Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Seat Belt Laws
I recently commented on a Ledger report about police cracking down on seat belt usage this week. I’m not sure what’s so special about this week as opposed to any other or how law enforcement all of a sudden thinks they can focus on seat belts when, by law, they are not allow to. Anyway, my comments, particularly regarding seat belts are often misconstrued by those who feel I am against wearing a seat belt. That is not the case, so, I want to clarify something. I wear my seat belt all most of the time. I also make anyone riding in my vehicle wear one and I remind my driving age children to wear them. You know why? Because they save lives it’s the law. I obey the law and believe anyone caught disobeying the law should be fined, cited, arrested, what-have-you.
I also want to clarify something else. Massachusetts has a “secondary” seat belt law. Technically, what that means is that the police cannot stop you simply for not wearing the seat belt; another motor vehicle infraction needs to have occurred and then an additional fine may be applied for not having a seat belt on. There are presently 28 states that have “primary” seat belt laws. The primary or, mandatory, law allows for law enforcement to stop individuals whenever they are noticed not wearing a seat belt. No other infraction is necessary. The states that have these primary seat belt laws have done so in order to receive federal transportation money. States without a primary law do not receive this money.
The real issue when it comes to seat belts is not whether they should be worn or not, and not whether they will actually save your life. The entire nation, except New Hampshire, has bought into the “seat belts save lives” propaganda and we must therefore wear them or die, or at least pay a fine. The more valid question now is whether harsher laws make you wear a seat belt and therefore save more lives. Certainly there are many advocates that have much to benefit from stating that they will. Approximately 14 million dollars in federal money could be spread throughout transportation and safety circles quite liberally. Law enforcement, emergency service personnel and insurance lobbyists often report to the media who was wearing their seat belts and who were not, in fatal crashes, and then make the assumption that was why they died; regularly pointing out the obvious claim that an individual being ejected from a vehicle would have survived had they been wearing a seat belt. While it is clear they probably wouldn’t have been ejected, there is no evidence to suggest they would have survived the crash if they had been secured in the vehicle or if wearing a seat belt would have mattered at all. The actuality is that seat belt usage as it directly correlates to saving lives is all a matter of extrapolation. There are a bevy of reasons why accidents occur and lack of a seat belt is not among them.
While no conclusive statistics can be made for whether or not a seat belt alone saves lives, there are facts that show Massachusetts does not need a more stringent law to save lives. Because there are 28 other states with a mandatory seat belt law, it allows the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who advocates a tougher law, to show us that they all have more fatalities on their roads in spite of it. Mississippi, a state with approximately 2 million less people than Massachusetts, had more than twice the traffic fatalities in 2008 despite passing a primary seat belt law in 2006. Primary law supporters will certainly mention that states with the stiffer penalty have seen a drop in unrestrained traffic deaths, but Massachusetts can also lay claim to that statistic.
One can only conclude, based on hard statistics that not only are Massachusetts drivers safer than drivers in other states, but states that have stricter seat belt laws do not out perform us with regard to vehicle fatalities; and the threat of police enforcing specifically, seat belt laws, definitely do not translate into less motor vehicle accidents or deaths.
POSTED BY STAN on July 22, 2009
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