Seatbelt Laws

My position is that seatbelt laws are extremely beneficial to society, and that it is ethically justified for the state to enforce them through legislation. I will show how this is true.Seatbelts improve safety.To be clear, my opponent has not contested the claim that seatbelts provide a major safety benefit by saving people from being killed and horribly injured. I believe the literature supporting this is indisputable. She merely asserts that this benefit is offsetted by other factors, that it is not a net benefit, and I will show that this is untrue.My opponent’s own sources show that wearing seatbelts is much safer than not wearing them. First she says that, in a sample of 28,911 deaths (combined restrained and unrestrained from 2006), a difference of 3,163 is statistically insignificant. That’s ridiculous. It’s 11% of the total 2006 deaths and 20% of the unrestrained deaths. This means that, in 2006, 20% fewer people died who were wearing seatbelts than weren’t. In 2002, the difference is even greater: 30% fewer restrained people died than unrestrained. She then goes on to claim that the marginal increase in restrained deaths from 2002 to 2006 (155, or 1%) is statistically significant -- an obvious double standard. What my opponent’s data really shows is a consistently present benefit of wearing a seatbelt.Contrary to my opponent’s argument, the safety increase of seatbelts is not “negated” by the increase in risky driving that they cause. She cites an article that blames a temporary spike in cyclist deaths on “risk compensation” from seatbelts. First of all, there is no evidence to support the claim that seatbelt laws made drivers more risky -- the authors simply assert it as the cause. Second, the authors even admit that the seatbelt law had an immediate benefit of reducing deaths by 25%, and the graph shows a consistent improvement in safety after 1989 [1]. That one datum spike doesn’t prove any of my opponent’s assertions.Also, it’s true that seatbelts themselves can cause injury, but as my opponent’s source notes, “almost all seat belt related injuries are caused by defects in the belt or improperly wearing them. And most injuries caused from the belts are still better than what happens to people who don't wear them at all” [2]. So the safety costs of seatbelts are mistakes, not inherent to the utility. No one is being forced to hurt himself.We should now be able to put to rest the unsupported claim that seatbelts are unsafe. The reality is that they drastically improve safety in automobile crashes.Seatbelts save money.While this benefit is secondary to safety, it is factual and deserves defending, as it is a utilitarian concern and a legitimate consideration in legislation. My opponent ignored the main financial cost of not wearing a seatbelt, which is hospital and medical service costs. Unrestrained car occupants are a burden to the whole health care system. They are injured much more severely, so they require much more attention in emergency services, long hospital stays, operations, and rehabilitation care.Seatbelts do not unjustly violate liberty.Let me briefly say that John Stuart Mill’s philosophical works are useful in determining whether those laws are just and appropriate according to utilitarianism, but his opinion is not the final word. Western legal systems sometimes -- and to the popular benefit of the societies they govern -- disagree with Mill in what degree of paternalism is acceptable.That being said, seatbelt laws are justified even under Mill’s libertarian utilitarianism. “Freedom can be restricted ... when its exercise would cause substantial or irreversible self-injury or would otherwise substantially compromise the agent’s ability to exercise her practical reason effectively in the future (weak paternalism)” [3]. For this reason, Mill does not support voluntary admittance into slavery even though it harms no one but the enslaved [3]. Accordingly, he would agree that seatbelt laws are just because they protect a person’s future capacity for agency.Even Mill’s harm principle applies to seatbelt laws: not wearing your seatbelt harms other occupants. As I said before, unrestrained car occupants can become projectiles within the car. This situation is not “rare” as my opponent claims, but it in fact has been studied and named “human collision” [4].For clarification, my opponent misrepresented the ethical implications of the opt-out provision that I suggested. As I said, most people would rather buckle up than get the sticker, so it would still result in a major safety improvement. People may exercise their liberty to not wear a seatbelt, but they do so at a cost to the rest of society and thus would be legitimately taxed.To conclude, seatbelts are undoubtedly a safety improvement and there are no substantial negating effects. It is justified to require the public to use seatbelts because it protects their lives and thus their agency. Therefore, seatbelt laws are preferable.1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...2. http://www.ehow.com...3. Mill’s Utilitarianism: Critical Essays, David Lyons. (available free on Google books)4. http://bmj-injuryprev.highwire.org...