Posted by: Bryan Pick on Wednesday, May 30, 2007 Seatbelt laws are as much a timeless libertarian bugaboo cliché as anything, joining bike helmet laws, trans fat bans and a thousand other instances of well-intentioned meddling. So why tread old water? Well, for one, I was slightly disturbed to hear recently, "I'm New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and I should be dead." For another, it's a bit ridiculous to see Bush chided for not buckling up to drive on his own property. Observe: So why didn’t a brave cop give Dubya a ticket for driving around his “ranch” without wearing the seatbelt? It’s simple! If you are super rich, you just buy up all the land and then it’s “private property” and you can do whatever you want!Oh, Wonkette! How your satire delights me. (It was satire... right?) And though it was topical, even then I wasn't worked up over it. Then I saw the electronic billboards. You've seen them: the ones that say "Click It or Ticket." I noticed several of them as I took a trip through Maryland and Delaware. I saw them when United Airlines stranded me for a day in Chicago. I saw a few on the way home from the airport. Then they were all over the freeways around LA; I counted half a dozen in one day on a 20-mile stretch. And I can't help but wonder how many of my fellow drivers resent the rankly overt threats as much as I do. Maybe you've heard the arguments for seatbelt laws, each a longer stretch than the last. If you don't accept the argument that it's good for you to be punished for not looking out for your own health, there's always the argument that people who don't wear seatbelts end up splattered on the asphalt and the state has to spend everyone else's money scraping them up—the costs of one state job justifying the costs of another. That line of reasoning, while we're at it, can be extended to every action that even occasionally carries a health risk, as long as the state cleans up any kind of mess. Digest the implications of that for a minute; does it sound appealing yet? And keep in mind that this vigilant enforcement comes with a cost. The attention of police officers can only be divided so many ways, and time spent searching for and punishing violation of seatbelt laws is time not spent protecting roads from people who are actually endangering other drivers. Taxpayers are spending money on enforcement against voluntary activity that is very rarely dangerous to third parties. (I admit that I see a better argument for more heavily punishing reckless drivers who don't buckle up their children.) And as long as we're on questions of total cost, lend your ear to arguments that mandated safety device usage encourages risk-taking behavior that offsets savings and may actually increase casualties for back-seat passengers, cyclists and pedestrians. If you're still not enamored of the idea that you'll be fined for failing to take that extra precaution while driving in the middle of nowhere at an ungodly hour, there's always the contention that driving without a seatbelt poses a risk to others: if you're thrown from a car in a collision, your flying body might hurt somebody. Seriously. That justifies a $200 fine, see. Take a look at those official campaign posters. What could be more comforting than, "Buckle up day & night or the cops will find you"? That's exactly the kind of protection from myself I need: the kind that hunts me everywhere and at all hours. The kind that's applied with stern-faced, condescending disregard. The kind that announces its eagerness to lower my quality of life for my own good. (While we're at it, may I suggest a variation on that theme? How about baby formula? Or a little orange bottle of prescription medicine?) The Click It or Ticket campaign—and as you can see, it is a campaign—doesn't waste much time justifying itself. They tried informing us, they say, and though virtually all are now aware of the benefit of wearing a seatbelt and 82 percent regularly decide to "click it," that's not enough. So we get this fully appropriate response: We're finished with warnings. People still aren't using their safety belts. So we're stepping up law enforcement and writing tickets. No excuses, no exceptions." This is apparently a problem requiring the police to "crack down" on violators with "zero tolerance." After all, this is for your own good: We would much rather write a thousand tickets than have to knock on one family’s door with the news that their loved one didn’t survive a crash because they weren’t wearing their safety belt.I, too, would much rather receive hundreds of thousands of dollars than inform someone of a significant other's death, but I'd be less easy about the collection method. I'm curious: is the irony of this lost on anyone? "[The seatbelt] not only protects you. It protects your wallet." That is, the government is taxing you to purchase ad space for the consoling message that wearing the seatbelt that the government requires your car manufacturer to equip protects you from the government taking away your money. Who but the government could get away with that? |
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