The Nanny State Strikes Again

Fox News ^ | 12/26/03 | William A. Niskanen

[Luis Gonzalez]

"If you were required to wear a safety helmet how much would that save?"

Medical services due to preventable injuries cost Americans billions of dollars every year. Three major causes of preventable injuries are automobile crashes, bicycle crashes and other sports activities. Taking steps to reduce both the risk and severity of these kinds of injuries is a key factor in reducing overall health care costs.

Key facts, national statistics

• · Each year in the United States, more than 500,000 people are nonfatally injured while riding bicycles. An estimated 140,000 children are treated each year in emergency departments for head injuries sustained while bicycling. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Injury Fact Book,” 2001.)
• · Annual costs associated with bicycle-related head injury or death are estimated to exceed $3 billion. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “National Bicycle Safety Network,” 1999.)
• · The failure of auto crash victims to wear seat belts in 2000 leads to an estimated 9,200 unnecessary fatalities and 143,000 needless injuries, resulting in $26 billion in health care and other costs. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Economic Impact of U.S. Motor Vehicle Crashes,” 2000.)
• · Use of seat belts saves an average of $50 billion per year. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Economic Impact of U.S. Motor Vehicle Crashes,” 2002.)
• · Sports-related injuries in children and young adults caused 2.6 million visits to the nation’s hospital emergency departments, costing about $500 million between 1997 and 1998. (National Center for Health Statistics, “National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey,” 1997 and 1998)
• · Medical and non-medical costs per traumatic brain injury survivor average $151,587. (The National Foundation for Brain Research, “The Cost of Disorders of the Brain,” 1992.)
• · In the event of a crash, wearing a bicycle helmet reduces the risk of serious head injury by as much as 85 percent and the risk of brain injury by as much as 88 percent. In fact, if each rider wore a helmet, an estimated 500 bicycle-related fatalities and 151,000 nonfatal head injuries would be prevented each year. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “National Bicycle Safety Network,” 1999.)

The simple act of buckling a safety belt can improve your chances of surviving an automobile crash by as much as 73 percent and can significantly decrease your risk of serious injury. (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Economic Impact of U.S. Motor Vehicle Crashes,” 2002.)

http://www.bcbstx.com/pdf/hccc/8710_689_503.doc

[Jorge]

"The PURISTS/UNAPPEASEABLEDS..."

Exactly! Puritan Political nit-pickin standards. Ugh!

[Orangedog]

Using our money to try to save us more than we are offering to the states isn't a bad investment of our money.

You're fooling yourself if you think spending this $400 million is going to save "us" one red cent. Insurance premiums will go down...they won't even stay the same. They will go up, like they always do. Government spending will not decrease because of this. It will go up, like it always does. Tylenol will still cost $15 each at the hospital.

The FOP and other police organizations will love this though. It will mean more money for them.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Good work. You've said nothing, and it only took you 6 carefully crafted paragraphs to do it.

In my first post to you, I said, "Go ahead and do what you want. I won't reward a man who has systematically attacked the Constitution on so many fronts with a second term. Especially using the weak justification, "He's not as bad as the other guy." If you demand only mediocrity, that's what you get."

Your response? You totally ignored the substance of what I have said, instead choosing to nitpick some small side issues about the legal voting age that mostly came out of sarcasm. You see, the thing for you to have done would be to defend Bush, because you obviously think I should vote for him. Nice. Of course, I predicted that would happen, now, didn't I?

By the way...it is easy to SAY that you really do know and understand politics...but you need to demonstrate it by addressing the issue that I brought up directly. After all, this was the original point of your contention...i.e., that sending a message would do no good, and I assume, therefore, that you think I should vote for Bush.

By the way, you could have just said, "Yes" to the voting age thing. Didn't need a complete bio. You're probably trying to steer the discussion in that direction.

Don't blame you for that.

So, I will rephrase my unanswered question...why is it exactly that I should reward a man who has (or plans to) systematically attacked the Consitution on at least three different fronts?

[biffalobull]

well these little shaved head punks just twist my shorts...I log approx 10K miles a month and have been for almost 30 years and some kid that isn't even that old comes at me with such a superior attitude like he is the see all, know all and be all...gonna save me from myself.

I'm with you cajun. I drove my own lease rigs 100,s of 1000's of miles, never with a seat belt. I think if I want to go thru the windshield, that is up to me.Do big rigs have seat belts now, or buses, or trains, or streetcars, or any form of public tranportation, or school bus's.?Regards

[Torie]

Hey inquest, given that subsidized medicine isn't going away (that is not an option, so forget it), would you rather have your taxes raised to help pay for the care of the maimed and quadriplegic and brain damaged from the failure to wear seat belts and seat belts, or just pass a law that they will get a fine if they don't?

Hey, I got an idea. Let folks sign a contract that they can drive without seat belts, provided that they are then dumped into a life and medical insurance pool of those that just say no, and have to pay the higher premiums. And no insurance (heck you have to have insurance to drive in many states as it is, but you probably don't like that either), then no free pass. No free lunch. No pay, then no way.

[Orangedog]

Safety belt usage saves society an estimated $50 billion annually in medical care, lost productivity, and other injury-related costs.

HEAVY emphasis on the word "estimated."

None so blind as he who will not see.

Just as long as you "see" the estimates that you choose to believe. How about this: Who will be held personally responsible when those savings do not happen?

[philetus]

He's going to sign it.

[garv]

Do Seat Belt Laws Work?

by John Semmens

Many states that have passed mandatory seat belt-use laws have required that evidence of the law's effectiveness be produced for the law to escape automatic expiration. A recently published report-"Arizona Hospital Costs for Seat Belt Use vs. Non-Use 1989, 1990,1991"-from the Governor's Office of Highway Safety purports to be the needed evidence for the extension of Arizona's seat belt law. Unfortunately, these kinds of reports have neither asked nor answered the right questions.

Proving that people suffer more severe and expensive injuries when they're not wearing seat belts belabors the obvious. No credible opponent of seat belt laws has disputed that seat belts can save wearers from death and injury. To present statistics that never were in doubt as the longawaited evidence fails to deal with the unresolved issue of whether requiring seat belt use is good public policy.

Critics of seat belt laws have contended that they alter driver behavior in ways that increase the hazards for other users of the streets and highways. In particular, some drivers wearing seat belts may feel more assured of surviving an accident, and hence tend to drive more aggressively, thus raising the risk of collisions with other vehicles and pedestrians.

In the early 1970s, a few challenges to the presumed safety benefits of increased auto safety regulations appeared in lightly read academic journals. In a 1970 issue of Applied Economics, L. B. Lave and W. W. Weber suggested that mandated safety devices (seat belts, better bumpers, collapsible steering wheels) might lead to faster driving that could offset the safety gains. In 1975, Sam Peltzman's "The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulations" in the Journal of Political Economy hypothesized that safer autos would lead to more aggressive driving that would endanger other users of the roads.

This earlier research has been mostly ignored or dismissed in favor of adherence to more simplistic research that, unsurprisingly, proves that crashtest dummies suffer more damage without safety devices. Crash-test dummies, of course, cannot have their driving behavior altered by a perception of greater crash survivability. Consequently, the research with dummies doesn't refute the hypothesis that driver behavior might be changed and thus negate or reduce some of the anticipated safety gains.

The plausibility of the aggressive driver hypothesis cries out for more research. For example, Hawaii, the state with the most rigorously enforced seat belt law and the highest compliance rate in the nation, has experienced an increase in traffic fatalities and fatality rates since its law went into effect in December 1985.

This is not to say that the seat belts are killing vehicle occupants. Clearly enough crash-test dummies have smashed into enough auto windshields and dashboards to convince all but the most obstinate that wearing a seat belt is probably a good idea. What, then, is going on in Hawaii? Well, we don't know. But the data do not support a smug assurance that forcing people to wear seat belts is without potential undesirable outcomes.

A recent statistical study of states with and without seat belt laws was undertaken by Professor Christopher Garbacz of the University of Missouri-Rolla. This study seems to support the altered driver behavior hypothesis. Dr. Garbacz found that states with seat belt laws saw decreases in traffic fatalities for those covered by the laws (typically drivers and front-seat passengers), but increases in fatalities for rear-seat passengers, cyclists, and pedestrians. Further, the patterns of changes in total traffic fatalities among the states showed no consistent relationship with the existence of a seat belt law in the state.

This suggests a significantly less optimistic interpretation of the impact of seat belt laws than the prevailing orthodoxy would allow. Forcing unwilling motorists to wear seat belts may save their lives and reduce their injuries. Disconcertingly, though, seat belt laws appear to be increasing the hazards for other users of the roads.

Deciding whether this apparent shift in risk is an acceptable cost of a seat belt law is a far different proposition from pretending that there is no significant cost. Policy-makers may be satisfied that the benefits of a seat belt law outweigh the costs. However, a humane public policy demands that those who may ultimately pay the costs be warned of the potential increased risks they face on the streets and highways. To do less is to endanger some of the least protected users of our roads.

Mr. Semmens is an economist for the Laissez Faire Institute in Chandler, Arizon

[inquest]

There was NO ,none,nada,zilch,bupkiss spending reductions, when Reagan got his tax cuts put through either

What Reagan did or didn't do is irrelevant. The fact that Bush's cuts weren't matched by spending cuts, and in fact were met with drastic spending increses - much of it totally unrelated to the War on Terror - means that both government and the debt will continue to balloon out of control.

some of President's Bush's ARE permanent...

So that's like, what, half of zilch?

...the rest of them may become so, in his second term.

Might-be's aren't the subject of our discussion.

The president, not ANY president, can do away with legal abortions of every stripe.

OK, so you've gone from saying that Bush has delivered 50% of what "they" (whom I interpreted to mean constitutionalists or people with similar viewpoints) wanted, to giving excuses for why in fact he hasn't done so. All too predictable.

You wouldn't know reality, if it bit you on the nose and hung on. And as far as President Bush not having done much...you're in denial.

Seems you have your work cut out for you if you actually intend to back up that statement.

[FairOpinion]

"And, given the stuff Dubya supports and calls for, just what would be the difference between him and Dean? Please be specific.

Dubya has, to quote a good number of FR posters, taken all the issues the Dems would raise off the table by out-liberalling the libs. He has scarcely even ACKNOWLEDGED the Conservative base, let alone pursued ANY of their issues and concerns, to the point that, IMO, he's a one-termer.

Oh, and good riddance. At least when a Dem has the helm, people like you will rightly oppose his policies. Dubya just gets pass after pass. It's disgusting."

====

Here is an excerpt from an article totally appropriate for your comment:

Uninformed voters are ruining politics

The ignorance of the typical American when it comes to politics is often staggering.

This ignorance is the real reason special interest groups and demagogues have the success they do (though it's a wonder they don't have more). For example, we are constantly told by extreme left-wing groups and more than a few rightwing groups that there's no difference between the political parties.

As anyone who pays attention to politics knows, this is monumental nonsense on stilts; informed people understand that a Dean administration will be very different from a Bush administration.

But if you get much of your news from late-night comics - as is the case with nearly half of young voters, according to the Pew Research Center - it makes complete sense that you'd think there's no difference between the parties, in much the same way people who don't understand physics think protons and electrons are pretty much the same thing.

But Americans don't like being told they're the problem. So when they eventually tune into politics they tend to blame the candidates, as if it's the actors' fault you don't understand the play when you arrive for the last five minutes.

[nopardons]

It's far worse than " PURITAN POLITICS " and pickers of nit! They have the mentality of a small child, don't understand politics at all,and would far rather NOT elect someone, who would give them something, than haves a president whose positions on things, would give them and the rest of us, nothing but everything we do NOT want at all.

Clinton knew about the terrorists, he could have HAD OBL, but ignored the acts of terror and chose to NOT take OBL, when thrice he was offered up to him. He was the author, as much as those who flew the planes, of 9/11. Dean's worse, but they'd rather have him, than President Bush, who has done everything he can, to protect us.

[FLAMING DEATH]

"Yes, they want your vote but not your voice..."

Exactly. And, people out there will vote for him despite his attacks on the First, Second and Fourth amendments, as well as the fact that he's done nothing to close our borders. As long as he stays slightly to the right of the Dems, he'll get their vote, while still pushing to get away with everything he can.

The second term scares me. He won't have to worry about re-election then. If it comes to pass, you're really going to see some sh** hit the fan, I'm afraid.

[Torie]

University of Missouri-Rolla

I'm impressed. And here I thought the University of Missouri was in Columbia. This must be an appendage or a state college "university" aka formerly a teacher's college. I wonder if the study has been peer reviewed, and whether the guy has a firm handle on the complexities of statistics. Rolla by the way is where the Widow Carnahan is from. I just thought you'd like to know.

[Orangedog]

I'm sure he will. Looks like he's jonesing to piss off the NRA vote as well.

[FLAMING DEATH]

Classy.

[Luis Gonzalez]

"Classy."

What are you referring to?

His post to me, or my response to his insult?

[agitator]

Nobody wants to listen to me on the subject of driver's licenses because it's outside the generally accepted reality. The world became flat in 1903 and will remain flat until further notice. In the event I'm wrong,

http://taor.agitator.dynip.com/on_law.htm

[MEG33]

Ya' lost me with that graphic.Your posts were great though .