Buckle Up . . . Or Else (Tales from the nanny state)

The Weekly Standard ^ | May 31, 2004 | Andrew Ferguson

[TexasTransplant]

Save me from myself, crap like this just drives me nuts.

[RipSawyer]

Cheer up, it will get worse!

[E. Pluribus Unum]

"You need the seat belt to protect you from the air bag."

A better solution would be secondary air bag air bags to protect you from the primary air bags.

That way the air bag manufacturers could make twice as much money.

[Copernicus]

Look," he said, "do you know what an air bag does? An air bag is an explosion in the closed passenger compartment of an automobile. That thing exerts nearly a ton of pressure as it inflates within that closed compartment. The force is simply incredible. And very dangerous."

I have spent over a decade arguing with Seatbelt Nazis and others about the unintended consequences of one-size-fits-all- mechanical engineering frequently to no avail.

It is good to see this become a wider public debate.

Thanks for the post.

Best regards,

[Cultural Jihad]

Self-governance is such a drag, man.

[RipSawyer]

Let's see now, whose job was it to watch the watchman who watches the watchman who watches the watchman............ad infinitum.

If our founding fathers returned tomorrow they would throw up at the sight of what we have become.

[mysterio]

I vote that we ban sports. Sports cripple millions of children. I have statistics.

Injury rates:

Approximately 3 million children ages 14 and under get hurt annually playing sports or participating in recreational activities.

Sports and recreational activities contribute to approximately 21 percent of all traumatic brain injuries among American children.

The majority of head injuries sustained in sports or recreational activities occur during bicycling, skateboarding, or skating incidents.

More than 775,000 children, ages 14 and under, are treated in hospital emergency rooms for sports-related injuries each year. Most of the injuries occurred as a result of falls, being struck by an object, collisions, and overexertion during unorganized or informal sports activities.

Source : http://www.lpch.org/DiseaseHealthInfo/HealthLibrary/orthopaedics/stats.html

The cost to our society is enourmous. Many of these children never recover completely from their injuries. Big Sports is marketing a crippling and sometimes fatal product to our children. I think all sports should be immediately and totally banned before another child is injured or killed.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Take a walk through a hospital ward devoted to people maimed in automobile accidents. It's horrible.

One of the best inventions for automobile travel is the seat belt.

One has to be foolish NOT to use a seat belt. The nanny coming into your lives is most likely the insurance companies who don't want to pay for people's freedom to be injured in an automobile accident.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Yeah how did we survive. When we were kids my brothers and I wrestled in the back of the family car during long road trips. We hated wearing seatbelts because they were a pain to put on and off.

[mysterio]

So you support my initiative to ban sports? Great, I will count on you and like minded safety advocates to help win the fight. It's the right thing to do.

[Bane]

Anyone who doesn't wear a seat belt is D@mn fool, but who is the government to protect us from our own D@mn foolishness.

[Texan5]

Amen. I'm heartily sick of being "protected". I was the passenger in a rollover accident last year involving a deer- my seatbelt and the rollbar we installed in our convertible saved my life-my broken ribs, torn muscles, facial cuts and burns, as well as my husband's similar injuries (not to mention having pieces of hot plastic from the air bag cover propelled at me so hard they became embedded in the flesh of my arm, neck and leg) were caused by the f'ing air bag. Since both of us are rather slim and small boned, the effect was not fun. Air bags are an invention of the devil, and they deploy at the slightest provocation-that accident didn't even involve the front end of the car. We bought switches to put on ours-we turn them on on the highway, off the rest of the time. I can't wait till someone files a class action suit against the airbag manufacturers-and I usually hate lawsuits...

[ditto h]

I have an idea. Why not make a law that if you are not 100 feet from the car in front of you, you get a ticket. Every day I have morons who are 10 feet behind me and they are trying to drive my car when they can't even drive their own. Why do we have 125 car pileups? Tailgating ,of course. Fix that and you will go a long way to help society.

[ServesURight]

Take a walk through a hospital ward devoted to people maimed in automobile accidents. It's horrible.

Mostly due to reckless, inattentive, or inexperienced driving, or being under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. Even most of the people who die in auto wrecks still wore seatbelts.

One of the best inventions for automobile travel is the seat belt.

Wrong. It's satellite radio.

One has to be foolish NOT to use a seat belt.

None of the government's business. It is my choice to wear a seat belt or not without bureaucrats and busy-bodies telling me so. And besides, seatbelts are so constricting. The shoulder harness rubs against my neck in an irritating, light stranglehold kind of way.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Aghh, you misread me.

I didn't say the government has any right to restrict your right not to wear a seatbelt. Although I think it's quite a good idea to wear a seatbelt and shoulder harness.

If you re-read my post, you'll see I'm accusing the insurance companies of getting the government into our lives because of the cost of the liberty to drive without seatbelts.

I really don't care if you don't wear a belt and harness. Me, I'm in a Navigator with belt and harness. If we have the opportunity to run into each other, I'll be sure to visit you in the hospital ward.

[Zuben Elgenubi]

Switch to decaf. You're babbling.

[gawatchman]

They don't pay anyway. At least not in my case when I was hit from behind and left with a lifelong debilitating injury because of a negligent driver. Some sleazebucket lawyer got them out of it. Anyway, insurance companies don't have to pay if it is determined that a seat belt was not worn at the time of the accident. So, that mangled body better find a way to strap itself in after the fact of a violent collision if no selt belt was worn.

[Veracious Poet]

LEOs will be so busy milking the CashCow looking for no-seatbelt criminals (the horror!) I wonder if they'd notice a truck full of illegals.

I've probably driven over 1 million miles in my lifetime, most of it without a seatbelt, and the only accident I was in I was spared because I didn't have one on!

The Nanny-State is in "it's for the children" full-swing lie again, they're just trying to pay for BIG gov't. spending.

[handk]

EVEN THOUGH ROUGH WINDS do shake the darling buds thereof, I think we can all agree that May is a fabulous month, flush and lusty as the poets say, a time to gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay.

Faggot (not you, RWR8189, the fruit-loop "Andrew" who wrote the article).