Seat Belt Laws - The Latest Ad Campaign

POSTED BY: SergeantX
UPDATED: Tuesday, June 7, 2005 02:46
VIEWED: 9635
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SHINY

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 3:19 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
Anyone know why the title of this thread got changed in the 'Real World Discussions' section? It just says RE: now

EDIT: uh, nevermind. changed back. weird.

Odd. If you see it again, let me know.

Jayne, your mouth is talkin. Might want to look into that.

SERGEANTX

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 3:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
Of course the standard answer to that is to say: should your decision to not use a seat belt end up with you disabled and draining the government coffers, it then becomes a social issue. Any thoughts on that?

I think that's a bit of a ruse. Isn't it debatable that not wearing a seatbelt just makes death the more likely outcome, rather than surviving with serious injuries? It might even be reasonable to argue that wearing seat belts would be more likely to produce the scenario you mention.

Either way, I don't think those are valid justifications for legislation. We could make an endless list of individual decisions that could be said to indirectly cost society money (having children, overeating, having unprotected sex, etc, etc,.. ) but do we really want to go there? It just seems like you could construct an argument like that to make pretty much anything illegal.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

STAGGERLY

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 4:18 AM

Why not just wear the seat belt AND a t-shirt that says, "you're not the boss of me!" Then everyone'll know you're just arbitrarily rebellious, and not a doofus with no common sense.

-----------------------
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

SERGEANTX

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 4:36 AM

uh.....

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

JASONZZZ

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 6:24 AM

No, because we have a country that refuses to get rid of flaming Darwinian idiots - even when they did it to themselves. I know a couple of nurses who have stories about Tommy (and the like). Tommy is this guy who was left after a drug overdose with no ID and was found comatose in complete catatonia. He is a ward of the state and the hospital foots the bill in caring for him. The nurses has been talking about him for some 15 years now, they feed him, change him, shaves him... What they can't do is get rid of him, they have to be responsible for caring for this idiot when there are much much more people on the floor and not enough nurses on each shift (yeah, that's another story altogether)...

Where do seatbelts come in? Seatbelts do wonders in lower speed crash. They aren't just there to hold you inside the car - i.e. prevent you from flying thru the windshield. They also do at least 2 other things. In lower speeds, you might "submarine", depending on the type of seat you have, how you have the seat configured and how you are sitting in it - that's when your body slides towards the floorboard and you loose your legs or have you lower spine crushed. It also allows your head and body to decelerate over matter of feet instead of having it decelerate into the dashboard.

These things happened frequently enough that people's mothers hated having to take care of their imbecilic (now permanently an imbecile) kids.

If you don't wear seat belts, please make sure to move to a state/country where they can get rid of these permanent imbeciles and have a durable power of attorney to help show you the way.

Quote:
Originally posted by Staggerly:
Why not just wear the seat belt AND a t-shirt that says, "you're not the boss of me!" Then everyone'll know you're just arbitrarily rebellious, and not a doofus with no common sense.

-----------------------
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

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CANTTAKESKY

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 6:50 PM

I don't understand why everyone--even people who don't wear seatbelts--assume that wearing seatbelts is ALWAYS safer than not wearing one, and not wearing seatbelts is ALWAYS a dumber choice. This is simply not true. Here are some common sense facts.

1. Sometimes seatbelts do save lives. This we know. I won't elaborate.

2. Sometimes, whether you wear or don't wear a seatbelt does not make any bit of difference. If you get squished going 70 miles an hour, you're squished, seatbelt or not. My husband used to work as an EMT in a major metropolitan area. He says much of the time, seatbelts don't make a difference at all.

3. Sometimes, seatbelts actually HURT your chances of surviving. They prevent you from reacting quickly or from getting out altogether. My hub heard firsthand from another EMT who watched a boy burnt alive, trapped in a car on fire. My sister-in-law was in a crash where a telephone pole fell down on top of the driver's seat. Because she wasn't strapped, she was able to dive quickly into the foot compartment of the passenger side before the roof was crushed. She had to be cut out, but she lived with very few injuries. Had she been strapped, she would have died. I can go on and on with examples, but you guys get the idea.

4. People are not dummies. Seatbelt tests are done on immobile, unreacting dummies. Unless they are sleeping, people can react. They can move and dive and jump out and take all manner of action to save their lives. In an accident, people actually have the ability to slow down time, such that 2 seconds seem like 2 minutes. They have that extra time in which to better position themselves. In some accidents, there is nothing to do and they might as well be dummies. But in other accidents, this ability to react can save lives--and seatbelts hinder.

On top of all these facts, there is the theory of risk homeostasis. It says that when forced to reduce risk (e.g. seatbelts or helmets), people will engage in riskier behavior to return to their comfortable level of risk. For example, someone wearing a seatbelt or helmet would drive faster than if he didn't. I haven't seen the research, but a psychiatrist friend tells me there is an increasing amount of evidence supporting this theory. I've witnessed it in my 4 year old, who rides her bike much more recklessly when she is wearing a helmet. In her words, "This helmet will keep me from getting hurt, so I can do whatever I want." Perfect example of risk homeostasis.

So, the fact is that seatbelts are not a one-size-fits-all-accidents solution for preventing injuries. There are advantages and disadvantages. Statistics and odds can be subjectively interpreted to whatever position you want. This is NOT a clear cut choice for everyone, every time. Ultimately, people need to be able to choose for themselves what kind of security measure they want to take, based on their driving habits and mental alertness.

There, stepping down from *my* soap box...

Can't Take My Gorram Sky

RUE

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 7:29 PM

SergeantX:

Quote:
Either way, I don't think those are valid justifications for legislation. We could make an endless list of individual decisions that could be said to indirectly cost society money (having children, overeating, having unprotected sex, etc, etc,.. ) but do we really want to go there? It just seems like you could construct an argument like that to make pretty much anything illegal.

To some extent, I'm actually with you on this issue. Taking the pro-law argument to extremes, here are some things that might happen: women get arrested for drinking b/c they might be pregnant; women are excluded from jobs b/c they might get pregnant; alcohol, cigarettes and risky sports are banned altogether; pl with incurable transmissible diseases are physically labeled in some way, etc. On the other hand, there is some validity in saying that these decisions, made individually, do cost society resources in the aggregate. I'm just wondering how you would address that fact.

JASONZZZ

Wednesday, June 1, 2005 7:29 PM

I would agree that seatbelts by themselves don't produce a static behaviour and save lifes every single time in every single instance. But that's sort of like saying "Don't wear condoms since it doesn't protect you from disease exactly 100% of the time in every single situation", or "Go ahead and lick the toilet seat, it won't make you sick every single time".

Some of the examples that you provided were also a bit pedestrian. I'm not arguing your EMT friends didn't make his observations, but this is also the type of "statistical" or observation nonsense that makes bad science. One thing that comes immediately to mind is whether your friend were call to every single car accident or whether his sampling is representative or all car accidents. It might be that he isn't called to accidents where the deaths are forgone conclusions. All I saying is there is a good chance that the sampling is skewed.

On the expose' that seatbelts can hurt your chance of survival, it clearly could happen if the person trapped were in a non-moving vehicle to begin with and were under some sort of duress to not be able to unrestrain themselves from the seatbelt. Clearly if the vehicle had been moving and if they were unstrained to begin with, their odds of being intact and awake enough to jump out of the vehicle is questionable - aside from having been thrown clear of the vehicle to begin with.

You mention of risk homeostatis is something to consider further though.

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SHINY

Thursday, June 2, 2005 12:11 AM

>>that these decisions, made individually, do cost society resources in the aggregate. I'm just wondering how you would address that fact.<<

* about to stir up a huge bunch of worms... *

This is one concern I have with many libertarian thinkers/leaders/politicians -- they seem to be satisfied with "just sue them" as an answer to many of these negative externalities (pollution and other environmental issues, grazing rights and other 'tragedy of the commons' issues, market failures/abuse of monopoly power, etc.)

There needs to be some reasonable middle-ground between anarchy and fascism...

Jayne, your mouth is talkin. Might want to look into that.

SERGEANTX

Thursday, June 2, 2005 12:27 AM

Agreed, Shiny. I'm certainly not one who sees private property and damage litigation as the be-all-end-all of public good. There does need to be a middle ground, but the supposed costs of people not wearing seat-belts don't seem to me a serious enough concern to warrant taking away personal decision making.

To me, the bottom line with seat belt laws is that they are based on the notion that it's the government's responsibility to protect people from themselves.

The costs to society and other supporting arguments seem secondary at best and wouldn't even be an issue without first accepting the above premise.

SergeantX

"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock

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