The culture around seatbelts in the US confounds me.
As an Australian I've spent my entire life wearing seatbelts. It's second nature. I don't even think about it. Taxis or otherwise. In fact I think it's required in all cases.
But in the US people seem to view the choice to turn a mild car accident into a severe or even fatal one as some kind of moral stance or personal freedom. Or rather any effort to require their use as Big Government or the Nanny State.
Some states still don't require rear passengers to wear seatbelts. [1]
Personally I wear a seatbelt in cabs and don't think twice about it. I'd feel uncomfortable without one.
The state I live in apparently has one of the highest seat belt usage rates (despite no rear seat belt enforcement for those 16+), which would explain why I almost never see people avoiding them. Sorting by usage in the Wikipedia table, I don't see much of a correlation between policy and the actual use except with primary vs. secondary enforcement, which would imply it's more cultural than not. That said, I agree that it's very disappointing that people don't understand the importance of wearing a seat belt when the cases are all around us showing that in almost every situation they are beneficial.
"Self-reported seatbelt use among adults in the United States increased steadily between 2002 and 2010, with the national prevalence reaching 87% in 2010. However, seatbelt use in states with secondary laws continues to lag behind that of states with primary laws. This lost opportunity has tremendous costs. NHTSA estimated that nearly 450 additional lives would have been saved, 12,000 nonfatal injuries prevented, and $1.6 billion in societal costs saved in 2009 alone if all states had primary laws."
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022437512...
Random anecdote: I travel to India on a reasonably regular basis to visit family, and I'm inevitably the one person that insists on wearing a seat belt and gets called out on it. Before traffic laws were actually (sort of) enforced in the city I generally visit, front seat occupants never really wore them either in my experience. It boggles my mind that people would travel at 120 km/h on inconsistently paved roads with insane drivers on the road and no seat belt to hold them in place.
It's useful to remember that while the extreme libetarian position is mostly American it's a minority position even in America. It overton windows the whole discussion, but most people who don't wear seatbelts are not "Free Men on the land" quoting Magna Carta. They're just not bothered.
I do not think the verbing of "Overton window" conveys the meaning you intend.
Did you mean, "it constrains itself to the Overton window?" Or, "it attempts to move the Overton window (up/down)?" Because saying it "overton windows" the discussion is meaningless.
The culture in the U.S. Is very much pro-seatbelt. Grizzly TV and billboard ads run all the time (in fact I just saw one last night). The slogan here is "click it or ticket" and police will ticket you for not wearing your belt.
For some bizzare reason though, it is somehow acceptable to not wear a belt when you are in a taxi, as if you are magically protected by the "professional" driver. I'm not 100% sure but it may have something to do with being in the back seat as well, as if that made it somehow safer.
I personally always fasten the seatbelt and have never had the slightest odd look from the taxi driver.
Seat belts are not required for people on the back seats, though. Since cab customers use the back seats, I believe that is the reason for not using seat belts on taxis.
There was an episode of Planet Money that covered why cars made for Europe can't be driven in the USA and vice versa.
IIRC one of the differences was in the airbag requirements, where cars designed for USA driving have air bag systems designed with the assumption the occupants aren't wearing seatbelts.
The state punishing people for not wearing seatbelts represents the idea that people need to be protected from themselves, by force.
If we go along that road, what's next? Should police officers be everywhere, ready to snatch a beer from an adult's hand if he seems to have had "too much" to drink already? What's too much? How do you know? The Nannier a state gets, the closer you are to complete tyranny.
Instead, we could just consider everyone personally responsible for their own choices.
- Didn't wear a seatbelt and got paralyzed in an accident? That's certainly tragic, but you're personally responsible for your choice to not wear a seatbelt.
- Didn't wear a seatbelt and nothing bad happened? Well good for you!
But the accidents are not usually single car incidents.
So, you are then leaving the driver of the other car having been in a fatal accident, because you did not want to wear a seatbelt.
If you want to drive on a private road without a seatbelt, drunk, whatever, that is entirely your choice. If you are likely to interact with other road users, then your choices impact others. (Note: your choices on a private road impact your family etc, but, you do not risk leaving someone feeling guilty because they had a car crash which killed someone)
It's a bit of a stretch to say that seatbelt tickets lead to tyranny--driving's mostly a privilege not a right. Seatbelts can affect other people due to an inability to control the vehicle after a collision, more likely use of emergency resources, etc. I generally agree with the sentiment about nanny states, though
Well, cletus, perhaps I can shed some light on this troubling question for you. Generally speaking (and there are naturally many exceptions, humans being the delightfully-flawed creatures that we are), the American government prefers to treat its citizens like competent adults who would rather not die if a suitable alternative presents itself. And so we don't generally have laws that require us to look both ways before crossing a street, or laws against poking angry bears with sticks and such like. America would rather you were smart enough not to do that sort of thing.
Of course, we have laws that all children must be suitably restrained in a motor vehicle because, hey, they're not adults. And we have laws that drivers must wear a seat belt because...well, I blame the insurance companies for that one. But America hopes you'll wear one anyway, because it's the smart thing to do.
The corollary, if you'll forgive my noticing, is that your government doesn't think you're smart enough to wear one on your own.
And so it's not really a "moral stance", but rather a general preference that our government not treat us like a bunch of ignorant monkeys. America wants you to live a long, happy life, but hey, you take your chances. Because you're an adult. And America will be sad if you fuck up and don't wear a seat belt, but life goes on. Mostly.
And now you may point out all the places where this convenant breaks down. The Drug War. The "Broken Windows" model of policing. The (up and coming!) Surveillance War. Well, fair point. Sure, we're flawed, remember? And so we try to make it better, over the long slog of decades. Sometimes it even works.
But the key idea, I think, is that by letting people fail, by letting them do stupid things, by treating them as fallible but sovereign citizens rather than a bunch of ape-men that need to be continually managed, they might become better, all on their own.
Well, that's a fair point, DanBC, but I generally regard laws about jaywalking to be a bit silly, and one of those things that I mentioned we'll need to fix at some point. If you're interested, I encourage you to Google "invention of jaywalking" for some insight into how that became a "crime".
And my thanks for your concern about downvotes, but I'm not very much bothered about them. What's the point of writing for the approval of a largely anonymous group of others? My only concern might be that my words would be construed as disrespectful to the late Dr Nash, but on a second reading I don't really see that. If some folks choose to disagree using some arbitrary points system instead of arguing properly, I guess that's their own affair.
As an Australian I've spent my entire life wearing seatbelts. It's second nature. I don't even think about it. Taxis or otherwise. In fact I think it's required in all cases.
But in the US people seem to view the choice to turn a mild car accident into a severe or even fatal one as some kind of moral stance or personal freedom. Or rather any effort to require their use as Big Government or the Nanny State.
Some states still don't require rear passengers to wear seatbelts. [1]
Personally I wear a seatbelt in cabs and don't think twice about it. I'd feel uncomfortable without one.
Anyway, sad news.
[1] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_legislation_in_the_...