| Seatbelt laws are unconstitutional | May 10, 2009 | |
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 Texas starts a month-long “Click It Or Ticket” campaign targeted at drivers on rural roads. - Corpus Christi Caller Times, May 11, 2009 If you’ve been watching TV at all for the past week, you’ve seen one of these commercials. Despite being financed by the state of Texas, they have pretty impressive production values. (So far I’ve only seen the one with the insect-like swarms of citation tickets and the one with teenagers acting like UFO abductees.) What is clear to me is that the people behind this campaign have put a lot more thought into advertising it than the state of Texas did when it became a law. There are some legal issues that I take a Libertarian stance on, and this is one of them. The law exists to protect the rights of American citizens, not to take them away. Seatbelts are not designed to keep you from crashing into another car and killing somebody - they’re only designed to reduce the chance that you might die in a wreck. If you decide not to wear a seatbelt, you are infringing on nobody’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness but your own, and there’s nothing in the Constitution that says that the law is supposed to protect you from yourself. As many opponents of this stupid, rhyming law have pointed out, there are plenty of things that aren’t illegal - eating, drinking, texting, shaving - that drivers still do to endanger the lives of other drivers. Why the seatbelt law? Because it’s easier to enforce? I do differ from the opposition on one point - I don’t believe that the government or police force are doing this to increase their income. I think that this entire thing was imagined by genuinely well-intentioned people who are trying to perserve the sanctity of human life. Why do I think this? Because there are so many other laws on the books intended to prevent you from doing harm to yourself. You can’t even attempt to hang yourself without risking going to court for it. Besides, the problem with making money in fines is that you’re not going to keep a lot of it by running a billion television ads with slick production values. Share this: 2 Responses to “Seatbelt laws are unconstitutional”Leave a Reply |
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My problem with the seat belt law is that the benefits of seat belts are not free - there are also risks of harm inherent to the seatbelt itself. So, when a motorist chooses whether or not to wear the seatbelt, he’s choosing between two sets of risks. When the state mandates the use of a seatbelt, it is replacing your determination of these risks with its own.
One of the state arguments back in Roe v. Wade was that the states had an interest in protecting women from the risks inherent to the abortion procedure which gave it a right to prohibit abortion (i.e., compel acceptance of the competing risks of childbirth).
The state does NOT HAVE the right to compel me to expose myself to any unwanted risk, no matter how large are the benefits obtained with that risk.
I have challenged a recent seatbelt ticket in Ohio as a violation of my fundamental right to choose (my body, my choice, right?), the case is still pending. The fun part is using the Left’s “holy grail” as the weapon against the Left’s nanny state law - my prosecutor and judge are both Democrats.
The internet is full of examples of harm and death attributable to seat belts in use, including quite a few “Valor Awards” to safety personnel who risked THEIR lives crawling into burning vehicles to cut seatbelts and free victims - the seatbelt increases risk not only for the user but also for safety forces.
One more thing - politicians use money (fines, fees, taxes) to buy power and influence, which brings more money. The millions spent advertising “Click it or ticket” make its proponents POPULAR with TV, radio and print corporations, which causes the media to support the politicians who have ad money to spend.