Seat belt laws more goofy than enforcing calories at McDonald’s

Hoping to improve safety on the road, Minnesota joined a small majority of states to enforce the worst law in the history of the United States.

On June 9 the state of Minnesota became the 29 state to enforce a primary seat belt law, allow police officers to pull over drivers for simply not wearing their seat belts and issue a $25 ticket to them.

Prior to the bill being signed into law on May 21, a driver could be ticketed for failure to wear a seat belt only after being pulled over for another violation. With the secondary violation, an estimated 87 percent of Minnesotans chose to wear their seat belts, according to the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.

The Department said were 325 fatal automobile accidents in 2008 and that of those 325, 178 involved passengers or drivers that were not buckled up.

One can see that a seat belt does improve your chance to live; the Department told the Pioneer Press that about 30 lives would be saved per year.

While it may never be known how many of those 178 may have lived had they worn their seat belt, the real issue is the government is taking away ones right to choose how much they care about their health.

While some road fatalities probably occurred in rural areas on Minnesota’s slippery winter roads, it would be rather safe to assume that a decent percentage of drivers involved in fatal accidents are usually breaking other laws, such as driving drunk or speeding excessively.

Do we really want to protect those kinds of individuals, if they don’t care to protect themselves?

Assuming a driver is not violating any other traffic laws, the only person at any added danger is themselves. Unless you consider the emotional damage that one might incur if they are involved in an accident with an unbuckled person who dies. 

Lost in the whole creation of this law is that while nearly impossible for a police officer to see if a driver is belted or not, it should be the least of their worries. And besides, don’t police officers have other things to worry about, such as crime and writing parking tickets?

This law really hurts everyday law abiding citizens, such as my self, who dislike seat belts. I do not like wearing seat belts, but I follow every other law. With the exception of one speeding ticket, I have a clean record in seven years of driving. And I never wear a seat belt. Some may say I am too lazy, some may call me a rebel, I just think that I have too much confidence in my driving ability that I know I will not be involved in a fatal accident.

While the government is at it, they should draft up some other bills that go after people who make choices that might be harmful to their health. I will even give them a list of five ideas.

1. Let’s station a police officer inside McDonald’s and ticket anyone who orders enough calories for two days. McDonald’s will lose a lot of business, but Americans will be a lot less fat.
2. Ticket everyone who doesn’t have health insurance. Many people may be avoiding that doctor visit where the doctor might tell them they have cancer, simply because they don’t want to pay for it.
3. Here is an easy one, and easy to spot. Hell, maybe police officers will even be able to write more seat belt violations when they catch these criminals. Ticket everyone who smokes cigarettes.
4. Bars will hate this one, but it will make people healthier the next day. Police officers should be able to ticket anyone who has blood alcohol content over .08, weather they are driving or not.
5. While this one would be very hard to crack down on, it is a good one. Everyone who gets under five hours of sleep a night should be ticketed, as it is known to be harmful to your health.

While some on this list are a bit over the top, one could argue quite accurately that poor diets and cigarette smoking are far more harmful to the well being of the country than seat belts.

According to the Center for Disease Control, the two top killers in the United States are heart disease (fast food) and cancer (cigarettes). I don’t see how not wearing a seat belt causes those types of ailments, but I do see that McDonald’s and Camel’s kill more people than cars.