
Why You Have to Wear a Seat Belt, but Can Drive a Motorcycle - Mitchhhs
http://mitchkirby.com/2015/05/11/seat-belts-motorcycle-red-states/
======
TrevorJ
It's all about reasonable safety balanced with freedom. Wearing a seatbelt
keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in terms of impinging on
freedom.

There's no equivalent on a motorcycle that checks both those boxes other than
the helmet laws we already have in many places.

There's no inconsistency here, it's the same philosophy but the outcomes are
different because the situations are different.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>Wearing a seatbelt keeps people a lot safer and has a really low cost in
terms of impinging on freedom.

I don't agree with that at all. There are too many opportunities for police to
stop motorists, which they use to pivot and further impinge upon peoples'
freedom. It is a common tactic for police to stop motorists for any of a
number of reasons such as this reason as a tactic to initiate a search of
their vehicle, and record the identities of driver and passengers. I am glad
that cars are equipped with seat belts, and of course it is wise to use them;
but I disagree that the state has much or any legitimacy in stopping a
motorist who was causing no negative effect on other motorists simply because
their seat belt was not visible. At its worst (and commonly) the seat belt
requirement is abused by greedy entities to drum up extra revenue to which
they would otherwise not be entitled.

~~~
TrevorJ
I see what you are driving at and I agree, the laws do get abused.

I think though, you may be slightly misunderstanding my point: Wearing a
seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way. It's not
hard to comply with the law, it doesn't cost you time or money and it doesn't
effect any of our other freedoms significantly.

To your point though: NOT wearing your belt is something that can land you in
situations that put you at risk of abuse to your freedoms.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>Wearing a seatbelt doesn't significantly reduce your freedom in any real way.

I agree. I wear my seat belt. I think it is foolish not to do so. I also think
it is a driver's right to decide that; and that a driver's failure to wear the
seat belt does not harm others in any appreciable way. It's also not a
requirement to fail to wear your seat belt in order for an officer to stop
you, s/he only needs to fail to notice your seat belt.

------
Karunamon
_can’t we agree that the law should at least strive to be consistent with
itself when possible?_

No, because putting consistency over correctness means instead of some right
and some wrong, you've either got 100% right (not possible in our world) or
100% wrong.

Besides that, consider that a state's laws are supposed to be an expression of
the values of their people, and it's entirely reasonable that a state might
tax cigarettes and alcohol differently, or have different laws for cars and
motorcycles. Depends on what the people want.

~~~
jrlocke
Inconsistency implies falsity

~~~
Karunamon
Humans are not logically consistent animals.

~~~
imaginenore
Some of us try to be.

~~~
AlexandrB
You'd have to be omniscient first. Otherwise you may always be inconsistent
when judged against context you're not aware of.

------
herbig
There's a lot of extremely biased assumptions going on here.

All of the numbers here are correlations only.

No definition is given for what "consistency" means. Taxing cigarettes but not
alcohol because of health is not, in my opinion, even remotely inconsistent.

Lastly, the article starts out asking a number of interesting questions and
answers none of them, including the one in the title.

If you go digging for statistical confirmation of your biases, you will find
it.

------
tghw
The argument that I've heard is that seat belts keep the driver in the seat,
making it more likely that he or she will have some control of the vehicle
after an abrupt maneuver, lowering the chances that the car just becomes an
unguided missile, which is more likely to hit something or someone else
without a driver.

Motorcycles don't really have the same issue, as they generally do a lot less
damage than a car since they weigh only a fraction as much. So helmet laws are
more a question of personal choice and how much influence the state government
wants to have over those decisions.

~~~
sparky_z
_If_ that's the justification, then shouldn't the law only apply to the driver
and not the passengers?

~~~
loco5niner
Here's an argument for that: Just like the car can become an unguided missile
endangering others, an unseat-belted passenger can become an unguided missile
endangering fellow passengers/driver.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Are we going to legislate that all of the potatoes in the back seat are
secured against becoming missiles as well?

~~~
loco5niner
Hardly a worthy comparison. How about this comparison instead? If I were to
transport my 25 lb kettle-bell, you can bet it will go in the trunk,
legislation or not.

------
jgroszko
The author here seems to be making the assumption that all these laws are
considered purely from a 'public health/safety' standpoint, without ever being
weighed against something else. If we wanted to evaluate laws purely under a
'health/safety' aspect we'd be scrutinizing the 2nd Amendment a lot more too,
or even car ownership in general. Luckily legislatures weigh these things
against other interests. People weigh gun ownership, motorcycles, and smoking
against their public health, because despite the risks these activities are
fun to do, make you feel good, etc.

Additionally, these issues aren't evaluated in isolation, there's lots of
competing interests. Auto manufacturers and consumer interest groups have
influence over seatbelt laws. For motorcycles there are ABATE groups in many
states that tend to lobby against motorcycle helmet laws. How much influence
these groups have may not necessarily be related to how safety conscious the
state is in other areas.

------
JoeAltmaier
"its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as a
result of people not wearing seat belts. "

Its easy to argue. Society spends 10's of thousands of dollars trying to
rescue and heal those that don't wear seat belts.

~~~
rcthompson
Also, if seatbelts weren't mandatory, it's conceivable that, in the event of a
collision, you could be found liable for injuries that would have been
prevented if the person wore a seatbelt. So yes, depending on the law, you
could be personally affected by someone else's decision not to wear a
seatbelt.

~~~
jessaustin
Victim-blaming is usually considered obnoxious. (It certainly is when
newspapers opine that cyclists run over by automobiles should have been
wearing helmets.) I wonder why that isn't the case here?

~~~
Vraxx
Probably because seat belts are ubiquitous and the cost of wearing one is
practically nil. When the preventative measures are that easy, so is the jump
to victim blaming. I'm not saying whether this is right one way or another,
but that's certainly a difference I see between seat belts and many other
preventative measures.

------
asuffield
Every time I see an article like this, it advances the "principle" that your
own death has no effect on anybody else in the world.

Never have I seen this justified in any plausible sense.

~~~
mod
Perhaps so, but to say that seat belt laws are to protect the society from
those who don't wear seat belts is equally unjustified.

Not to mention they can, and do, find all kinds of other ways to kill
themselves, both accidentally and intentionally--and almost none of those are
regulated in a similar fashion.

~~~
njharman
There are innumerable and obvious societal impacts to your personal
death/injury. From direct costs of EMS/Fire/medical care, to the minor
economic disruption/traffic, to the esoteric person who kills themselves not
wearing seat belt cut short their potential contribution to society.

~~~
mod
Right, my point was that I don't believe that's really the impetus for the
law.

------
vacri
> _If the repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision
> maker, its hard to argue that society as a whole bears a significant cost as
> a result of people not wearing seat belts._

So... occupants of cars aren't mothers? Or fathers? Or run businesses? Or
manage church bake sales? They aren't students with promising careers in
medicine ahead of them? They aren't passionate lovers or mentors or good
friends or musicians or even civil liberties lawyers?

When someone dies or is badly hurt, it doesn't affect just them. The author
has a pretty disturbed view on human interaction to make this assertion in the
first place. The argument that 'harm due to speed also hurt other people' and
'harm due to lack of seat belts only hurts the non-wearer' is specious.

------
megaman22
What states, outside of New Hampshire, don't require wearing a seat belt?

Live Free or Die, motherfucker :-)

~~~
rcthompson
> Live Free or Die

Or, as the evidence seems to show in this case, both.

~~~
pandler
I like the full quote better:

> Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.

Given that John Stark is the attributed author of the quote, I like to imagine
that his sister might have added, "Valar morghulis".

------
rifung
I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with higher
mortality rates. I thought the trend was to increase speed limits, and I
remember reading that at least for one of the states where they increased the
speed limit, people were still pretty much driving at the same speed.

It seems that the general consensus is the speed limit should be at the 85th
percentile to minimize accidents. However, this just considers minimizing
accidents, and I suppose I can see how we can lower the number of accidents
but also increase the mortality rate.

Also, I suppose it's not completely fair to compare different states, as what
works in one might not work in another and vice versa.

~~~
ska
> I am surprised that higher speed limits are so strongly correlated with
> higher mortality rates.

This really shouldn't be surprising: higher speed limits correlate with higher
average speeds, and while energy goes as the square of the velocity,
mitigation efforts do not.

No matter how well you engineer crumple zones, improve traction, give
automated braking responses... if you are going fast enough when you actually
hit something, it's the kinetic energy that is going to kill you.

Bear in mind that mortality rates and incident rates don't really reflect the
same things here.

~~~
njharman
It has a lot to do with reaction times as well. At higher speeds you've
already run into the idiot swerving into your lane (or whatever) by the time
your brain processes image.

------
derekp7
The big thing that a lot of these articles overlook, is that seatbelts keep
the driver in front of the steering wheel and potentially in better control of
a car during an accident -- whereas without one, it is possible to be thrown
to a different part of the car, and it keep going in a random direction
(thereby affecting others).

------
shalmanese
What I find is that people tend to vastly underestimate the role that path
dependence has on explaining history and then work to come up with just-so
stories that explain the result, absent path dependency.

Nobody ever sat down and rationally assessed the relative risk of motorcycles
vs seat belts and crafted a law to take the two into account. Instead, what
happened was at one point in time, a group of people lobbied and succeeded in
changing one status quo and at another point in time, some other group of
people lobbied and failed to change another status quo.

------
tzs
This submission raises an interesting question about HN submission policy with
regard to titles.

The actual title of the article is "Drive In A Red State? You’re More Likely
To Die. Here’s Why" (and there is an earlier submission using that title [1]).

However, it appears that the submitter may be the _author_ of the article.

Does the rule about not changing titles apply when it is the author of the
article doing the submission?

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9532196)

~~~
dang
The HN guidelines ask a submitter _not_ to use the original title when it's
linkbait, so the point seems moot in this case.

In general, though, we're a bit more tolerant of title alterations when the
author of the article is the one posting it, because the concerns around
editorializing are less pressing.

------
alkonaut
Seatbelt law without helmet law is a bit inconsistent as far as driver safety
goes.

Banning motorcycle riding outright is a much more invasive law than requiring
a seat belt. Costs vs benefits.

------
eweise
Comparing wearing a seat belt to driving a motorcycle is not really a fair
comparison. One is used for safety and the other is a transportation device.
If the comparison is between cars and motorcycles then clearly cars are safer.
If the comparison is between safety devices then seat belts are better than
helmets if you are in a car but worse if you are on a motorcycle.

------
ck2
You'll still have to wear seatbelts in a driverless car.

In fact it probably will refuse to go anywhere unless you do.

I think the seatbelt laws are to get federal funding, while motorcycles have
little political persuasion.

~~~
DrJokepu
Just curious, I know nothing about these things, how would it know what's a
human and what's e.g. a dog? It couldn't even rely on the fact that there must
be a human sitting in the driver's seat because the concept of the driver's
seat is meaningless in a truly self-driving car.

~~~
Nadya
FRS is always a possibility.

That being said - self-driving cars will likely allow manual overrides or
require a driver in the case of a manual override for the same reason space
shuttles have a cockpit and give astronauts the ability to manual override the
controls. People will _want_ the ability to have control _just in case_.

If a system fails, or says it is failing, and you feel you know it will work
or have an alternative that _might_ work. Having manual overrides as a fail
safe for software failure can be life saving.

For example, what if your brake sensor malfunctions and your car ceases to be
able to operate it's brakes? A manual pedal to brake the car could save your
life. Although _arguably redundant_ it will likely remain as part of the car
until enough time has passed that such fears are considered completely
unfounded.

"There hasn't been a brake sensor failure in over 25 years." Such a statement
could probably convince people a manual override brake system isn't needed and
they can save money by ditching it.

~~~
mod
Not to mention there will always be situations where you need to take control.

A flooded (but passable) road is an example that comes to mind--I don't
envision us programming our way out of that one.

Surely there's dozens of similar examples.

------
leni536
What about public transport? We don't have seat belts, we can even travel
_standing_ on a crowded bus. It doesn't seem to bother anyone apparently.

------
eximius
Well, there is an _incredibly_ easy and obvious answer to this.

Mothers.

Mothers of dead children have been a _huge_ force is traffic policy in the US.

------
njharman
Can't imagine how author pulls out of his ass the notion that speed limits are
less impinging on liberty than seat belts.

I also find it hard to believe author is not being disingenuous stating
"repercussions of not wearing seat belts only affect the decision maker".

The last couple paragraphs are opinions stated as facts and very much want the
reader to agree with them I can't help but feel the whole article/data was
just a means for author to push his opinion.

