Safety Devices

A friend of mine recently wrote an article about the pros and cons of seat belt usage. I thought it was well written and agreed with her views on the subject. However, I don't believe she went far enough. Not being too clever myself, I turned to an article written by George Jonas, whom I admire as a great writer and someone who can get to the gist of almost any issue you throw before him. I very rarely disagree with him, but I think on this issue, he has hit the nail on the head.

Mr. Jonas, under the heading of 'Double Standards', writes basically that governments impose laws upon us that, while saving lives on the one hand, can kill us on the other. The seat belt laws constitute a small part of being killed by government intervention. The argument that should your car rollover and catch fire while it's going under water in Lake Wobegon and you're trapped in the seat because of the belt is a non-starter. Seat belts save lives and whatever discomfort you might suffer because you have to buckle up is usurped by the fact that you might live to see another day.

I didn't like the seat belt law when it came into force but I've learned to live with it. The same as I objected to the helmet law for motorcyclists. Mr. Jonas puts this into perspective when he says, "Having discovered that bikes don't always stay shiny side up, I came to the conclusion that riders who wear no helmets have no brains to protect." I have to agree with this. As much as I enjoyed the wind whistling through my hair as I rode, looking back at it, I'm thankful I survived.

Mr. Jonas makes his argument against air bags, especially the side curtain air bags now being put into so many vehicles. While air bags save many lives, that fact doesn't give any consolation to those people who are on the other side of the equation. I didn't realize it but Toyota is recalling 30,000 Scions due to the side curtain air bag deploying at the wrong time. All it takes is to slam the door and the bag can deploy. How good are you going to feel after you slam the door on Junior and by the time you get around to the driver's side, you find out you just killed him?

How about the government mandating smaller cars to save the environment? Small cars are more likely to use diesel engines and each year (according to NHTSA) some 2,000 to 4,000 die of diesel fumes. There isn't much we can do about the 18 wheelers that bring us our daily bread, but we can do something about the smaller cars. NHTSA researchers determined that increasing a car's weight by 100 lbs. would save eight times more lives than decreasing the weight by the same 100 lbs. And what does the government recommend? Put the SUVs on a diet and get that weight down.

The gist of Mr. Jonas' article is that it is wrong for the government to mandate using things that can harm people. This goes for seat belts, motorcycle helmets, side curtain air bags and small cars. We can't do a lot about any of this, but what is wrong with having an on/off switch on the air bag? For those who don't want to use seat belts or helmets, well, we pay specially trained people who hopefully won't vomit too much when they clean up the mess, but shouldn't it still be our choice to use them or not? Buy a smaller car if you want, but lower the price of diesel to make it advantages to those paying $10,000 more to have Rudolph's engine in the damn thing.

The Democrats and Liberals crow about how free our society is. Why don't they then prove it by giving the right of choice back to the people?