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Seat Belt Laws

Your Opinion:

  • One federal seat belt law, but just for children

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    65
A seatbelt can keep a driver in their seat (and passangers from interfering with the driver) thereby promoting control of the vehicle after the initial collision. That's why not wearing it risks others.
 
Why a single shoulder belt? Wouldn't a crossing 'X' shoulder and chest belt be much safer? It would only require one additional click.

What do you mean by: "Burn up in a fire"?
Well there are technical, economic and ergonomic reasons. Seatbelts are now supplemented by supplemental restraint systems such are front airbags and/or side curtains. This prevents most primary and secondary impact injuries. Economically it would increase the cost of restraint systems due to vehicle structural modifications, increased complexity and testing. Ergonomically there is the issue of donning the restraint, which already exists with the current 3-point restraint. Given the differences in population anthropometrics and people's limited patience with donning seatbelts, it has been accepted that a 3-point restraint will provide a reasonable level of protection in most crashes.
 
Well there are technical, economic and ergonomic reasons. Seatbelts are now supplemented by supplemental restraint systems such are front airbags and/or side curtains. This prevents most primary and secondary impact injuries. Economically it would increase the cost of restraint systems due to vehicle structural modifications, increased complexity and testing. Ergonomically there is the issue of donning the restraint, which already exists with the current 3-point restraint. Given the differences in population anthropometrics and people's limited patience with donning seatbelts, it has been accepted that a 3-point restraint will provide a reasonable level of protection in most crashes.

while airbags do brace a person in the case of a crash, that is only from hitting the steering wheel. is a person is driving 60 mph and crashes with no seatbelt on, the airbag does not prevent them from going through the window. It's not my business though, if you don't want to take an extra 3 seconds to put on something that could keep you from flying hundreds of feet through the air in the case of a crash, have fun. I will be safely secured.
 
I still don't see how making someone wear a seat belt compares to a motorcycle?
 
My thinking is similar, BUT, that does NOT make it "right".
In truth, its not "your" car, its society's, its the other passengers in the vehicle, its even the man on the street.. Read the other posts as I have...
In other words, lets be less selfish and more aware of the way things really are....
As far as the silly "losing of rights and liberties" goes...this has been going on since day one, with the advent of the second human....

Um. No. It is MY car. Otherwise society would be paying MY insurance on MY car. And I shouldn't have to pay to get it smogged or have it filled with gas. When that happens, then yes. It can be societies car. Until then, NO IT IS NOT.

I am not being selfish, either. I choose to not wear it. ME. Its MY body. I am fed up with some government agency telling me what I can or can't do when it comes to just ME and MY BODY. Get it? Got it? Good.

By the way...have they passed a seat belt law for school buses yet?
 
Are there seat belts in trains?
 
Um. No. It is MY car. Otherwise society would be paying MY insurance on MY car. And I shouldn't have to pay to get it smogged or have it filled with gas. When that happens, then yes. It can be societies car. Until then, NO IT IS NOT
. Well you are driving on their roads.

I am not being selfish, either. I choose to not wear it. ME. Its MY body. I am fed up with some government agency telling me what I can or can't do when it comes to just ME and MY BODY. Get it? Got it? Good.
do you not live a good life, i am just trying to figure out why you wouldn't want to try and be as safe as possible, while you might be a good driver, nobody knows about drivers around you.

By the way...have they passed a seat belt law for school buses yet?
they need to, but if they don't the seats in front of them serve as protection.
 
I haven't been able to find this because neither statistic seems to be tracked.

So, we are basing laws on incomplete knowledge.

I do know however that people are run over by other drivers due to being ejected from their vehicles. That is a fact. How exactly do you stop that person from feeling bad for running over the guy/girl in the road who wouldn't have been there had they worn their seatbelt? Or are you going to try to tell me this doesn't happen? Maybe it isn't your problem?

I do not deny that as fact. But on the flip side people die due to seatbelts also. Do you deny that? You are quite willing to allow a law that is touted as saving a life while totally ignoring the fact that the same law (wearing seatbelts) can cause death also.

As for stopping that one person from feeling bad for running over the person? Counseling usually helps. But ultimately there is nothing you can do, if you want people to have fredom of choice anyways. If you don't want them to then you make them wear a seatbelt which can possibly kill them.

The arguement being used here to defend seatbelt laws in this case is that you affect others. Anything you do affects others either directly or indirectly. As such there are literally thousands, if not millions of laws that could be enacted based upon that reasoning. Where do you stop? Should we ban sky diving? After all, you might hit someone and kill them and yourselves if your parachute fails to open. How about bungee cord jumping? You could be paralyzed and be dependent upon the state for the rest of your life due to that. As such you are affecting others. Football? You can be paralyzed with that also. Race car driving? etc etc etc. I could name so many things. So...where do you stop?
 
So, we are basing laws on incomplete knowledge.



I do not deny that as fact. But on the flip side people die due to seatbelts also. Do you deny that? You are quite willing to allow a law that is touted as saving a life while totally ignoring the fact that the same law (wearing seatbelts) can cause death also.

As for stopping that one person from feeling bad for running over the person? Counseling usually helps. But ultimately there is nothing you can do, if you want people to have fredom of choice anyways. If you don't want them to then you make them wear a seatbelt which can possibly kill them.

The arguement being used here to defend seatbelt laws in this case is that you affect others. Anything you do affects others either directly or indirectly. As such there are literally thousands, if not millions of laws that could be enacted based upon that reasoning. Where do you stop? Should we ban sky diving? After all, you might hit someone and kill them and yourselves if your parachute fails to open. How about bungee cord jumping? You could be paralyzed and be dependent upon the state for the rest of your life due to that. As such you are affecting others. Football? You can be paralyzed with that also. Race car driving? etc etc etc. I could name so many things. So...where do you stop?

Prove that those people who died because of wearing their seatbelts wouldn't have died had they not been wearing it. There may be a couple of instances where some freak accident occurred where a person not wearing their seatbelt was ejected from the car, luckily didn't get hit by another car and avoided being crushed by something that fell on the car, but that is not going to happen very often. Even in the fire or trapped under water cases, it is more than plausible that the person could have suffered more extensive injuries not wearing their seatbelt that left them unable to avoid dying in the incident any way.

Since you are asking for numbers from me for how many people are killed because of those not wearing their seatbelts, why should you not be providing those same numbers for how many are killed purely because they were wearing their seatbelts?

There are a number of things that are considered when doing a cost/benefit analysis for anything. These include what the activity/thing is for, how it works, what affects how it works, how much it cost to implement safety standards, how those safety standards affect others, who is affected without those safety standards, etc. Looking at such an analysis of cost/benefit for seat belt laws easily points to the cost of not wearing a seat belt is much worse than the benefit of being able to not wear a seatbelt.
 
Prove that those people who died because of wearing their seatbelts wouldn't have died had they not been wearing it. There may be a couple of instances where some freak accident occurred where a person not wearing their seatbelt was ejected from the car, luckily didn't get hit by another car and avoided being crushed by something that fell on the car, but that is not going to happen very often. Even in the fire or trapped under water cases, it is more than plausible that the person could have suffered more extensive injuries not wearing their seatbelt that left them unable to avoid dying in the incident any way.

Proving that they wouldn't have died without the seatbelt is like asking a person to prove that God is real or not. It's impossible. You can't go back and recreate the same exact conditions of what happened and apply or not apply a seatbelt to the situation. What is known is that seatbelts were responsible for deaths.

Since you are asking for numbers from me for how many people are killed because of those not wearing their seatbelts, why should you not be providing those same numbers for how many are killed purely because they were wearing their seatbelts?

But that is not what I asked you. I asked you to compare the statistics of people being ejected due to not wearing a seat belt and those that died because of wearing a seat belt.

But honestly I don't know how many die because of a seat belt. There isn't any statistic that I can find on it. Although I have found reports of people dying due to not wearing a seat belt correctly or because of bad manufacturing of the seat belts, but even those didn't show the statistics of it. Which kind of brings up a question in itself...how do they know the person was wearing a seatbelt incorrectly? In an accident everything moves and where they end up after the crash isn't always the same place where they were originally. I suspect that there's a bit of dishonesty going on there. Of course nothing that I, or anyone, can really prove.

There are a number of things that are considered when doing a cost/benefit analysis for anything. These include what the activity/thing is for, how it works, what affects how it works, how much it cost to implement safety standards, how those safety standards affect others, who is affected without those safety standards, etc. Looking at such an analysis of cost/benefit for seat belt laws easily points to the cost of not wearing a seat belt is much worse than the benefit of being able to not wear a seatbelt.

And do they ever consider what the cost is in freedoms?

In 2009 there was 33,808 traffic fatalities. That includes any death that was the result of any type of motorized vehicle. Like a person standing on a sidewalk being hit by a car and dying. That's only 1.1 deaths out of 100 million miles traveled. Thats not many compared to the 300+ million people that live in the US.
 
. Well you are driving on their roads.

do you not live a good life, i am just trying to figure out why you wouldn't want to try and be as safe as possible, while you might be a good driver, nobody knows about drivers around you.

they need to, but if they don't the seats in front of them serve as protection.

Oh please. I'm driving on their roads???? So that gives "them" the right on what I do with my body????

How I live my life, not to be rude, is really nobodies business. I don't want to wear my seat belt while in my car, and frown on the government telling me I MUST wear one or I get fined....but school buses don't have seat belts for children on each seat, yet the buses are driving on "their" roads, right? And you are kidding yourself if you think the front seats are protection. So is my dash. See how silly that is?
 
Should there be one federal seat belt law declaring that every person in the vehicle should be wearing one whenever the vehicle is moving? Should I remain up to the states? Should some people be exempt from seat belt laws? Should there be seat belt laws at all for adults?

Discuss. :)
There should be no seat belt laws period.
 
I used to be an advocate of seat belt laws.

My political opinion, however, is that it should be up to the states and those living within those states to decide on such matters. I don't believe such laws, on a federal level, are within the scope of the powers granted to the federal government by the constitution.

I am, and will always be, an advocate of wearing the seatbelt.
I, however, on a personal level, don't believe the government, any government, should be in the business of mandating that someone wear a seat belt. I do not believe that the government should be in the business of making laws against things that cause harm to only ones self.

That aside, the appropriate place for the discussion is in state, not federal law.

Our federal government has too much power as it is.
 
I've never had to cut a dead body out of a seat belt.....

I have, however, had to block the roadway off for an investigation and standby as the fire department hosed off the blood from an ejected driver/passenger off of the highway.
 
But honestly I don't know how many die because of a seat belt. There isn't any statistic that I can find on it. Although I have found reports of people dying due to not wearing a seat belt correctly or because of bad manufacturing of the seat belts, but even those didn't show the statistics of it. Which kind of brings up a question in itself...how do they know the person was wearing a seatbelt incorrectly? In an accident everything moves and where they end up after the crash isn't always the same place where they were originally. I suspect that there's a bit of dishonesty going on there. Of course nothing that I, or anyone, can really prove.
Kal, if there is a fatality the accident investigation team check over the vehicle. Some of these checks can take considerable time. They check everything, mechanical, tyres, brakes, seatbelts etc. They would be able to determine if a seatbelt is faulty or not. I've been to accident scenes and it is more often than not very obvious if the occupants were wearing a seat belt at the time.

Like Cain, I am, and will always be, an advocate of wearing a seatbelt but i don't believe the government should mandate that you have to wear a seat belt. I wish everyone would though and i don't understand why some people are so against it.
 
Is there any Nascar drivers who refuse to wear a seatbelt restraint?
 
Are there seat belts in trains?

May be surprizing but their are few head-on or rear-end collisions with trains. And T-bone collisions are nearly nil.
 
Kal, if there is a fatality the accident investigation team check over the vehicle. Some of these checks can take considerable time. They check everything, mechanical, tyres, brakes, seatbelts etc. They would be able to determine if a seatbelt is faulty or not. I've been to accident scenes and it is more often than not very obvious if the occupants were wearing a seat belt at the time.

I wasn't asking how they knew that the person wasn't wearing a seat belt...thats normally obvious. No, what I asked was how they "know" that a seatbelt was being used incorrectly so as to kill the person.

Like Cain, I am, and will always be, an advocate of wearing a seatbelt but i don't believe the government should mandate that you have to wear a seat belt. I wish everyone would though and i don't understand why some people are so against it.

I don't because of my life experiances. I've seen the results of seat belt use and non-use in accidents. And each time it was contradictory to what the "experts" say.
 
Driving without a seatbelt endangers no one but the person that is not wearing a seatbelt.

Please don't take this personal. I just want to present a scenario to prove you're wrong.

Your driving down a highway with your two young children safely strapped in their car seats. You're not wearing any restraints because you firmly believe what you've falsely posted... that driving without a seatbelt endangers no one but the person that is not wearing a seatbelt.

Then an accident happens as it so often does... You hit something on the highway, or fall asleep, or get a blowout, or get sideswiped by a hit and run driver, or [insert action here] that causes your car to suddenly stop moving from a rate high enough to cause your body to be propelled forward into the exploding airbag and roof breaking your neck.

You're at peace now because your brain no longer functions and believe me that's a good thing since you don't have to hear your hysterical children calling for their daddy as the smoke and fire....over time....eventually burns them alive.

I've seen the results of people who think like you so I hope you change your mind.

Bee
 
would someone please..... Think of the children!!!!!!
 
would someone please..... Think of the children!!!!!!

Not sure if you meant that sarcastically or not, but am taking it as such as that seems to the be battle cry of anyone that tries to push an agenda that even remotely might affect a child.
 
Not sure if you meant that sarcastically or not, but am taking it as such as that seems to the be battle cry of anyone that tries to push an agenda that even remotely might affect a child.

It was extremely sarcastic.
 
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