SEAT BELT LAWS: CREEPING SOCIALISM
The spread of seat belt laws across this nation represents the kind of creeping socialism lovers of freedom and responsibility detest. As competent adults, we make hundereds of decisions about my health and well being every day. We decide to go to work, pay bills, keep our wet fingers out of electrical outlets, etc. Yet the government has decided that we cannot handle making a simple decision about whether or not we wear a seat belt. Failure to wear a seat belt (in most areas) carries a fine between $10 and $100 plus court costs and any other surcharges the local grubberment cares to impose.
Being forced to wear seat belts by our ever increasingly intrustive government is a small thing...or is it?
All 50 states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) have mandatory seat belt laws. 11 states (plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) have "Primary Belt Use Laws". These laws enable law enforcement to stop drivers, or set up checkpoints for no other purpose than enforcing seat belt laws. Fines currently range from $10 to $95.
On January 23, 1997, President Clinton issued an Executive Order directing all agencies to: require on-the-job seat belt use for all federal employees; directing the Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Park service to institute programs and policies to increase seat belt use on DOD installations and in National Park areas; encouraging Tribal Governments to adopt programs and policies for highways on Tribal lands; and encouraging government contractors, subcontractors, and grantees to institute on-the-job seat belt use programs and policies for their employees.
Congress has yet to enact and fully fund Section 2002 (m) of the Administration's National Crossroads Transportation Efficiency Act of 1997 (NEXTEA) which provides incentive grants to states for improving their "occupant protection programs" or their seat belt use rates; and Section 11006 of the Surface Transportation Safety Act of 1997 which provides for a transfer of a certain percentage of a state's highway construction funds to safety programs, beginning in FY 2003, if the state fails to enact "Primary Seat Belt Laws" or fails to reach specified seat belt use levels.
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