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From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.auto
Subject: Re: Massachusetts seat belt law
Message-ID: <285@gargoyle.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Dec-85 20:17:38 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.285
Posted: Sat Dec 28 20:17:38 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 29-Dec-85 06:19:08 EST
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Distribution: net
Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept.
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Xref: watmath net.politics:12700 net.auto:8910

A 1979 Univ. of North Carolina study estimated that the direct costs
associated with non-use of a lap and shoulder belt restraint is about
$500 per occupant per crash.  Direct costs include hospital costs,
professional fees, lost wages, and funeral expenses.  The societal
costs, which include direct costs, are about $2500 per occupant per
crash.  Societal costs include all medical costs, funeral costs,
legal and court costs, insurance costs, costs of investigating
accidents, and costs from lost productivity due to disability, but do
not include the unquantifiable pain and suffering experienced by
victims and their loved ones.

Opponents of mandatory seat-belt laws propose to deal with this
situation by internalizing the costs of seat-belt non-use, by making
the non-user pay the marginal cost incurred by his or her non-use,
through higher insurance premiums, etc.  I believe that this is
unrealistic and utopian.  It might be difficult in some cases to tell
if an accident victim had been wearing a belt, and it would often be
difficult to tell if non-use had contributed to causing an accident,
as sometimes happens when the driver is thrown to one side.  Then the
cost of police, ambulance, ER, rehabilitation, and survivor welfare
payments would also have to be internalized so that only the non-user
bore their cost.  I don't see how this can realistically be done,
particularly in the case of poor people, unless we are going to
refuse emergency room and rehabilitation services to people who
cannot pay for them.  Finally, how do you internalize the suffering
and general disruption that your death or serious injury imposes on
other people, particularly your family and co-workers?  The opponents
of seat-belt laws sometimes write as if the only person who would
care if they died were themselves.  So I think a reasonable albeit
imperfect solution is to make seat-belt use mandatory.

[One would not necessarily favor a general ban on cigarette smoking by
the same reasoning.  I favor increased insurance premiums for
smokers, since it can be determined if one is a smoker or not.  A
general ban on cigarettes would, like Prohibition and unlike
seat-belt laws, be very difficult to enforce.  Millions of nicotine
addicts would have to go cold turkey and people in the tobacco
industry would have to be compensated.  It is not a good analogy,
although I do favor societal measures to reduce smoking (the proposed
ban on cigarette advertising is worthy of consideration).]

In states that do not have seat-belt laws, about 6 out of 7 motorists
are not using belts at a given time.  Do you really think that these
motorists, like mountain climbers, have rationally weighed the risks
and benefits and concluded that the 1.7 seconds they save or supposed
increased comfort (I think seat-belts are very comfortable) outweighs
the additional risk?  Or is it more like this:  You get into the car
and don't even think about belts.  You don't think about the
possibility of an accident because it is very unpleasant to think of
such a thing happening to *you*.  If you do think about accidents you
misjudge their likelihood and their potential costs to you and
others.  If you are a passenger you don't want to insult the driver
by buckling up if, as is likely, he does not.  If you are the driver
you don't want to appear chicken to your passengers (don't laugh
unless you have never cared if anyone thought you were chicken,
especially as an adolescent).  Perhaps you don't use the belt simply
because you have never formed the habit, and humans are creatures of
habit.  I am trying to point out the complexities involved in such
apparently simple acts of "free" choice, and that a seat-belt law 
that is enforced can provide benefits to the belt user himself, and
as judged by himself.  

On the order of 15-20,000 deaths a year (and many more serious injuries)
are attributed to seat-belt non-use in the US.  I wish opponents of
seat-belt laws would talk to the families and friends of these
victims, such as a couple I know of who lost their teenage daughter
in an accident where it was clear that she would not have died if she
had been wearing a belt.  Or talk with quadriplegics, a large
proportion of whom received their injuries in auto accidents, and
*none* of whom had been wearing belts.  If you can convince such
persons that mandatory seat-belt laws are a bad idea, my hat's off to
you.
-- 
Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes