From: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!wagner Newsgroups: net.auto Title: Re: seatbelts and freedom Article-I.D.: utcsstat.305 Posted: Tue Aug 17 09:33:42 1982 Received: Tue Aug 17 11:31:13 1982 References: watmath.3319 The arguements for free will and not being forced to use a seatbelt are obvious. Freedom has been defined as the right to swing your fist to within an inch of others. In other words, you are free to do anything which does not impact others.I purposely submitted the previous article to show how not wearing a seat belt impacts others. When you are unable to control your car in a panic situation, you clearly impact (no pun intended) others. And when you go flying out of your car, you dont just take your own life with you on a ride - on a crowded highway, you risk the lives of those in the cars you hit. This is a similar situation to the one that Americans seem to have a lot of trouble with - gun control. You are free to have a gun, but by doing so, you are potentially preparing to violate someone elses rights. Our countries differ in how we prepare for that possiblility. In Canada, you can have the gun, but it must be registered. In the US, it is such an inalienable right that the society can not even register the guns for its partial protection. (Please, I dont really want to start a gun control arguement, I just want to develop the thesis that society can partially control an item without the individual losing a lot of freedom, and society gains a lot of control over the case where the bounds of freedom have been exceeded by the individual). Now, I claim, and others on the net have backed me up, that ones control of a car in a panic situation is improved with seat belts. Aside from irregular planned panic stops to test the condition of my car and my reflexes, I have unfortunately had more practical experience with real-life accident and near-accident situations than I really wanted. If anyone contests the control question, they are welcome to come try it with me. Ill drive, you stay in the pasenger seat without a seat belt. There is a parking lot (huge) near where I grew up. Every year, once snow has fallen, preferably with some sheet ice, we go out on a saturday when the lot is empty, and practice panic stopping and turning on ice. I could never keep control of the car without a belt. And the situation is more contrived than real life (I know when I am going to hit the brakes, spin the car, etc). Ok, I hope people agree about control. If not, we can talk about it more later. Given control is improved with a belt, we then have the issue of projectile people, which I have gone over already, and wont belabour again, unless it becomes necessary. That leaves us with two situations where the issue of a belt is more than a personal issue. I claim that both of these situations are basically highway situations (sure, I recreated the glare ice situation at slower speeds, but then I *purposely* put the car in a tailspin. You dont tend to get thrown around so much in the city). Perhaps we could come to a compromise as follows: At low speeds, the largest likely result of not wearing a belt is self-inflicted injury only. So belts are optional at city speeds on city-quality roads or equivalent. On the highway, or any road, country included, with speed limit above the city norm (which we will call 50KMH or 30MPH for purposes of this discussion) belts are compulsory to go over the 50KMH limit. If the road has a minimum speed (freeway), then belts are de-facto necessary. On the country road, you can chose to do only 50KMH, but you will get a speeding/belt combined fine if you are caught above without a belt on. How does this strike the people of the net. It is trying to be a compromise between the rights of the individual and those of the larger number. If you write back with comments, please make it clear whether you are commenting on the theoretical level or the implimentation level, since there are clearly some implimentation level problems. I will talk in a few days about some implimentation details that have occured to me, but first, does anyone like it in principle? Michael Wagner, UTCS