Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!decvax!cca!inmet!nrh From: nrh@inmet.UUCP Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Re: Massachusetts seat belt law (Pre Message-ID: <7800876@inmet.UUCP> Date: Sun, 5-Jan-86 00:54:00 EST Article-I.D.: inmet.7800876 Posted: Sun Jan 5 00:54:00 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 6-Jan-86 20:46:02 EST References: <2438@amdahl.UUCP> Lines: 162 Nf-ID: #R:amdahl:-243800:inmet:7800876:000:8053 Nf-From: inmet!nrh Jan 5 00:54:00 1986 >/* Written 8:17 pm Dec 28, 1985 by carnes@gargoyle in inmet:net.politics */ >[discussion of costs to society of non-use of seatbelts. About > $2500/occupant/crash, not including pain & suffering] >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. Actually, only some opponents of mandatory seat belt laws do this. Others simply point out that making seat-belt use mandatory on economic grounds is consistent with far-reaching regulation of LOTS of things on economic grounds, so perhaps we should either drop the idea, destroy the grounds (by internalizing the costs) or (to be consistent) regulate such behavior as smoking, overeating, not getting enough exercise, comsuming carcinogens, and being nice to each other. >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. My understanding (limited) is that it is not difficult to tell this in a negative sense -- that is, it is normally easy to tell if a seatbelt has borne a strain commensurate with the forces involved in keeping you from going through the windshield. It seems to me also, that it would suffice to place the burden of proof on the insurance companies -- that is, the difficulty in proving that someone WAS wearing a seatbelt need not arise -- it would be the insurance company's problem (always assuming that the agreement with the insured was worded this way) to establish that the insured had indeed violated the contract. My understanding is that this is pretty typical of the insurer-insured relationship now -- that is you do not have to establish that you are not defrauding the company, rather it is typically the company that must investigate you to find if you are defrauding it (although you must, of course, cooperate to some extent with such an investigation). >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. Only the non-user bears their costs? Nobody's proposed that! The non-user simply doesn't benefit from having joined whatever insurance pool he's in, that's all -- in other words, he gets a bill for services that OTHERWISE would have not cost him anything additional because he was a member of a pool. Of course, the big costs of running patrols, hospitals, welfare, and so on would be borne by the folks involved, whether those efforts are public or private -- non wearers would simply contribute more (and thus wearers would need to contribute less). >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? Hah! You don't even MENTION the difficulty of internalizing the glee if the person killed was horrid! The nice thing about those costs is that they are non-quantifiable, and hence fine fodder for emotional rhetoric, but very difficult to say anything useful about. I think we both sympathize with these families, and would rather they not suffer. Beyond that.... >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. The proponents of seat-belt laws write as if they don't realize that their opponents do NOT (so far as I know) disdain or oppose the wearing of seatbelts. >[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. Ho! I suppose you have compliance figures on the seat-belt laws? >Millions of nicotine >addicts would have to go cold turkey and people in the tobacco >industry would have to be compensated. But what about the folks in the hospital and ambulance business in the case of seat belts? Remember, those medical costs and such represented GAINS to someone else. Having instituted the seatbelt laws, should we now be required to "compensate" the folks in medicine? Undertakers? Road Crews? By the way, F. Paul Wilson wrote a very good short story on what happens when the government institutes socialized medicine and then figures out the best way to lower the high costs involved is to (get this) force everyone to eat better diets. The story's called "Lipidleggin'", and you can find it in the "Survival of Freedom" anthology edited by Pournelle & Carr. >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? Not at all! I merely support their right to be foolish if they don't wish to think about what's going to happen. I also have the queer idea that something shouldn't be illegal unless the law is to be enforced. >.... >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. This is nothing! Think about all the folks who (for some reason) do not wish to make it illegal to eat wrong! Think of all the Cancer victims who would have lived had they simply gotten less Soy sauce! I'm serious! This sort of emotional appeal ("people who oppose a law enforcing X should talk with people who might have benefited from such a law") is fine for rabble-rousing (and who am I to deny that there's a large "rabble" element in net.politics?) but has no place if you're trying to convince us that such a law is a good *idea*. It's worth pointing out that making seat-belt use REQUIRED doesn't make the 15-20,000 deaths go away -- nor will it be possible to show how many lives were saved because people decided to buckle up. >Or talk with quadriplegics, a large >proportion of whom received their injuries in auto accidents, and >*none* of whom had been wearing belts. The source for this remarkable statistic? >If you can convince such >persons that mandatory seat-belt laws are a bad idea, my hat's off to >you. I'm told that the Virginia (or was it one of the Carolinas?) branch of the American Cancer Society still refuses to admit that smoking causes cancer. Why? I don't know, but let's posit that they've got motives which may blind them to the evidence. I suspect the same to be true of those grief-stricken by loss. "Convincing" them would no more make the mandatory seat-belt law a good idea than "convincing" the Virginia ACS would make cigarette smoking a bad idea. You follow the logic? Convincing people of things is not the index of how true those things are unless the people involved don't have biases. Anyhow my final word here is a suggestion to buckle up!