Letters: Seat-belt laws only the start

I had a “Nanny State” moment recently. I’d finished some heavy weed-eating on some property and prepared to drive home. My clothes were soaking wet from sweat. I was covered with dirt and plant debris. I had a seat protector.

But I didn’t have anything to protect my shoulder strap and seat belt fabric from the sweat and grime.

So I thought about the fact that I couldn’t legally make an informed decision to drive nine miles home without wearing my seat belt. I couldn’t legally decide, as a supposedly free citizen of what’s supposed to be a free country, to accept increasing a very tiny risk to a somewhat higher but still very tiny risk for the benefit of not getting sweat and grime in my seat belt fabric.

Later I did some Googling to arrive upon some rough estimates of the risks involved. I got data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and relative risk estimates of injury as well as death when wearing and not wearing seat belts. I estimated that I had a 99.999 percent chance of remaining uninjured with a seat belt on versus a 99.998 percent chance of remaining uninjured without one on. And I estimated that the corresponding chances of remaining alive were 99.999999 percent and 99.999974 percent respectively.

By any reasonable standard, I wouldn’t have been doing anything “dangerous” either way. One choice was slightly less safe than the other. But the odds that I would remain unscathed were overwhelming whether I wore a seat belt or not.

A common argument for paternalist laws such as those requiring seat belt usage is that, if we harm ourselves, we cost the society. But accepting the premise that regulating behavior to control cost puts us on a dangerous road. All of us make countless decisions every day that affect the risk picture. There is a difference, for instance, between opting to use a stationary exercise bike for exercise and opting to ride a real bicycle outside. Accepting the premise that government can protect us from ourselves in order to reduce cost is accepting the premise that government can take just about any meaningful decision away from us as well as many trivial ones that we take for granted as ours.

Underlying all of this is the fact that we’ve also accepted the premise that government should spend money to ensure the well-being of individuals. And if government is responsible for ensuring our well-being, government can assert the “cost-to-society” argument.

So we’ve exchanged liberty for security, in small ways, such as seat belt laws, as well as in large ways. And we exchange more as time goes by, bleating as we go.

John Veazey

environmental and public health consultant

Prairieville

Comments

1) Comment by Chucky - 10/07/2012

Sorry for the violation and using the bad word, but this man is such an idiot i lost my self.

2) Comment by potkcalb - 10/07/2012

Statistics or no statistics, if Mr. Veazey wants to smash into his windshield or be thrown out of his vehicle he can do so by not observing seat belt laws. Law or no law I'll take my chances by wearing a seat belt.

3) Comment by Whatchange - 10/07/2012

Mr. Veazey, You're fighting a losing battle here, to many Nanny State lovers here. No really, Mr. Veazey, they make wipes to clean just about any part of your cars interior now days, simply stating I was sweaty doesn't get it. I wear my seat belt as I have long before the law said I had to, but it was my choice, does it keep me safer, I don't know. Been in a few wrecks, some wearing it, some not wearing it, I'm still here. My son was killed in a car wreck, he was wearing his seat belt as was the driver, but then again it was a bad wreck, my brother was killed in a wreck, he wasn't wearing his seat belt, he would have survived if he was. The logic that Louisiana pays higher insurance premiums due to the a higher number of car accidents or accidents involving injury is wrong, we pay higher premiums because cases with claims exceeding $50,000 receives a jury trial. This means more cases are settled out of court, which leads to higher accident settlements and higher insurance costs. That is why we pay higher insurance. We are a sue happy state, we pay higher insurance rates because of one simple fact. A 10mph bump cost over $20,000.00 (just throwing out a number), which by the way, drives up medical cost because the person in the front vehicle of the 10mph bump will go to the hospital in an ambulance, get an MRI, Cat Scan, wear a neck brace, go to physical therapy, and miss the average of 3 months of work which is what the lawyers estimate is the allotted amount of time for the most pay out. This is the reason we pay the most for insurance, well the laws that our elected officials have put on us regarding insurance doesn't help either.

4) Comment by DMJ - 10/07/2012

The odds are only the same when you take into account the odds of getting into a crash in the first place which, although still too high, are relatively low. However, you didn't bother to look up the odds of seatbelt vs. no seatbelt for those who DO crash. Your odds of remaining safe with a seatbelt vs. not having a seatbelt are not so indistinguishable. You're a public health consultant, right? Am I wrong? The CDC says seatbelts reduce the risk of serious injury or death in a car crash by 50%. Considering how much automobile accidents cost the taxpayers in the form of medical care every year....not to mention increased health and car insurance premiums (BTW, Louisiana has the highest in the nation), maybe you should just put your seatbelt on and stop whining about not having the freedoms you still have. Anyone notice the irony of this letter? He's more worried about the government telling him to wear a seatbelt than he is about the risk of not wearing a seatbelt. How silly.

5) Comment by RationalOne - 10/07/2012

Yeah, who believes all that "free country" stuff anyway? Everybody knows that we're not free and that the government controls everything. Now let me finish typing so I can enjoy the rest of my root beer, do my job at the place where I applied for employment, pick up my kids from the day care that I chose, drive the vehicle that I bought on my own to the house I bought on my own, and finish recovering from the spur-of-the-moment vacation I took at the beach last week with my family. Maybe I'll pop in a DVD that I chose from one of my favorite stores as I settle into my queen-size bed, which I'm considering giving up for a king-size bed.

6) Comment by warreni - 10/07/2012

No, he's not right. Public safety laws exist for a reason, and if you think they don't then why don't you drive around without a seat belt on all the time and tell your family to do the same thing. I don't know where he got his ridiculous statistics, but no sane person is going to suggest that driving without a seat belt is just as safe as not doing so.

7) Comment by [e-mail] - 10/07/2012

Mr. Veazey is exactly right; all the feel good laws are mostly about is tort law. They have nothing to do with common sense and are undermining the very foundations of personal responsibility, which is the bedrock upon which our society is based. When people abrogate responsibility for themselves and their own actions in favor of a "nanny state" nothing will survive for long; this is shown by the fact that more and more people draw disability benefits as a ploy to collect their social security earlier and get full benefits which would ordinarily be reduced at an early retirement.

8) Comment by warreni - 10/07/2012

Yes, first they came for the people who choose not to wear seat belts, then they came for the people who choose not to get liability coverage, then they came for the people drinking alcohol and driving, then they came for the people texting and driving, and when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me. Truly Pastor Niemoeller would empathize with your predicament.

9) Comment by Chucky - 10/07/2012

****Comment Removed for Violation of Terms of Use****

10) Comment by Bighug - 10/07/2012

I'm surprised you had the time to do the weeding after all that research and calculating. What were the costs and risks involved in hiring it out versus doing it yourself? I'll bet a study would show that time and cost saved by just stopping and checking traffic for safety, then crossing against a red light saves time. Too bad those darned "Nanny State" laws put us in jeopardy of being fined for doing it.