this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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Not wearing a seatbelt should be completely legal (once you're over 18). It's stupid, but it should absolutely be legal.
No. It also puts the other party's life (in a crash) in danger.
Nope, it doesn't.
The chances of that happening are so astronomically low as to be completely irrelevant, and it doesn't hold a candle to the violation of personal liberty.
?????? Astronomically low? Even a crash at 10 to 20 Km/h can turn you into a meat projectile, dumbass
If you are a passenger sitting behind someone and you don't use your seatbelt you crush the person in front of you in case of a frontal colision, and if you are sitting next to someone and get hit from the side you can break both your skulls on each other
You live in civilization -- that's a choice you made. You adhere to a social contract. Your liberty after a certain point takes a back seat. This shouldn't need explaining.
personal liberty includes children's right to have a parent alive and well for as long as possible even if they're too stupid to take measures against risk of an accident.
all laws are limits on personal liberty. that alone isn't a good argument against any law.
also if you're gonna say the risk of something is astronomically low you have to back it up. and even then it's not a good argument.
My wife works in a hospital and receives patients from car crashes. If driving without a seatbelt was legal she would find another job.
Intact she has worked in a country where no one, even kids are required to wear seatbelts, and she doesn't want to work like that now
This is like the 3rd or 4th dumb take I've seen come out of lemm.ee users within the past few hours.
Yall must be migrating from the highly intellectual youtube community section.
At least the other people complaining and downvoting here are bringing actual arguments to the table and engaging in productive dialogue.
What a useless comment.
Whoosh
Since you don't care about human life, maybe money matters more to you: Seatbelts decrease auto insurance costs.
I absolutely care about human life, and it's sad and senseless when people kill themselves with stupid choices.
I just respect their humanity enough to not impose my will on theirs, when their decisions don't cause significant enough externalities for the people around them to justify treating them as less human than I see myself.
And legal penalties for high BMI decreases health insurance costs, which are much, much higher than car insurance costs (as well as preventing far more needless deaths, since you're such a humanitarian).
Why is freedom of choice valid in the more egregious cost scenario but not less egregious one?
Shitty whataboutism
I get that this is an onion-derived convo and I see the wishy-washy word there too.
But if I were to swerve and miss a child running into the street and run into your car instead, I will have assumed safety features would protect you when instead I've just killed someone not wearing a seatbelt. Humans are seriously squishy.
Clearly from a country without socialized healthcare...
While at it, we should legalize drunk driving. Drunk driving got a bad name in the past because irresponsible drunk drivers were drinking behind the wheel and purposefully running people over. My father drove drunk for 30 years and he was only in 7 car accidents. It’s non sense.
I agree. It is VERY stupid to not wear one, but seatbelt laws in the US were a test of control, not safety.
Seatbelts are a constitutional violation on personal freedom. Argue all you want, but they are.
which part of the constitution was the seatbelt law supposed to be violating again?
See, this is what happens when they stop teaching civics in school. Article VIII § 2, "in the event that some means of transportation referred to as an automobile is invented, Congress shall enact no laws that infringe on the inalienable right of all men to launch themselves through the windshield of said automobiles."
At least read the constitution if you're gonna make claims like this
thats my bad. good catch.
I mean, then so is not allowing people to randomly test nukes on their own property.
As is every law against suicide or selling clearly harmful chemicals.
The penalty is a ticket, and rarely enforced, get over your shit.
If you think about it, all regulations stemming from the DoT are.
They're infringing on my right to drive with no head or taillights.
They're infringing on my right to ignore traffic signs.
They're infringing on my right to drive on the left side of the road.
They're infringing on my right to drive a monster truck on the highway.
In a truly free country, I could drive my truck with 66" tires down the so-called "wrong" side of the road in the dead of night with no lights whatsoever. Sure, I might injure or kill someone, but I also might not, and stopping me from doing so is clearly stopping me from my pursuit of happiness.
Tail lights and the like are required for the safety of others. Seatbelts are basically the government being your mom and making you wear a winter coat because she worries.
The same goes for regulations requiring air bags, crumple zones, tempered glass windows, and other safety features designed to protect the occupants of a vehicle. If seatbelts are government overreach, then so are these. It's my God-given right to die as violently as possible in an easily-preventable accident.
Those are regulations upon the automobile industry.
They can make seatbelt installation mandatory, but forcing people to wear them is a violation of personal freedom.
It is what it is. Motorcycle helmets are exactly the same. Your state may require them, my state has declared helmet laws unconstitutional. This is from New Hampshire, the only state where seat belts are not required:
[New Hampshire has] "a strong emphasis on individual liberty and a reluctance to infringe on personal freedoms, rooted in their state motto, "Live Free or Die". Many residents and lawmakers believe the government should not dictate personal choices, such as whether or not to wear a seat belt. "
Do you also think it should be the law for car manufacturers to provide seatbelts? If you don't, then you've got an even worse take
Wearing a seatbelt should 100% be the law. It affects others, you're just doing mental gymnastics to pretend it doesn't.
If you didn't mandate seatbelt usage it would take up extra valuable hospital resources, extra valuable emergency response resources, and simply expose more people to death of someone they know.
Go live outside of society, if you truly feel this way. Honestly.
Take your downvotes as a small microcosm that the vast majority of society is not with you on this, and maybe reconsider.