From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.autos
Subject: Re: Two articles on seat belts
Date: 16 Oct 92 12:21:49 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <1bhd76INN6vn@bigboote.WPI.EDU>, walkerr@bigwpi.WPI.EDU (Robert A Walker) writes:
>In article <26355@oasys.dt.navy.mil> bense@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Ronald Bense) writes:
>>indicating that the car would be auctioned off because the unbelted
>>moron has given up his right to drive.

>There is no "right" to drive,  driving is a privledge.  Or so i was told
>in driving school

Your driving school is a part of a large system in this country dedicated
to making people believe this poppycock.

>                  and since there is nothing in the bill of rights that
>says that one has the "right to drive".

To the very contrary.  The Ninth Amendment states clearly and in no uncertain
terms that rights _not_ specifically enumerated are to be protected as well.
It is only the tacit admission of people like yourself, brainwashed by a
system with a vested interest in propagating the fiction that all the rights
we have are in the Bill of Rights, that allows gov't to deny recognition of
that right.  But that is to be expected, the Second Amendment states just as
clearly that the right to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia,
where dictionaries of the time define militias as non-gov't bodies, and it has
_still_ been shot to pieces by enthusiastic legislators, ably assisted by the
gun-control lobby.

>                                         Think about it, isn't the government
>nice to let us drive on their roads?  So we all own them, we all own a 
>piece of a nuclear missile, but we can't use them any time we want to.

Sarcasm.  But the point is well-taken, where you are wrong is that you _do_
have Constitutional justification for claiming a right to drive - or, more
generally, a right to operate machinery in a fashion that does not endanger
other citizens.

>I only want to make
>>those that choose to drive without belts pay for their own medical costs,
>>and not pass it off to those of us that are more responsible.

>	More responsible?  What are you doing getting into accidents in
>the first place?  The way I see it, if you don't live in Massachusettes, then
>you have no right/need to complain.

I have no idea what your point is.

>                                    What if it is an old car that is not 
>equipped with seat belts?  Is that excusable or does the owner have to 
>put them in,

I've never liked the grandfathering that is implicit in all clean-air laws
and safety laws.  Old cars are now a tiny percent of all operating vehicles,
but they are now responsible for almost 90% of the pollution cars emit.  Rather
than taking this as a reason to condemn old cars, gov't instead takes it as
justification for tightening the screws even more on new cars, driving up the
prices and reducing the incentive to upgrade old smokers for newer, more
fuel efficient, less polluting, safer cars.  Yes, I think it _is_ reasonable
to require that older cars be retrofitted with equipment required of newer
ones - or condemn them outright.

>I wouldn't exactly call it
>responsibility, because I know a person that simply refuses to wear a seat belt
>after his mother was hit by a truck, the reason she is alive today is because
>her seat belt didn't hold her into her seat, but let her *fly* across the car
>out of harms way.  Would it have been responsible for the government to fine
>her and take away her car because she wasn't wearing a seat belt, even though
>if she were she would have been dead?  

Yes, I think so.  Because 99.9999% of the time, it would have been the other
way around, and people love to use anecdotal evidence like this to justify
what they want to do anyway.  I've had up to the bridge of my nose with stories
about people thrown from cars and "saved" from trains, bridge abutments, or
whatever, they do nothing to justify not wearing belts when anyone with even
a tiny modicum of statistical training can look at the highway injury figures
and tell that belts _do_ reduce or eliminate injuries.  Your friend doesn't
refuse to wear his belt because of his mother's experience, he refuses to wear
his belt because he doesn't like to wear it, his mother is mere justification.
And when they have to scrape him off the inside of his car because he was in
a majority accident where a belt might have saved him, _I_ don't want to see
his stupid medical bills on _my_ insurance.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want,
it is the freedom to do whatever we are able.