Got pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. Why is this even a law?

Bad Wigins wrote:

NHwhitetrash wrote:

helmets are for sissies

Helmets inside cars would vastly improve their safety. Race car drivers are nearly indestructible, even when their cars disintegrate around them at 200mph and flip over 20 times.

I've never heard of a non-race-car crashing that fast with anyone surviving, let alone walking away.

I also believe that the drivers are strapped in pretty well and the car's safety designs are far superior to what we are driving. (Some of the tech has been put into cars).

The downside to a helmet in a car is the potential for obstructing vision.

I agree with seat belts wrote:

EMT wrote:

It's a good law as who wants to pick up your mangled corpse that may have been ejected from the vehicle? In addition, seat belts cut down on injuries, thus less hospital time and keeps our car insurance premiums down to cover medical costs.

I always wear a seat belt, but requiring exploding air bags in cars is insane.

Many more people are injured by air bags than they help.

I would like to see support for this statement. Sorry, but I am calling BS on this one.

Go Ahead, make my day wrote:

...???? wrote:

Cop wouldn't have even known if my windows weren't down. Why does the government have a say in my safety when it harms no one else but myself if I wreck? Motorcyclists don't wear seatbelts....

By the way, I do normally wear a seatbelt but I was 5 minutes away from where I was going and never went above 35mph.

Dude, i have no problem whatsoever if you don't wear a seat belt.

Just promise me one thing: when you're a paraplegic on life support

after a car accident without seatbelts, can you please pay your own hospital bills rather

then milking the insurance system causing rates to go up,

or expecting Trump to help you out with his awesome

"nobody knew it could be so complicated" health care plan?

Exactly, the government doesn't want people's "victim-less" actions to cost the other taxpayers more money. Wear your seatbelt.

I am not sure that most of what you list I would put in the "nanny state" column (banning straws would be). Speed limits make sense from a safety standpoint and on government roads it is within the purview of them to limit speed. Now what that speed limit is set at should be a decision based on engineering and safety and not revenue.

Crosswalk signals seem like a reasonable safety precaution just as traffic lights are (although I prefer traffic circles to 4 way stops).

I could get behind doctors not having a state issued license. A private entity can do the job just fine.

The government is not making NFL players stand for the anthem even with Trump's tweets. (There is a US Code about the presentation of the flag, but I am not aware of any penalties associated with the code). The NFL (a private entity) or teams is requiring that.

No, taxing for certain things is not nanny state.

You are just being silly.

It's all about revenue.

You will be fined for not wearing a seat belt yet they send our kids to school on buses without seat belts.

Youre basically all sheep and poindexters wrote:

Sometimes not wearing a seatbelt will save your life.

Sometimes wearing one will.

Some putz a few posts up shared data that said "more than half of automobile related deaths weren't wearing a seat belt" and the percentage was 53...

How you drive probably has a better influence on your saftey than seat belts ever will.

Or the fact that you (and everyone else) drives way too much, and so increases their risk of getting into an accident. For god's sake walk someone for once.

Seat belt laws are for children pretending to solve a problem.

Police should give tickets to people who drive too much.

There are rare cases where not wearing a seat belt has saved a life. And I have read stories about parachutists who survived a jump with a failed chute and lived, but would you want to take that risk?

53 is more than 50.

My driving does influence my safety, but I also know that sometimes another driver could do something that will cause me harm. Lost a friend years ago when a guy T boned him at an intersection. Not really sure what he could have done.

Yes, let's give everyone a number of miles they can drive and police it. Now THAT I would put in the "nanny state" category.

Driving is a highly regulated privilege done in public, on public roads maintained by local, state and the federal government. Nothing wrong with seatbelt laws. They make a lot of sense.

I don't even notice I'm wearing a seatbelt. Why would anyone not wear one? Stupid not to wear one.

That is a LAME argument wrote:

ex-runner wrote:

Emergency care is untimely and puts strain on hospitals. Forget Medicare.

You are a waste of an ambulance. There isn't unlimited numbers of those. If a crash is fatal (more likely without a belt) there needs to be an investigation which is more likely to mean road closures.

Traffic incidents are a huge problem.

You might think it's 'lame' but that's a childish outlook

And again;

By that logic, should the government regulate your body weight? How many hours you sleep each night? . . . ? Many, MANY things lead to medical bills which "may then be paid by Medicare or Medicaid which is funded by US."

Care to try again?

Seat belts are only required on government roads. If you have a 1000 acre ranch and you are driving on that ranch, you are not subject to seat belt laws that I have seen.

So if government owned everything and provided all health care, then we can discuss obesity as a crime.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Free_the_thigh wrote:

Ya helmets are only a small part of what enables race car drivers to walk away from those crashes

They are only a part, but not a small part, definitely the most important part. The indestructible inner cage part of the car may save the driver's body, but their brains would still be scrambled eggs without the helmets and head/neck restraints. Easier to walk with a broken leg than brain damage.

Football needs to adopt head/neck restraints to cut down on concussions from sudden rotation.

Rotation? What plane of movement are you talking about? Rotation as in clockwise or front to back?

Idiot wrote:

So...

Your car is going 40mph and suddenly stops during a crash. You're inside, so you're going 40mph too. What do you think happens to you when the car suddenly stops because of the huge forces in the crash? YOU'RE STILL GOING 40MPH FOOL!!!

I have often read/heard that the steering column is the most dangerous part of any car. Before air bags became common several companies were working on cars without a steering wheel. The cars had a "joystick" on a center console. After a few hours of practice people were able to drive a car as easily with the joystick as they could with the traditional steering wheel.

What bothers y'all so much about wearing seatbelts?

Is it simply because the government makes you do it?

I am not following the rent seeking argument with the traffic law argument aside from the mandate to have liability insurance to drive on government roads.

So you would rather a person die than the injuries that come from surviving the accident? In most of those cases the person will return to a productive life and contribute. In the 53% of non-seat belt deaths those people may be leaving behind a family that will be less well of.

Also, I take issue with your assertion of the lower extremity damage being "severe".

Cash money wrote:

It's all about revenue.

You will be fined for not wearing a seat belt yet they send our kids to school on buses without seat belts.

I would not say it is ALL about the revenue, but the lack of seat belts on buses is odd.

I began driving before seat belts were required, but my first car has a passive restraint seat belt system. The belt attached to the door and slid along so that when you opened the door it was out of the way and when you closed the door it slid into place. I still had to buckle the lap belt.

The car would not start if the shoulder strap was disconnected from the door.

Now I could slide under the belt but that was a pain.

In short, I am glad I had that because I got used to driving with one and have probably only driven a handful of miles in my 40 years of driving without a seat belt on.

It's one of a maze of laws passed to give cops the ability to arrest or harass people of color when no other pretext is available.

Student of Economics wrote:

Nothing to do with rent seeking? Are you going to ride that quote out into the sunset? Instead of calling it rent seeking, let's say the insurance companies, wined and dined and bullied and harassed and walked to the legal limit of bribery and blackmailing of politicians to get current traffic safety laws.

Yes, I will ride on it.

Yes, insurance companies are, in essence, rent seeking enterprises. (However, not all rent-seeking is bad. In this case they extract a fee for protecting you against risk.).

Insurance companies don't care if you wear your seat belt or not. If there are no laws against this, then the insurance companies can calculate how many people will not wear seat belts, and how much this will impact their costs. As they do now.

They will then simply pass this cost on to you.

Insurance companies are rent seeking, but this law is not because of insurance companies.

Mandatory insurance maybe. Seat belts. No.

I said: "Lets that that increases the costs for a typical large insurance company by 1 billion dollars. ". I did not say it will. I have not idea. A billion dollars is not that much money for a large insurance company, but, still, I have not idea.

If someone is hospitialized because they did not wear a seat belt then their medical insurance, disability insurance might come into affect. If they are hospitalized or ride in an ambulance at all, the costs are very high.

If they die at the scene, there will still be emergency vehicles and likely hospitals involved. Plus the possibility of a life insurance policy.

1 billion, 500 million, or 50 million. Who knows.

My point: whatever that extra cost is will be paid by those with policies (over the long run).

Benefit of not wearing seatbelt? 0

At speeds as low as 15 mph you could easily loses consciousness when you face smacks the wind shield and your car could go on to cause multiple fatal accidents.

Seat belts also protect the automaker from liability. They have built a lethal machine and have a low cost option to lower mortality rates. Do you remove the safety options on power tools and kitchen appliances as well or do these reduce your freedom less.