seatbelt ticket question

[systemnt]

The reason you don't have to wear a helmet is because it's cheaper to bury you than to fix a broken body. On a motorcycle you are more likely to live with a helmet on but it usually come with bad injuries. In a car it is more likely you will live with serious injuries when not wearing a seatbelt than die. While wearing a seatbelt it’s more likely you will walk away or have minor injuries.

This is not the government concerned with your safety as an individual, it’s just easier to sell the public on the safety thing. It’s the government concerned with the masses being able to afford insurance, after all it’s cheaper to bury you than pay a lifetime of medical care caused by an accident.

Why not ban motorcycles then?

[Cotton]

Why not ban motorcycles then?

Why not just go back to horse and buggy days?

systemnt, how would life be without insurance? Can you afford to pay a 100k medical bill how about a million dollar one? Letting the insurance companies die because of stupid folks driving premiums so high just invites big government to take over more of your life.

[systemnt]

Why not just go back to horse and buggy days?

systemnt, how would life be without insurance? Can you afford to pay a 100k medical bill how about a million dollar one? Letting the insurance companies die because of stupid folks driving premiums so high just invites big government to take over more of your life.

..you mean like allowing Government to make choices about your personal well being for you?

where does it stop?
It's not the Government's job to protect you from yourself.

And Insurance rates did NOT go down when states began imposing Seat belt laws- in fact they still increased nomially - so your use of them in this context is irrelevant.

Here's an excellent write up on the seat belt laws and why they were really imposed.. and the fraud associated with them (along with the falsehood insurance rates would go down because of them..)..
(link to site on bottom)
On the promise of reducing highway fatalities and auto insurance rates, seat-belt laws began to pass in state legislatures throughout the United States beginning in 1985.

While such laws had been proposed before 1985, they were rejected by most state legislators since they knew the vast majority of the people opposed them. "The Gallup Opinion Index," report no. 146, October 1977, stated: "In the latest survey, a huge majority, 78 percent, opposes a law that would fine a person $25 for failure to use a seat belt. This represents an increase of resistance since 1973 to such a law. At that time 71 percent opposed a seat belt use law." "The Gallup Report" (formerly "The Gallup Opinion Index"), no. 205, October 1982, report showed that a still-high 75 percent queried in June of that year opposed such a law.

Given the massive, obvious opposition to seat-belt laws, why did state legislators suddenly change their minds and begin to pass them in 1985? Simple-money and federal blackmail. According to the Associated Press, Brian O’Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said, "People have been talking about seatbelt laws and there have been attempts to pass them for well over 10 years. It’s been a snowball effect, once the money poured in."1

That sudden flow of money began in 1984, when then-Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole promised to rescind the rule that required automakers to install passive restraints by 1990 if states representing two-thirds of the U.S. population passed seat-belt laws by April 1, 1989.2 Passive restraints included air bags, which automakers bitterly opposed because, they claimed, the high expense to develop and install them would raise the price of autos way beyond what the average auto buyer would pay. Dole’s promise amounted to an invitation to the automakers to use their financial resources to lobby states for seat-belt laws, something the Department of Transportation (DOT) was forbidden to do by law, in exchange for the government’s not forcing them to install air bags. In effect, the DOT surreptitiously used the financial resources of the private sector to further the political agenda of the federal government through blackmail.

In response to Dole’s promise, the automakers created the lobby Traffic Safety Now (TSN) and began spending millions of dollars to pass seat-belt laws. That caught the attention of state legislators, and suddenly the "will of the people," void of financial backing, gave way to the "will of the seat-belt law lobbyists," who had millions of dollars to spend.

Besides the millions of dollars spent by TSN, the federal government added millions more by, for example, giving grants to states for achieving a certain percentage of seat-belt use and to pay the police to enforce the seat-belt law.3 And with increased seat-belt law enforcement, ticket income increased, another source of easy revenue for the state.

While TSN championed passage of seat-belt laws under the banner of reducing highway fatalities and auto insurance rates, no mention was made that the real purpose was to avoid installation of air bags.

As of 1992, TSN had spent $93 million to buy passage of seat-belt laws in almost all states.4 Popular opposition to the laws sometimes made passage difficult. In most states the only way the law could be passed was to make enforcement secondary; that is, the police could not stop a motorist for not using a seat belt unless the officer witnessed another traffic violation. Some laws applied only to front-seat occupants. Exemptions were also added to help reduce opposition. In three states, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Wyoming, the laws were passed without any penalty.

Once seat-belt laws were passed in any form, supporters returned each legislative session to lobby for amendments, such as including all occupants, increasing fines, eliminating exemptions, and changing to primary enforcement, so that the police could stop a motorist merely under suspicion of not using a seat belt.

Such action by seat-belt law supporters shows the insidious nature of such laws, and supporters continue to lobby for stricter enforcement and heavier penalties. Even the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 added its own flavor of tyranny by ruling it was legal for a Texas police officer to arrest, handcuff, and jail a woman, and impound her car, for not buckling up herself and her children.5 Our nation, founded on freedom, certainly has come a long way from Patrick Henry’s cry, "Give me liberty or give me death," to "Click it or ticket."

After the automakers did the DOT’s bidding, the government went back on its word and mandated installation of air bags anyway. Also, the very law the automakers worked for, supposedly to save people’s lives, turned on them. While using seat belts saves some lives, doing so can injure and kill others. That got the attention of lawyers. Moreover, some seat-belt systems were defective.6 As a result, since 1985 the automakers have faced hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in hundreds of lawsuits.

Loss of Freedom
While the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in support of seat-belt laws has been a horrendous financial burden to society, the greatest cost is really not money. It’s the loss of freedom. Seat-belt laws infringe a person’s rights as guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth, and the Ninth Amendments, and the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws are an unwarranted intrusion by government into the personal lives of citizens; they deny through prior restraint the right to determine one’s own individual personal health-care standard.

While seat-belt use might save some people in certain kinds of traffic accidents, there is ample evidence that in other kinds, people have been more seriously injured and even killed only because they used seat belts. Some people have been saved from death in certain kinds of accidents only because a seat belt was not used. In those cases, the malicious nature of seat-belt laws is further revealed: such persons are subject to fines for not dying in the accident while using a so-called safety device arbitrarily chosen by politicians.

The state has no authority to subject people to death and injury in certain kinds of traffic accidents just because it hopes others will be saved in other kinds of accidents merely by chance. The state has no authority to take chances with a person’s body, the ultimate private property.

As for the promise that seat-belt laws would reduce auto insurance rates, there is no record of any insurance company ever reducing its rates because a seat-belt law was passed. A study released in August 1988 by the Highway Loss Data Institute compared auto-accident injury claims before and after the enactment of seat-belt laws in eight states and could find no clear-cut evidence that belt-use laws reduced the number of injuries. "These results are disappointing," the report added.7

Seat-belt laws have also failed to reduce highway fatalities in the numbers promised by supporters to get such laws passed.8 According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 51,093 highway fatalities in 1979.9 Five years later, 1984, the year before seat-belt laws began to pass, there were 44,257 fatalities. That is a net decrease of 6,836 deaths in five years, which represents a 13.4 percent decline with no seat-belt laws and only voluntary seat-belt use. In 1999, there were 41,611 fatalities. That is a net decrease of 2,646 deaths, a 6 percent decrease over 15 years of rigid seat-belt law enforcement, with some states claiming 80 percent seat-belt use. If the passage of seat-belt laws did anything, it slowed the downward trend in highway fatalities started years before the passage of such laws.

Right to Refuse
Besides such facts, a person has the right to refuse any health-care recommendation. No nonpsychiatric doctor would dare attempt to force a person to use a medical device or take a drug or have surgery or other medical treatment without full consent. Yet politicians force motorists to use a health-care device, a seat belt, against their will under threat of punishment that could include jail.

The hundreds of millions of dollars spent in support of seat-belt laws have been wasted. Not one penny of that money has ever prevented even a single traffic accident, the real cause of highway fatalities. We don’t need millions of dollars for stricter seat-belt law enforcement. Instead, we need more responsibly educated drivers, safer vehicles, and better roads to prevent traffic accidents.

Individual freedom is the very foundation of our country. The American people should not accept legislators who pass laws that take liberty away while claiming to do good. History has shown this to be the easy road to power for tyrants.

There is certainly nothing wrong with voluntary seat-belt use; however, there is a great deal wrong with all seat-belt laws. As Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/the-fraud-of-seat-belt-laws/#

[alec73065]

Why not just go back to horse and buggy days?

systemnt, how would life be without insurance? Can you afford to pay a 100k medical bill how about a million dollar one? Letting the insurance companies die because of stupid folks driving premiums so high just invites big government to take over more of your life.

Not a valid argument , I am not sure but I believe there were insurance companies around back in the days before the seat belt law !

[Traildust]

..you mean like allowing Government to make choices about your personal well being for you?

where does it stop?
It's not the Government's job to protect you from yourself.

And Insurance rates did NOT go down when states began imposing Seat belt laws- in fact they still increased nomially - so your use of them in this context is irrelevant.

Here's an excellent write up on the seat belt laws and why they were really imposed.. and the fraud associated with them (along with the falsehood insurance rates would go down because of them..)..
(link to site on bottom)
On the promise of reducing highway fatalities and auto insurance rates, seat-belt laws began to pass in state legislatures throughout the United States beginning in 1985.

While such laws had been proposed before 1985, they were rejected by most state legislators since they knew the vast majority of the people opposed them. "The Gallup Opinion Index," report no. 146, October 1977, stated: "In the latest survey, a huge majority, 78 percent, opposes a law that would fine a person $25 for failure to use a seat belt. This represents an increase of resistance since 1973 to such a law. At that time 71 percent opposed a seat belt use law." "The Gallup Report" (formerly "The Gallup Opinion Index"), no. 205, October 1982, report showed that a still-high 75 percent queried in June of that year opposed such a law.

Given the massive, obvious opposition to seat-belt laws, why did state legislators suddenly change their minds and begin to pass them in 1985? Simple-money and federal blackmail. According to the Associated Press, Brian O’Neill, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said, "People have been talking about seatbelt laws and there have been attempts to pass them for well over 10 years. It’s been a snowball effect, once the money poured in."1

That sudden flow of money began in 1984, when then-Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole promised to rescind the rule that required automakers to install passive restraints by 1990 if states representing two-thirds of the U.S. population passed seat-belt laws by April 1, 1989.2 Passive restraints included air bags, which automakers bitterly opposed because, they claimed, the high expense to develop and install them would raise the price of autos way beyond what the average auto buyer would pay. Dole’s promise amounted to an invitation to the automakers to use their financial resources to lobby states for seat-belt laws, something the Department of Transportation (DOT) was forbidden to do by law, in exchange for the government’s not forcing them to install air bags. In effect, the DOT surreptitiously used the financial resources of the private sector to further the political agenda of the federal government through blackmail.

In response to Dole’s promise, the automakers created the lobby Traffic Safety Now (TSN) and began spending millions of dollars to pass seat-belt laws. That caught the attention of state legislators, and suddenly the "will of the people," void of financial backing, gave way to the "will of the seat-belt law lobbyists," who had millions of dollars to spend.

Besides the millions of dollars spent by TSN, the federal government added millions more by, for example, giving grants to states for achieving a certain percentage of seat-belt use and to pay the police to enforce the seat-belt law.3 And with increased seat-belt law enforcement, ticket income increased, another source of easy revenue for the state.

While TSN championed passage of seat-belt laws under the banner of reducing highway fatalities and auto insurance rates, no mention was made that the real purpose was to avoid installation of air bags.

As of 1992, TSN had spent $93 million to buy passage of seat-belt laws in almost all states.4 Popular opposition to the laws sometimes made passage difficult. In most states the only way the law could be passed was to make enforcement secondary; that is, the police could not stop a motorist for not using a seat belt unless the officer witnessed another traffic violation. Some laws applied only to front-seat occupants. Exemptions were also added to help reduce opposition. In three states, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and Wyoming, the laws were passed without any penalty.

Once seat-belt laws were passed in any form, supporters returned each legislative session to lobby for amendments, such as including all occupants, increasing fines, eliminating exemptions, and changing to primary enforcement, so that the police could stop a motorist merely under suspicion of not using a seat belt.

Such action by seat-belt law supporters shows the insidious nature of such laws, and supporters continue to lobby for stricter enforcement and heavier penalties. Even the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 added its own flavor of tyranny by ruling it was legal for a Texas police officer to arrest, handcuff, and jail a woman, and impound her car, for not buckling up herself and her children.5 Our nation, founded on freedom, certainly has come a long way from Patrick Henry’s cry, "Give me liberty or give me death," to "Click it or ticket."

After the automakers did the DOT’s bidding, the government went back on its word and mandated installation of air bags anyway. Also, the very law the automakers worked for, supposedly to save people’s lives, turned on them. While using seat belts saves some lives, doing so can injure and kill others. That got the attention of lawyers. Moreover, some seat-belt systems were defective.6 As a result, since 1985 the automakers have faced hundreds of millions of dollars in damages in hundreds of lawsuits.

Loss of Freedom
While the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in support of seat-belt laws has been a horrendous financial burden to society, the greatest cost is really not money. It’s the loss of freedom. Seat-belt laws infringe a person’s rights as guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth, and the Ninth Amendments, and the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws are an unwarranted intrusion by government into the personal lives of citizens; they deny through prior restraint the right to determine one’s own individual personal health-care standard.

While seat-belt use might save some people in certain kinds of traffic accidents, there is ample evidence that in other kinds, people have been more seriously injured and even killed only because they used seat belts. Some people have been saved from death in certain kinds of accidents only because a seat belt was not used. In those cases, the malicious nature of seat-belt laws is further revealed: such persons are subject to fines for not dying in the accident while using a so-called safety device arbitrarily chosen by politicians.

The state has no authority to subject people to death and injury in certain kinds of traffic accidents just because it hopes others will be saved in other kinds of accidents merely by chance. The state has no authority to take chances with a person’s body, the ultimate private property.

As for the promise that seat-belt laws would reduce auto insurance rates, there is no record of any insurance company ever reducing its rates because a seat-belt law was passed. A study released in August 1988 by the Highway Loss Data Institute compared auto-accident injury claims before and after the enactment of seat-belt laws in eight states and could find no clear-cut evidence that belt-use laws reduced the number of injuries. "These results are disappointing," the report added.7

Seat-belt laws have also failed to reduce highway fatalities in the numbers promised by supporters to get such laws passed.8 According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there were 51,093 highway fatalities in 1979.9 Five years later, 1984, the year before seat-belt laws began to pass, there were 44,257 fatalities. That is a net decrease of 6,836 deaths in five years, which represents a 13.4 percent decline with no seat-belt laws and only voluntary seat-belt use. In 1999, there were 41,611 fatalities. That is a net decrease of 2,646 deaths, a 6 percent decrease over 15 years of rigid seat-belt law enforcement, with some states claiming 80 percent seat-belt use. If the passage of seat-belt laws did anything, it slowed the downward trend in highway fatalities started years before the passage of such laws.

Right to Refuse
Besides such facts, a person has the right to refuse any health-care recommendation. No nonpsychiatric doctor would dare attempt to force a person to use a medical device or take a drug or have surgery or other medical treatment without full consent. Yet politicians force motorists to use a health-care device, a seat belt, against their will under threat of punishment that could include jail.

The hundreds of millions of dollars spent in support of seat-belt laws have been wasted. Not one penny of that money has ever prevented even a single traffic accident, the real cause of highway fatalities. We don’t need millions of dollars for stricter seat-belt law enforcement. Instead, we need more responsibly educated drivers, safer vehicles, and better roads to prevent traffic accidents.

Individual freedom is the very foundation of our country. The American people should not accept legislators who pass laws that take liberty away while claiming to do good. History has shown this to be the easy road to power for tyrants.

There is certainly nothing wrong with voluntary seat-belt use; however, there is a great deal wrong with all seat-belt laws. As Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

http://www.thefreemanonline.org/feat...at-belt-laws/#

On second thought...I agree with you .....can we get rid of those stupid speed limits too and why should I have to buy a hunting license to feed my family I dont think Ol' B Franklin every envisioned transportation like we have today....and his statement wasn't about seat belts or speed limits

[trailboss]

FYI - when I write a ticket for no seatbelt, it has nothing to do with revenue generation.

And regarding riding in the back of a PU, the under 18 y/o no longer applies - no one can ride in the back as of 9/01/09.

Trailboss

[Bily Lovec]

Here's an excellent write up on the seat belt laws and why they were really imposed.. and the fraud associated with themhttp://www.thefreemanonline.org/feat...at-belt-laws/#

its an opinion piece.
its an "excellent write up" because it suites your needs.

[okrattler]

I always thought it went on your driving record when you got pulled over for not having a seat belt on.I don't know a whole lot though so if it does'nt thats cool too.I've been drivin for a while now and have'nt been pulled over but 3 or 4 times and every time was for somethin stupid.My tag lights were out one time and I did'nt know it.The last time I got pulled over was for not having a seat belt on.I got pulled over 1/2 a block away from my house.The police officer could have pulled over anyone in the town where I live and given out a ticket for $20 like the one he gave me but I was the unlucky one.I could literally see my house from where I was pulled over and I got a ticket.lol I'm not really laughing out loud.That cop is arrogant and he's just not as cool as he thinks he is.

[Cotton]

In the early 80’s the insurance companies were going broke and one of the things the government did was to impose the seatbelt laws, I’m sure some states took a little encouragement. No one said anything about premiums going down but it helped make the insurance companies profitable again. Without these laws insurance companies would go under. There’s only one entity that can run without profit and that’s the government, how’s government insurance sound? It’s just that simple.

Not all government is bad but I feel I’m wasting time here.

[systemnt]

its an opinion piece.
its an "excellent write up" because it suites you're needs.

What about it isn't factual?
Please provide sources/resources to support your claims.
thanks.

[Bill]

As America moves towards socialism and increasing government control of our lives, the historic balance between the right of the individual and the needs of the society. When we move to healthcare as a right, and to be controlled by the government, then it becomes the logical role of the government to make you wear a seatbelt- to protect yourself.

If you look at motor vehicle laws, they are largely to protect others from what you do- speeding, etc.

I can't disagree that wearing a seatbelt is a great idea, and saves lives. I know of too many accidents where the passenger without the seat belt died in an accident. But where does it stop? Nobody can argue that brushing your teeth 2x per day and flossing 1x will reduce the costs for the 'society' for dental care- but does the government then have the power to penalize you if you don't brush and floss?

More govt control over our lives under the guise of they're looking out for us- we're not smart enough to do that. Or spend out own money, they'll collect it as taxes and redistribute it and spend it for us.

[Cotton]

Not a valid argument , I am not sure but I believe there were insurance companies around back in the days before the seat belt law !

Therein lies the problem... it's the ONLY valid argument. Some can't see the forest for the trees...

[Cotton]

What about it isn't factual?
Please provide sources/resources to support your claims.
thanks.

Where are yours?

[cosmiccowboy]

The law for back seat passengers in cars does seem rather selectively intrusive considering you can still ride a motorcycle without any safety gear and school buses loaded with kids still don't have seat belts.

[systemnt]

Therein lies the problem... it's the ONLY valid argument. Some can't see the forest for the trees...s

.....what?
From your own comments the only reason for the law is to keep the insurance companies in business.
So my freedoms and liberties, granted by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, are trumped by the governments need to keep private business afloat?

You understand the underlying principles on why this country was founded ...right?