Buckling Up For Your Own Good (and theirs too)

According to the Brant News today, 16,000 people in Brantford were detained and searched without a warrant this month…impressive.

Of course, that’s not exactly the wording of the original article.

We certainly have short memory spans. As recently as 40 years ago, any kind of “seat belt law” was considered an obnoxious invasion of liberty. But under the guise of “safety”, we have become very accustomed to laws that allow bureaucrats to dictate and mandate the devices we use for health care purposes. The promises of significantly reduced highway fatalities and lower insurance rates quickly found its way into the memory hole as the studies showed mixed results for the former and no impact on the latter.

Worse still, the “safety lobby” got its real start in the early 80’s, a coalition of the auto giants and insurance companies who were faced with pending legislation to install air bags, a hassle and expense they resisted. Transportation regulators hinted that if the safety lobby could pressure the government to pass seat belt laws, the industry could thereby pass the costs of its regulations to the consumer and taxpayer instead in the form of fines and higher insurance rates. This partially backfired for the auto makers and insurers since air bags were eventually mandated anyway, and costly lawsuits for the malfunction of seat belts as well as air bags have resulted (the costs for both, of course, went to the consumer). But it was an unqualified success for the state and an excellent example of the gradual growth of government power.

It began with a compromise, seat belt laws would only impact drivers who were already “bad” (stopped for other infractions) in what was called “secondary enforcement”. But of course, lobbyists continued to chip away at those limitations, and typical of the growth patterns of the regulatory state, soon enough, check points were set up with the express intent of checking specifically for seat belt infractions (and any other violations spotted during the visual search), a free surveillance/cost cutting service for the insurance companies and a permanent source of new tax revenue.