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Cell phone/ Seat belt sting

BCKRider

Kbiker
A few days ago the cops in my nearest small town had a one-day "sting" operation on hand-held cell phone users. (Hands-free cell phones are legal in B.C.; seat belts mandatory.) Unfortunately the newspaper article had no info on where or how the cops did this, but the results were, at least for me, startling. They nailed 4 people for using a cell phone and 11 DRIVERS for not wearing a seat belt!

Hey, I can understand people driving drunk; in fact used to do it many years ago when that was just the norm. Can also understand using a hand-held cell phone, though that has never had any attraction for me. There are REASONS people drive after having a few drinks or use a cell phone while driving. And the statistics support the fact that you are much more likely to be involved in a crash if you do either. So good for enforcement of these laws.

What I just don't get is not wearing a seat belt! What is the payoff, aside from the 3 seconds it takes to click it in? Any of you not use a seat belt? Please tell us why.
 
I think it boils down to those folks think they should have the freedom to choose wether they wear a seatbelt or not.

I'd much rather see a stricter punishment for drinking and cell phone use than for seat belts. If you don't wear your seatbelt it does not affect me. Honestly I'd rather see people who don't want to wear them not wear them. No skin off my nose and it might help cleanse the gene pool. But drunk driving and cell use can directly affect me when you slam into me cause you didn't see me due to your cell phone usage or you passed out at the wheel while driving drunk.
 
From the thread title I thought I was going to
read about a cellphone holder for the seatbelt
that keeps the phone next to your ear hands free.

I want pictures!
 
Cell phones and drinking can and will distract drivers. As for the seat belt it is law so the paramedics do not have to pick you up in a shovel off the road after you go through the windshield. The biggest reason for seat belts is to save lives and to keep the cost of health care down (and it works).

If someone kills themselves I do not care as it is there problem and families. It is when they end up in the triage unit and in the hospital for 3 months recovering. This costs us all in the long run.
 
I think that the seat belt issue is financially a serious one. A person that gets into a bad crash W/O a seat belt on, is more likely to have very serious injuries (lots of studies to bear that out). Many of these folks may not have medical insurance and thus the burden for payment is absorbed by us, the tax payers. In Canada, where you have a sane and reasonable government that understands the value of universal healthcare, it puts an unneeded financial burden on your health care system. Why should any individual place that burden on the rest of the nation just because he or she does not like the idea of seat belts.
 
What I just don't get is not wearing a seat belt! What is the payoff, aside from the 3 seconds it takes to click it in? Any of you not use a seat belt? Please tell us why.

My 22-yr-old daughter, who was raised from birth to wear a seat belt, would forget to put hers on if her car did not remind her. She's just not attentive to doing it, I can't explain why. My other three kids were raised the same way and wear their seat belts habitually.

My wife won't drive anywhere without wearing a seat belt, but she finds it very uncomfortable across her chest due to asthma. She uses a small clip that relieves the chest strap tension so that she can breath and drive comfortably. It's not hard to imagine that some people would simply not wear the belt because it is too uncomfortable for health reasons.
 
To me, the seatbelt issue is the same as the helmet issue, it is simply that people don't want to be "inconvenienced".
It has nothing to do with "rights or choices", because I only see it that we North Americans are creatures of convenience and many won't accept anything that cause the slightest discomfort, restriction, or burden.

The "right" to go helmetless or seatbeltless, is a sham. Just like the assumption that driving on public roads is a "right or prvilige". When actually it DOES require involvement and responsibility on the part of the driver/rider. If that requirement is to wear a seatbelt or helmet, then so be it. But a great many people won't accept that.

Myself, I have worn seatbelts and helmets long before either became law. I honestly don't like the feeling of being loose and flopping around in a car in motion. Same for a helmet, I don't liek the exposed feeling of riding without wearing a helmet.
 
I don't even like hands free cell phone usage when driving. To me, it's like saying its OK that your drunk, just not OK that your holding the beer in your hand. Would it be better if the beer was in a cupholder and you drank it through a straw? Drunk is drunk, distracted by the phone is the same whether or not its in your hand or not. That fact has been proven in many studies.

Not wearing a seatbelt can affect others around you too. It will keep you in the drivers seat where you at least have some chance of controling the vehicle if you should suddenly skid, need to swerve, be hit by another vehicle. Without being belted in, the chances of you being tossed out from behind the wheel increase and then the vehicle becomes an unguided projectile. If there are others in the vehicle with you and you choose not to wear your seatbelt, you become a deadly projectile inside the vehicle. Even if they are belted in, you flying about inside the vehicle will probably affect their survival rates too. They can only hope that you are quickly and cleanly thrown free of the vehicle before you harm them.
 
Here in Massachusetts we are always near the bottom of the list for seatbelt use, yet we are always near the top for a well-educated population. So there is no correlation there. Strange.

Not wearing a seatbelt shows a general lack of responsibility and concern for one's self and others. If you have so little concern you should not be driving. If you feel inconvenienced by having to put on a seat belt (about 2 seconds of inconvenience) and possibly save your own and others' lives, you should not be driving. You are not allowed to fly on a commercial airliner without fastening your seatbelt, and flying is far safer statistically than driving. If you are not bright enough to figure out why, you shouldn't be driving.

Rant over. Don't get me started on the idiocy of cell phone use when driving.

pete (I feel better now, thanks)
 
Rarely when I want to listen to the airhead ticking away with a short jaunt around the block, warm and cold, and for the simple freedom of feeling the wind, I'll leave the helmet off. Granted I may be killed or worse, receive a fine. A mere two clicks from this or that lays a mandate constraining motorcycling in general, for our own safety. IMO, great topic, but can rightly veer into the political arena because it involves law.
 
I'm for the simple solution...Why not just take all the warning labels off society and let Darwinism takes its course?
 
I'm for the simple solution...Why not just take all the warning labels off society and let Darwinism takes its course?

If I didn't have to pay higher insurance and taxes to take care of all these miscreants I would agree with you.
On another note, if we did as you suggest, Tampa would likely become a ghost town. I rode through there four times last year and that was plenty.
 
Here in Massachusetts we are always near the bottom of the list for seatbelt use, yet we are always near the top for a well-educated population. So there is no correlation there. Strange.

Not wearing a seatbelt shows a general lack of responsibility and concern for one's self and others. If you have so little concern you should not be driving. If you feel inconvenienced by having to put on a seat belt (about 2 seconds of inconvenience) and possibly save your own and others' lives, you should not be driving. You are not allowed to fly on a commercial airliner without fastening your seatbelt, and flying is far safer statistically than driving. If you are not bright enough to figure out why, you shouldn't be driving.

"Not wearing a seatbelt shows a general lack of responsibility and concern for one's self and others."

Really? Let's take that kind of reasoning one step closer for everyone of us here. "Operating a motorcycle and/or lane splitting shows a general lack of responsibility and concern for one's self and others."

I'm sorry. I just don't see a solid connection between not wearing a seatbelt and lack of responsibility or concern for someone. As a medic, I never pulled a dead person out of a seat belt(I know, I was just lucky), and I believe you should belt up when behind the wheel. I wear a helmet by choice and not because The Peoples Republic of California passed a law forcing me. I don't drink and drive and I pull off to the side of the road to answer my cell phone. And yet, I have been cited for not wearing my belt. All it takes is being tired after a long shift at work and a slight lapse in memory or routine.

You don't see seatbelts on school buses, except for the driver. Does that mean the school district is not concerned about the children? I doubt it. When you fly on an airliner, are you normally required to use your seatbelt the whole flight? No. Does that mean the airlines is not worried about your safety? Of course not.

Personally, I think someone is nuts if they don't use seatbelts or other safety gear when it is available. Having a law on the books mandating it's availability is one thing. Laws forcing me to use it is something else.

For many people, it is not the "2 seconds of inconvenience" or even health issues. It boils down to the idea of someone regulating personal morals, free agency, or trying to protect us from ourselves.
 
For many people, it is not the "2 seconds of inconvenience" or even health issues. It boils down to the idea of someone regulating personal morals, free agency, or trying to protect us from ourselves.

This is what it comes down to for me. You said it better than I could in my post though :usa
 
It is not the role of government to protect us from ourselves, and yet --

I support Florida's refusal to make helmets mandatory for motorcycle operators or passengers over the age of 12, but I never ride without one and every time I see someone riding without a helmet I think "There goes Natural Selection waiting to happen."

Applying this mindset to seatbelts: A case can be argued that a driver not wearing a seatbelt may be more apt to lose control of his or her vehicle in a minor accident that doesn't stop the vehicle, or during a sudden violent avoidance maneuver (though bucket seats and center armrests make this highly unlikely), and therefore a driver's use of a seatbelt has a potential impact on others. Further, I can buy into an owner's responsibility to provide seatbelts for all occupants so that they can choose to wear them if they wish.

But frankly I think laws making seatbelt use mandatory for adults make as much sense as trying to stop psychos from shooting up a school by making certain kinds of firearms illegal: it's an exercise in political expediency that has no positive impact on society.

Convince me that a law justly proteccts others from me, rather than me from myself, and I'll support it. I don't see that with seatbelt or helmet laws, though I think the only sane personal choice for both is to use them.
 
It seems like almost all of the laws that are now being passed fall in to the " it's an exercise in political expediency that has no positive impact on society" group. It is amazing, our elected officials don't have time to balance the budget, but they have time to pass laws that give us poorer quality gasoline and force auto companies to produce electric cars that most people can't afford or don't want.

If I don't stop now, I will surely end up making this a political post by comments about mandatory recycling and/or gun control. We can't have that now, can we?
 
Why do people take these risks? Easy. To click a seat belt or let the phone ring they have to admit they aren't invincible. They are mere mortals that any number of bad things could happen to. If they aren't invincible then what about cigarettes, texting, un-safe sex or their bacon diet or cholesterol? "No, lets just keep the door closed on all this stuff or life is too boring to even think about."
 
It comes to mind, how did our forebearers ever get to where they needed to be without great overseers telling them what to do, where to go, what eat etc.? We may have smoked plenty in the past, ridden our pants off through the middle of the night, took risks in hand, buried our dead without oncologists hovering, and never thought twice about cell phones and PSAs. Never had a seat belt until my brother installed a set in our '63 Chevy. Never used one until '68 in my Volvo. Natural selection used to be a way of life. Had to look out for yerself in the not too distant past. Just a thought or two.
 
Not wearing a seatbelt shows a general lack of responsibility and concern for one's self and others. If you have so little concern you should not be driving. If you feel inconvenienced by having to put on a seat belt (about 2 seconds of inconvenience) and possibly save your own and others' lives, you should not be driving. You are not allowed to fly on a commercial airliner without fastening your seatbelt, and flying is far safer statistically than driving. If you are not bright enough to figure out why, you shouldn't be driving.

Using the same logic, if you have so little concern for oneself and others you should not:
Ride a motorcycle, bicycle, skateboard, ATV, Ski, waterski, own a gun, cross the street, use rollerskates, hangglide, it goes on and on, and on.

We have so many regulations in this country, we have no freedom left. I don't wear a seatbelt because I have been in 3 automobile accidents during my lifetime that would have killed me had I been wearing one. So it's my CHOICE not to wear one. Remember when we used to have choices ?

Ken
 
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