There are laws in place to protect people from serious injury or death. As life is important not to just yourself or your family, it is important to the community as well. Our government knows the value of life and is why they wish to make laws to protect and save lives. When it comes to seat belts, its not that we are trying to take freedom away from those who don’t like to use them. They were created because its proven that in car accidents, seat belts save you and passengers from serious bodily harm or death.
When you think of individual rights, you have to think of the lives of others, not just yourself. Take drinking and driving for example. If you were completely sober and had to go somewhere with someone that you knew was too impaired to operate a vehicle, would you let them drive you? Of course not! You are thinking about making it to that destination safely. That is the reason seat belts and laws for wearing them exist. We don’t go driving anticipating that an accident will happen, but wearing a seat belt will prepare you in case an accident should occur.
In car accidents there are many things that happen beyond our control. In serious car flipping or bumper smashing accidents, seat belts have saved millions of lives. An example of a car getting flipped for running off the side of the road. The seat belt keeps you from falling out of your seat and smashing your head into the glass, or forcing your head through the top, possibly snapping your spinal cord. In bumper accidents where you are moving 60 miles an hour and seconds later completely stopped, the force stopping you from going through the window is the seat belt. Sure there may be whiplash involved, but there are far fewer serious injuries from wearing a seat belt than from those not.
I often compare seat belts to the ridiculous warning signs you may see on every day products. Danger signs not to swallow house-hold cleaners. Operating instructions for a washing machine, before operating, remove small children pets and other foreign debris. Why on earth do we have these common sense warnings on these products? Because someone has tried it before and sued the company that didn’t have that warning label on there. You can’t sue car makers or the government from trying to protect you in case of a car accident. We have seat belts in our vehicles for a reason, use them!