11 replies to this topic

[darktr00per]

Seatbelt law 50 was passed july 03 in illinois. This law requires anybody driving to wear a seat belt. Also, gives the right for an officer to perform a traffic stop or search based on no seat belt alone. This law will allow the state to allocate federal funds 10million for enforcing it. their reasoning for this law is that they will save lives and money. This is a sad example of how america is turning to a fear and control nation. Many of you will think this is a small detail or you dont have to worry because you wear your seat belt anyway. Well wake up, this is only the beginning. I like to have small freedoms like this. I like to have a choice. When has it become the governments job to tell me what to do if the only person i am hurting is me? If i die from not wearing a seat belt then so be it. IF i died tomarrow while not wearing my seat belt i would die free-i used my common sense and freedom of choice. Another factor is money. Each ticket is 25$ thats quite the racket. Its sad that prisons are privately owned now, the whole justice system is a business now. When will people stand up and say NO. why are americans sitting back in apathy while our freedoms are being taken away in the middle of the nite? These law makers pass laws that most people have never heard of.(unless they watch cspan lol) also, I would like some feedback on how i could protest this law to its fullest effect. petition?

[kevin]

We've had a seatbelt law.. and a helmet law for motorcycling here in Alberta Canada for a long time now.. fatalities have been reduced drastically for accidents involving both types of vehicles.

Nobody wins when people are too stupid to look after themselves. If you got into an accident and became a quadrapeligic you would certainly be society's problem and financial burden.

I used to think like you about seat belts.. and in fact I almost always only remember to put mine on halfway to my destination.. but after seeing what some of the police have to scrape out of vehicles and seeing the statistics drop.. well.. I paid my seatbelt ticket knowing that this law at least serves a purpose.. and it's up to a hundred dollars now..

but don't get me started on photo radar..

[darktr00per]

Burden on society? I could name a number of other problems that drain the funds of this country. I highly doubt traffic vicitms would be top 10. Yeah it saves lives but at a price, your freedoms. I think that its more about the money than the lives. The lives saved is to justify the tickets. I have another problem-it states that a cop can pull u over on that reason alone-how the hell can he see if im wearing it or not? Its just another reason for cops to pull people over for the hell of it.

[David]

You both have good points. Not wearing a seat belt is just plain stoooopid. Being told you have to wear them is an infringement of liberty. Perhaps a compromise could be worked out whereby those not wearing them forgo publicly funded medical resources, thereby taking full responsibility for their actions. I would prefer that parents be made to make their children wear them though. Then again, lets just all ride bycycles. Healthier and safer!

[jpars82]

My aunt got in a car accident awhile back and survived because she didn't have her seatbelt on. If she would of been wearing it she would have been crushed. I'm sure most of the time that's not the case with most accidents, but I think it should be our choice to make.

[David]

Please don't fool yourself. Wearing a seatbelt drops your probablility of dying or having your head split open on the windscreen in an accident by a huge amount. Keep in mind it will be your friends and relatives who will have to dress you, bathe you and wipe your ass if you suffer serious brain damage.

We all know someone who drinks and smokes and eats pure handfulls of fat, and is healthy and well at 95. That makes them memorable, salient. The ones you don't remember are the ones who died of a heart attack.

I do agree though that it should be our choice. Factored into that choice should be the costs involved. I myself wear a seatbelt because I want to be alive and kicking when immortality comes around. To not do so would be bloody moronic. [huh]

Dave

[hecksheri]

I am doing a mental scan of all of the car accidents I have been to. I believe that every single fatality was not wearing a seatbelt, with the exception of one. She was pregnant and had put the shoulder strap behind her. She was in a head on collision and her head hit the dash so hard that she died instantly. Her husband was sitting next to her and was wearing the whole seatbelt assembly. He was uninjured. I guess the logic there was that by putting the seatbelt behind her, she would be less likely to hurt the baby in a crash. The baby died when she died. We couldn't remover her or her husband until we had pried the dash out of their laps, but her only injury was the one she got when her head struck the dash on impact.

The most disgusting accidents were the ones where someone was ejected from the car. Its horrifying what can happen to the human body when it flies through safety glass and onto the ground 20 meters or so away. Even worse if they are in a jeep. Movie special effects don't even come close to the reality of it.

It was said somewhere in the forum that "so and so would have been crushed if she had been wearing her seatbelt" I worked an accident in which a bmw pulled out in front of a blazer on the highway. They got t-boned on the drivers side. Both people in the bmw were wearing seatbelts. The driver was hurt pretty bad and when we came onto the scene, we thought for sure he had been crushed. We were surprised that he lived, but he did and eventually made a full recovery. I wonder how that would have been different if he had not been wearing a seatbelt. It's hard to say really, but he may have ended up with some spinal injuries because he would not have had his back held steady by the seat. My friend who is a quad was not wearing his seat-belt.

There are many laws out there that are meant to protect us from our own stupidity. There are laws in many municipalities requiring that all new homes have scald proof faucets for showers and tubs. Sitting Bull Falls in New Mexico is illegal to climb now. You are required to have railing on your stairs. You are required to put ground fault interrupters on outlets near sinks and tubs (even in your own home if your building permit is after the date of the ordinance). The net result of all of these laws is gains in the average life expectancy, but I agree that the cost is one of freedom. I climbed Sitting Bull Falls many times as a child and if I ever have children, they will not have the same experience. Sure they will be a little safer, but they will also have less to show for it. On the other hand, I am glad that seatbelts are required, but then I always did hate having to scrape brains off the pavement and insurance companies hate having to pay for long hospital stays and lifelong disability. The difference here is that you really have nothing to gain by not wearing your seatbelt. If they are calling not using a seatbelt probable cause for pulling over and searching your car, well that is another matter entirely.

-sherry

[hecksheri]

I suppose I should have said, for those who do not know who I am, that all of these experiences with car accidents occured because I was a firefighter...not knowing that, my entire post would seem, well, odd.

--sherry

[darktr00per]

"The most disgusting accidents were the ones where someone was ejected from the car. Its horrifying what can happen to the human body when it flies through safety glass......." So what? Those people made a choice NOT to wear it, I could care less what the body looks like? How the hell does that justify all the money they aquire(the state)? I am hurting no one on the road but me, and if im going 60+ on the hiway even with a seat belt the chances that ill be alive r slim. I am not debating speed limits-im taling about seat belt! things I wear for MY saftey, NOT other drivers! Its obsurd that the government can tell me not to do something when its MY damn life- and on top of it all-they are getting money!! Its a nonsense law that serves only the politicians pockets.

[Lazarus Long]

How the hell does that justify all the money they aquire(the state)? I am hurting no one on the road but me, and if im going 60+ on the hiway even with a seat belt the chances that ill be alive r slim. I am not debating speed limits-im taling about seat belt! things I wear for MY saftey, NOT other drivers! Its obsurd that the government can tell me not to do something when its MY damn life- and on top of it all-they are getting money!! Its a nonsense law that serves only the politicians pockets.

Just to play devils advocate here Dark let me explain a little about the burden you would be on society if you did survive your own foolishness and remind you that by the standards you imply, society would not only be in its rights to but would logically be obligated to shoot you on site rather than provide aid and assistance if you survived the crash because if you couldn't afford to be bankrupted by your indiscretion then "society," which means the rest of us will be picking up the tab for your emergency and long term care.

The odds are if you survive the crash (truly the worst case scenario) you would be a para or quadriplegic, requiring months to years of rehabilitative care and you are cluttering up the road with the garbage you left behind when it is you personally that should have to go back and sweep it all up.

I love when people want to talk about how "I am not hurting anyone else and it is all about me" when they use a "common utility" like a road bed. Did you build and maintain the road by yourself?

I know I will be hearing back on this one but "legally" driving is a privilege, not a right. It is by definition a behavior regulated for the "common good". All the money we as a society invest in roads and infrastructure is not merely so you can race around, toolin and foolin yourself and if we have to pay for it collectively then some rights to the collective accrue toward the regulation for the use of the common resource.

In this case the burden of individual stupidity was piling up on taxpayers in the form of the famed loss of productivity, emergency room care, long term rehab, not to mention the fact that besides physical impairment in all likelihood your mental capacity would be even more impaired after such an experience.

Now I realize that once you were suffering it would be perfectly consistent with your philosophy to put a bullet in your head and put you out of your self inflicted misery but who should pay for the bullet, you?

You would still be destitute and probably in a coma from the accident.

[hecksheri]

if im going 60+ on the hiway even with a seat belt the chances that ill be alive r slim.

Actually, if you are wearing your seatbelt, chances that you will survive and be relatively unhurt are quite good. Like I said, none of the fatalities I saw while working accidents were wearing properly buckled seatbelts, and some of these were pretty bad crashes at 60+. The only seriously permanently injured properly seatbelted person in my professional experience was a guy that was driving drunk, in excess of 100 miles an hour in a 25mph zone when he hit a large old tree that did not budge. The rapid deceleration was pretty violent, but the guy survived, paralyzed from the waist down though. His unseatbelted brother did not survive. It was quite a mess, once he was found. I was off duty for that one and I am glad. It was right before fathers day and their father came to the scene. Apparently someone who recognized the car called him. The guys that worked that one had some pretty horrific memories to deal with on that one. (How is it that you are only hurting yourself again?)

My mentor recently was the first on the scene of an accident recently near Montgomery. Ford explorer, tire blew out on the interstate at 80mph. The car flipped about ten times in about 10 seconds. The back seat passengers were not wearing seatbelts and were ejected from the car. Their feet were torn off in the process. The guys in the front seat were buckled in, stayed in the car through the whole accident strapped to the conforming support of the seat which was in turn bolted to the vehicle. They were relatively unhurt and appeared to have no spinal injuries.

The point of all this is to refute your above statement...With todays cars and all of the safety features that they have, the advances in rescue technology, and the advances in medical technology, in actuality the chances that you will die in a car accident are pretty slim...if you wear your seatbelt. Avoiding doing 100+ in residential cross streets will probably help with the odds too.

-sherry

[darktr00per]

I think I already mentioned that our current political situation is a bit socialistic, We have many programs to provide aid to the poor,sick,disabled and other. Example-public aid/welfare/medicare. I may be aided by the peoples/governments money if I was paralized, But thats part of our responsibility already. I dont see how relevant that is to seatbelts? You would have to start saying that we sould rid our country of all programs like that?(welfare/public aid) If every single law and regulation was guided by saving money, we would have no freedoms left. Every damn thing you do you can get hurt. Should we all live in fear? should we not leave our homes anymore because if might cost the government money? what the hell, I am sick of all these people living in fear. Fear of terrorism, fear of your house getting broken into, fear of the lone black male walking down the street. Its sick, I dont fear anything, and I feel great. Fear is a powerful marketing stradegy as well. All those supplies people started buying after 911, and as far back as the Y2k prediction. But not to get off the subject I think that just because it costs us money we should automatically be in favour of a law or regulation. That is our downfall, obsession with money. The false GOD in america.