by Native Gemini

Created on: August 12, 2009   Last Updated: August 13, 2009

Seat belt laws can be considered unjust by many even though they are presented to the public as a safety precaution. Many authorities, especially state and local law enforcement, claim that by enforcing seat belt laws, they are trying to save lives and keep the public safe. This reasoning could just be a way to cover for a method of bringing in revenue while not technically making the public any safer.

A seat belt law is not in the same class of public safety as other traffic laws such as stopping at stop signs or obeying traffic lights. If a driver were to run a stop sign and cause the injury or even property damage to another motorist, one can easily see that breaking the traffic law was the very cause of said accident and, as such, the compliance with the law does protect the public and save lives. However, if a driver is commuting without a seat belt fastened, and has an accident with another motorist, the other motorist will not suffer any worse an injury due to the former driver being without a seat belt. Many incidents have occurred where a sensibly driving commuter has been followed and stopped, then cited by law enforcement for no other reason than a seat belt violation. The driver's good diving habits - like stopping at stop signs or yielding properly - were irrelevant to the citing officer.

In 1998, within thirty two states, the total number of seat belt citations issued equaled more than 2 million. Multiply the excessive number of seat belt citations by the smallest known fines for such violations, which are usually around 25 dollars, and you get over 50 million dollars. This averages more than 1.5 million in revenue for each of those 32 states where the data was collected. Keep in mind that some states have a fine set at a higher amount than the 25 dollars we used as an example. It appears seat belt fines do account for a large source of revenue for all the states.

The states are divided into two categories when it comes to seat belt laws; there are 30 states, plus American Samoa, D.C., Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands that have primary seat belt laws. The primary seat belt laws give officers the ability to cite a driver just because the driver is in violation of the seat belt law, without any other traffic offense occurring. Law enforcement can spend the majority of a shift constantly pulling and citing drivers just for a seat belt infraction. During this time, traffic officers may end up missing the chance

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