[WalterBright]

Not wearing a seatbelt is an individual choice, and should not be a crime.

P.S. Growing up, my dad had the dealer install seatbelts in the family wagon before he picked it up. We never moved an inch unless everyone was buckled up. Nobody else, and I mean nobody else, had seatbelts in their car at the time.

P.P.S. Seatbelts also saved my life.

[CodeAndCuffs]

Its a choice that effects others. When you get ejected from the crash and hit someone else's car. When we have to shut down the interstate north and south bound for 3 hours to do a full reconstruction. When we have to do a death notification.

Dealing with a dead body isnt a big deal. Your mind kinda puts it in the pile of "just evidence". Working the fatality is easy. The hard part is the death notification. Having to find the family member, either waking them up at 2 am or knocking on the door in the middle of an otherwise normal afternoon. Its not like brain surgery gone bad. There was 0 warning of this happening. Noones prepaered for it.

Death notification is a full day of training in our academy. Noone deserves to learn their loved one died on the news or thru a rumor or over the phone. You have to tell them in person.

And you have to be blunt. Anything less just makes it harder to cope. "There was a crash, he didn't make it" leaves their mind to fabricate a weak lie, like maybe he didn't make avoiding the crash, and he's just hurt. This just makes the pain last that much longer

"Sir, I'm sorry to tell you that your son was killed in a motor vehicle crash".

If you want to make dumb decisions, that's fine, but don't try to justify it with this isolated "well it's my choice" nonsense. Your choice effects others, and I can still remember the reaction of every single death notification I've done. The viet nam vet trying to pass a tractor trailer on his motorcycle, and the way his wife screamed. Having to tell a Dad who's son was touring a college, that his sone was the only one in the car not in a seat belt. Having to wake a mother up at 2 in the morning to tell her her son is dead, and not having an answer to "How do I tell his little sister"

Individual choices generally effect more than the individual

[thereisnospork]

>Individual choices generally effect more than the individual

One of the fundamental principles of this country is that individual choices are up to the individual unless they present onerous effects on others. Simply, any choice can be construed to have externalities, much like anything can be considered interstate commerce if you squint at it strongly enough. To say nothing of the logical incongruity of allowing people to ride motorcycles.

Of course if you don't wear your seatbelt you're an idiot, but this doesn't feel like an epidemic reaching a reasonable threshold, e.g. being deleterious to national security.

[ArnoVW]

Yup. Also, that's the Good scenario. What if you are unfortunate, and don't die, but just become paraplegic? Aside from the financial impact on society (unless you are a millionaire, you'll end up needing help) you'll spend the rests of your life regretting your choice of not wearing a seatbelt.

I somehow suspect that we should just call them "freedom belts" and enshrine them in the constitution.

[WalterBright]

I don't envy your job. I'm sure it is tough. I respect you for taking on such a difficult task.

However, people still have a right to be stupid with their own life. It's not nonsense.

For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright were quite aware that they stood a high chance of dying in their airplane experiments. Neil Armstrong figured that he had a 1:3 (or something like that) chance of dying going to the moon. The people who free climb have a very high death rate.

They all have the right to decide for themselves what is worth doing and what isn't. If you've got family depending on you, you should think about them before taking stupid risks. It's your right and your responsibility and your decision.

[pshc]

> For example, Wilbur and Orville Wright were quite aware that they stood a high chance of dying in their airplane experiments. Neil Armstrong figured that he had a 1:3 (or something like that) chance of dying going to the moon. The people who free climb have a very high death rate.

In these examples, these people aren't posing a threat to other people around them in their risky behavior.

[base698]

Rescue attempts for a variety of mountain sports do put others at risk. In addition most of the above post was about the effect on first responders.

[anigbrowl]

the other poster's point went over your head. Risk-accepting people and their families understand what they're doing and that they're making a bet with their life. I've done so, and not without cost. Opinions might differ on the value of such bets, and acceptance of that risk might be grudging rather than serene, but it's not unexpected.

But sudden random death is a different story. Car crashes or stray bullets can suddenly kill people uninvolved in and not seeking any risk. An unbuckled driver is primarily a danger to themselves, but also highly incentivized to drive differently - eg swerving to avoid an unsurvivable collision, but causing someone else to have a more serious accident.

I'm not sure where you'd start a statistical analysis, but the worst outcomes in the many traffic accidents I've seen always seem to involve 2 cars that have a minor collision causing a third car to have a major one, like hitting a structure or rolling.

[profile53]

Not wearing a seatbelt is also a choice to force the healthcare system to support the person for 50 years after they break their neck in a preventable way. The choice is individual but the consequences are societal.

[WalterBright]

One of the things I don't like about free health care is it comes with the notion that the government should force you to do things to reduce those costs.

[pkulak]

The alternative is letting people die on the street who may not be able to pay. No developed country will ever have a health care system that shifts 100% of costs to the individual.

[robotresearcher]

No it doesn't. The US government doesn't force military vets and retirees to quit smoking and eating donuts.

I don't think a single one of the many countries with socialized health care for all does this.

They may pay for education and awareness of the risks of smoking, and they may highly tax cigarettes to dissuade you. But they don't force you.

[WalterBright]

Seatbelt laws and helmet laws.

[robotresearcher]

These apply to everyone in the US, whether or not they are eligible for 'free' medical care.

[sagarm]

Everyone is eligible for 'free' medical care via EMTALA.

[pas]

then it's not free :)

anyway, spending on carless infrastructure to provide alternative transport modalities to people is what works, whereas trying to force people to just "do the healthy things" doesn't really

plus there's nothing stopping the US from coming up with "free healthcare 2.0" that also solves this with clever incentives (eg. via a voucher system, people who opt out of the hazardous things get a voucher, for example people without a car get a "free" monthly public transit ticket, etc.)

[clint]

Not wearing a seat belt is dangerous to others when you're catapulted through your windshield at 90mph into traffic. This is not the clear-cut case you want to make it out to be.

[Fricken]

Is there any evidence that an ejected car occupant injured a bystander even once?

[WalterBright]

If you're catapulted through your windshield, you're going to hit whatever you drove into, not traffic.

[Arrath]

If you hit a giant wall, sure.

In the other case, a violent roll over accident will happily eject you from a side window and off on a happy trajectory towards whatever might be in that direction.

Forward through the windshield is hardly the only way to be ejected.

[WalterBright]

You're going to fall out in the direction you (and the car) are travelling/rolling.

[vel0city]

You're going to be thrown out in some additive vector of where you were going and where the other car influenced your car to go, depending on what other impacts you're getting pre-ejection. That can easily be into another car, into other traffic, etc.

[myroon5]

whatever you drove into could be traffic

[campbel]

As long as you're held accountable for your body flinging into others and injuring them, sure.

[WalterBright]

Fair enough.

[fzeroracer]

I've seen your exact same argument made by people who believe the BAC limit should be abolished and it's just as disingenuous to engage with there as it is when applied to seatbelt laws.

A family that refuses to wear seatbelts and doesn't buckle in their children is an individual choice as well in your world, but the end result can be killing someone that didn't have a choice in the first place. And your argument around seatbelt laws seems to assume that the driver is the one at fault, not the one being rear ended or involved in an accident outside of their control resulting in them being ejected from their vehicle.

[tzs]

A good seat and shoulder belt can reduce your movement relative to the steering wheel from centrifugal forces during a sudden sharp high speed swerve to avoid an obstacle, which should reduce the chances that you will lose control.

[Arrath]

An individual choice that can endanger others when e.g. you cannonball through your own windshield and hit someone, or cause follow on accidents as people swerve out of your way, etc.

[bendbro]

Yes, you survive 2 tons of steel smashing into you only to die against .1 ton of perfectly aimed flesh. I wonder what the odds of this are? Just kidding, I'm not Wiley E Coyote so I don't waste time worrying over comically unlikely ways to die. I do however spend time worrying about people with comically detached models of physical reality.

[everforward]

It's actually a fairly substantial risk, but from unbuckled passengers in the back slamming into the person in front of them. Studies said about a 20% increase in risk of death to the person in the front.

[cityofdelusion]

This seems so incredibly unlikely that it is going to need some kind of citation. Deer hitting cars is a drop in the bucket in terms of human mortality and must be several orders of magnitude more common than flying unbuckled humans.

[WalterBright]

Not going to happen.

[lovich]

Well that’s a bold statement, guess the rest of us are just wrong and there are no externalities associated with not wearing a seat belt

[WalterBright]

First off, the physics are you are going to be thrown into whatever your car hit. Second, I've never, ever heard of a flying body hurting someone else.

[ok_dad]

My parents were both in vehicle accident reconstruction for just such things and I don’t even know how to count how many times I watched a car accident reconstruction (dummies in crash test vehicles) end in a dummy being thrown in any direction you could imagine. It might not hit a person but it will hit a car in the other lanes and cause accidents.

You’re out of your element here, stick to compilers for once.

[WalterBright]

Do you know of any such accidents in real life? Do you have any statistics on ejected people causing other accidents?

What about when people were saved because they were flung from a car? Like when the car catches fire, falls off a bridge, goes into the river, goes into another lane to be smacked by a truck?

[kortilla]

> You’re out of your element here, stick to compilers for once.

This is an incredibly stupid way to engage people. He has a degree in aerospace engineering from Caltech and IIRC worked for Boeing on the 757 before getting into compilers.

You’re argument is “you are an expert in one thing and thus can’t know other things.” Take a moment to reflect on why that ends up just making you look really dumb.

[bendbro]

> It might not hit a person but it will hit a car in the other lanes and cause accidents

A butterfly flaps its wings in China causing ok_dad to speculate wildly about the deadly consequences of car fired human projectiles.

We definitely need to ban butterflies.

[jahewson]

Well, that’s because almost everyone wears a seatbelt.

[bendbro]

Rube Goldberg called and he wants his accident back

[BrianHenryIE]

Graphic car safety ad about seatbelts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epTdI-9V6Jk

[WalterBright]

When I drive I don't move unless my passengers buckle up. When I'm the driver, it's my rules.

[throwaway0a5e]

That's like the car equivalent of D.A.R.E. It's so farcical it does more harm than good.

[BrianHenryIE]

Anecdotally, drink driving is more common in California than in Ireland, maybe because I grew up with ads like these on TV:

https://youtu.be/xtJqw--DGl8

And a cursory search says:

> threat-based road safety communications that target affective (fear) and cognitive (perceived efficacy) mechanisms can positively affect driving behaviours

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12889-016-3227-2