by David Bowie

Created on: April 06, 2008

Seat belt laws only violate the individual rights of people that lack the intelligence to make rational decisions for their own safety. For those that have the capacity to make those rational decisions, seat belt laws are just redundancies. Statistics have shown that wearing a seat belt will, more often than not, save a person's life if they get in an accident.

Anti-seat belt proponents will often quote obscure stories of people dying because they wore a seat belt, but conveniently forget all of the stories where a seat belt saved a life. Everyone has stories, there are stories where drunk drivers survive accidents, does that mean everyone should drink and drive? NO! It is flawed logic to base one's decisions on isolated stories. Statistics clearly show that drinking and driving is dangerous, and they also clearly show that riding in a vehicle without a seat belt is dangerous.

Statistics also show that a majority of people are injured or killed while wearing clothes. Based on the same sort of flawed logic that anti-seat belt proponents eschew, we should come to the conclusion that wearing clothes is dangerous and people should not do so. Any rational intelligent being can realize, though, that there is no correlation here.

In 2002, 10,984 people were killed in car accidents in the United States, 5,226 were injured. In those accidents, 10,404 were not wearing seat belts, and 5,806 were. Take a look at those numbers for a minute? Do you see a correlation there? The number of people killed and the number of people not wearing seat belts is nearly identical. Also, the number of those just injured nearly matches those wearing seat belts. Certainly there are exceptions, which is why the numbers are not exact, but it is obvious that wearing a seat belt greatly increases the chances of surviving an accident.

Wearing a seat belt also affords a certain amount of greater control over a vehicle. With a well fitting seat belt in place, a driver is more firmly seated in the driver's seat, which leads to less sliding around and a greater feeling of oneness with the vehicle. Ask any race car driver if they were guaranteed to not be injured or die in a car wreck if they would still wear a harness, and they would tell you "Yes" because being strapped into the vehicle affords greater control and precision when driving.

Are your individual rights taken away with seat belt laws? Only if you want to have the right to a greater chance of death in an accident. For everyone else, they keep those that want to die from causing higher taxes due to the city having to clean up and dispose of the bodies of those that do not wear seat belts.

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