banning motorcycle riding outright is a much more invasive law than requiring a seat belt. Costs vs benefits.

eximius 11y ago

Well, there is an incredibly easy and obvious answer to this. Mothers. Mothers of dead children have been a huge force is traffic policy in the US.

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TrevorJ 11y ago

It's all about reasonable safety balanced with freedom. Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on freedom. There's no equivalent on a motorcycle that checks both those boxes other than the helmet laws we already have in many places. There's no inconsistency here, it's the same philosophy but the outcomes are different because the situations are different.

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
>Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on freedom. I don't agree with that at all. There are too many opportunities for police to stop motorists, which they use to pivot and further impinge upon peoples' freedom. It is a common tactic for police to stop motorists for any of a number of reasons such as this reason as a tactic to initiate a search of their vehicle, and record the identities of driver and passengers. I am glad that cars are equipped with seat belts, and of course it is wise to use them; but I disagree that the state has much or any legitimacy in stopping a motorist who was causing no negative effect on other motorists simply because their seat belt was not visible. At its worst (and commonly) the seat belt requirement is abused by greedy entities to drum up extra revenue to which they would otherwise not be entitled.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  I see what you are driving at and I agree, the laws do get abused. I think though, you may be slightly misunderstanding my point: Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way. It's not hard to comply with the law, it doesn't cost you time or money and it doesn't effect any of our other freedoms significantly. To your point though: NOT wearing your belt is something that can land you in situations that put you at risk of abuse to your freedoms.
  - fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
    >Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way. I agree. I wear my seat belt. I think it is foolish not to do so. I also think it is a driver's right to decide that; and that a driver's failure to wear the seat belt does not harm others in any appreciable way. It's also not a requirement to fail to wear your seat belt in order for an officer to stop you, s/he only needs to fail to notice your seat belt.

jgroszko 11y ago

The author here seems to be making the assumption that all these laws are considered purely from a 'public health/safety' standpoint, without ever being weighed against something else. If we wanted to evaluate laws purely under a 'health/safety' aspect we'd be scrutinizing the 2nd Amendment a lot more too, or even car ownership in general. Luckily legislatures weigh these things against other interests. People weigh gun ownership, motorcycles, and smoking against their public health, because despite the risks these activities are fun to do, make you feel good, etc. Additionally, these issues aren't evaluated in isolation, there's lots of competing interests. Auto manufacturers and consumer interest groups have influence over seatbelt laws. For motorcycles there are ABATE groups in many states that tend to lobby against motorcycle helmet laws. How much influence these groups have may not necessarily be related to how safety conscious the state is in other areas.

asuffield 11y ago

Every time I see an article like this, it advances the "principle" that your own death has no effect on anybody else in the world. Never have I seen this justified in any plausible sense.

mod 11y ago
Perhaps so, but to say that seat belt laws are to protect the society from those who don't wear seat belts is equally unjustified. Not to mention they can, and do, find all kinds of other ways to kill themselves, both accidentally and intentionally--and almost none of those are regulated in a similar fashion.
- njharman 11y ago
  There are innumerable and obvious societal impacts to your personal death/injury. From direct costs of EMS/Fire/medical care, to the minor economic disruption/traffic, to the esoteric person who kills themselves not wearing seat belt cut short their potential contribution to society.
  - mod 11y ago
    Right, my point was that I don't believe that's really the impetus for the law.
derefr 11y ago
If you assume otherwise, you get into all sorts of weird utilitarian edge-cases where your friends and family should be able to force you (or at least have a vote in) whether you're able to do things like eating candy or taking on a career in Fire & Rescue. It's not that that value is incoherent or anything—it's actually not a bad idea in isolation—it's just that we seem to value self-determination strictly more.

vacri 11y ago

> If the repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision maker, its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as a result of people not wearing seat belts. So... occupants of cars aren't mothers? Or fathers? Or run businesses? Or manage church bake sales? They aren't students with promising careers in medicine ahead of them? They aren't passionate lovers or mentors or good friends or musicians or even civil liberties lawyers? When someone dies or is badly hurt, it doesn't affect just them. The author has a pretty disturbed view on human interaction to make this assertion in the first place. The argument that 'harm due to speed also hurt other people' and 'harm due to lack of seat belts only hurts the non-wearer' is specious.

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njharman 11y ago

Can't imagine how author pulls out of his ass the notion that speed limits are less impinging on liberty than seat belts. I also find it hard to believe author is not being disingenuous stating "repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision maker". The last couple paragraphs are opinions stated as facts and very much want the reader to agree with them I can't help but feel the whole article/data was just a means for author to push his opinion.

derekp7 11y ago

The big thing that a lot of these articles overlook, is that seatbelts keep the driver in front of the steering wheel and potentially in better control of a car during an accident -- whereas without one, it is possible to be thrown to a different part of the car, and it keep going in a random direction (thereby affecting others).

eweise 11y ago

Comparing wearing a seat belt to driving a motorcycle is not really a fair comparison. One is used for safety and the other is a transportation device. If the comparison is between cars and motorcycles then clearly cars are safer. If the comparison is between safety devices then seat belts are better than helmets if you are in a car but worse if you are on a motorcycle.

tzs 11y ago

This submission raises an interesting question about HN submission policy with regard to titles. The actual title of the article is "Drive In A Red State? You’re More Likely To Die. Here’s Why" (and there is an earlier submission using that title [1]). However, it appears that the submitter may be the author of the article. Does the rule about not changing titles apply when it is the author of the article doing the submission? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196

dang 11y ago
The HN guidelines ask a submitter not to use the original title when it's linkbait, so the point seems moot in this case. In general, though, we're a bit more tolerant of title alterations when the author of the article is the one posting it, because the concerns around editorializing are less pressing.

leni536 11y ago

What about public transport? We don't have seat belts, we can even travel standing on a crowded bus. It doesn't seem to bother anyone apparently.

shalmanese 11y ago

What I find is that people tend to vastly underestimate the role that path dependence has on explaining history and then work to come up with just-so stories that explain the result, absent path dependency. Nobody ever sat down and rationally assessed the relative risk of motorcycles vs seat belts and crafted a law to take the two into account. Instead, what happened was at one point in time, a group of people lobbied and succeeded in changing one status quo and at another point in time, some other group of people lobbied and failed to change another status quo.