Seat Belt Laws

Seatbelt Laws, Profiling and Restoring Liberty

09-03-01

State mandatory seatbelt harness laws are unconstitutional. They infringe on a person’s individual rights as guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, namely, the Fourth, Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Such laws are an unwarranted intrusion by government into the personal lives of citizens; denies through prior restraint the right to determine a person’s own individual personal safety and health care standards for one’s own body, the ultimate private property, and forcefully, under threat, mandates the personal opinion of those in government.

Also, the use of a seatbelt is no real guarantee of safety. While some people might be saved in certain kinds of traffic accidents using a seatbelt, there is ample evidence that in other kinds of accidents some people have been more seriously injured and even killed only because of seatbelt use. Further, there is ample evidence that in certain kinds of accidents, some people have been saved from death only because a seatbelt was not used. It should be fully noted in the latter case, such a person is subject to a fine for not dying in the accident using a so-called safety device arbitrarily chosen by politicians.

The fact is, the government has no constitutional authority to willingly and knowingly maim and kill some people through forced seatbelt use, just because the government hopes others will be saved merely by chance. The government has no right to take chances with a person’s body. Any medical professional who would attempt to force a person without full consent to use a device, take a drug, medicine, or have surgery to protect a person’s health, would be subject to full prosecution of the law. The courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have confirmed a person has the right to determine his/her own individual personal health care standards. Politicians, therefore, are claiming, through forced seatbelt use, more power over our bodies than legally allowed not only by the Constitution, but by federal and state laws.

Politicians who support seatbelt harness laws not only violate the Bill of Rights, they also are hypocrites in supposedly protecting society. When the device they force people to use causes more serious injuries or even kills, they refuse to be held financially responsible, while they demand others who cause injury or death to be held fully financially and legally responsible.

There is nothing wrong with voluntary seatbelt use, as it is with all other kinds of individual personal health care suggestions and recommendations in life; however, there is a great deal wrong with all state mandatory seatbelt harness laws. Such laws should be repealed in order to restore true liberty in the U.S.

Citizens in states with a people’s referendum should organize and place a seatbelt law repeal bill on the next ballot. In other states, people should attend en masse every political rally and make it clear they will only support state candidates for office who will promise to vote for repeal of the state’s seatbelt law if elected. Federal candidates for office should be told that they will not be supported unless they promise to stop the current annual spending of millions of federal taxes in support of seatbelt laws.

For more information contact: Wholdorf@msn.com

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