From: smith@ctron.com (Larry Smith)
Newsgroups: rec.autos
Subject: Re: Two articles on seat belts
Date: 14 Oct 92 13:03:00 GMT
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.

In article <26311@oasys.dt.navy.mil>, bense@oasys.dt.navy.mil (Ron Bense) writes:
>In rec.autos, pebi@aem.umn.edu (Peter A. Bidian) writes:

>>Yes, it will. If you get badly injured w/o seatbelts vs. w/ seatbelts
>>the insurance pays more money for you... and all the rest of us pick up the
>>tab.

>All the more reason to make it a law that insurance only has to pay
>for injuries to belted occupants.

I agree with you in principle, but I don't think it works that way in real
life now, nor do I think it could even under a more Libertarian ideal.  Let
me explain why I think so.

Accident victims are usually rushed to the nearest hospital.  We are already
having serious problems with such victims being turned away when those
hospitals are private and there is any doubt about their ability to pay.
Patients have died en route to a second hospital.  It is not practical to
make people's lives hinge on whether they carry their insurance card or not,
it might get lost, it might get burned along with the victim in a fire, it
might fall out when they are put in the ambulance, a thousand things might
happen to it.  Hospitals - even private ones - should not be permitted to
turn patients away.  But neither can we stick them with the bill after they
treat someone without insurance.  Now, you might claim that the patients
should foot the bill, and you'd be right, but there is no collection mech-
anism for that in this country except for a lawsuit.  You _know_ that that
just means the lawyers get even more money, and hospitals wind up caught in
an endless round of court appearances, which also cost money and which are
not, in our system, re-imbursible without more legal finagling.

It is true these are issues that must be addressed in a larger context, and
must, in fact, be solved to some degree or our health-care system will
continue to slide in quality and skyrocket in cost.  But given the number
of injuries that are caused by improper belt use, I feel this in one area
where a cost-effective analysis shows us that some gov't regulation is
warranted, at least until the other issues are addressed.  But laws requiring
seatbelt use are only marginally effective and, let's face it, prone to
abuse by police.  Regulations for "safety devices" are a statistical crap
shoot, compromising the safety of thoughtful human beings, who are in a
minority in this country, in order to save more unbelted morons, a significant
majority.  A simple transmission interlock forbidding vehicle motion until all
occupants are belted is a simple, cheap solution.  Add to it a law forbidding
damaging or disabling the interlock, and I believe we have a very cost-
effective solution that doesn't damage any personal liberty.

Any accident that shows unbelted injuries could impound the car and prove in
a criminal court - _not_ a civil court, "The State Vs. an Unbelted Moron" is
handled very differently from "Xyzzy Hospital Versus Timothy J. Nitwit" - that
the device had been disabled.  The hospital that treated the moron who did that
would be paid from a fund financed by fines on people convicted under that law.

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.