Should State Police in my area be dedicating this solely to ticket people without seatbelts on?

The Mr. Pine

The cops have much better things to do. The highway patrol's don't. If you don't care if you die I don't see why they should. There is no correlation between bad driving and seat belt usage on any road. You get arrested for failing to kill yourself. I think there is just a hero complex out here among people that are unable to do their job so they can the easy worm shine it on like we care.

Aliz

I agree, but in my state you have to have been caught doing something else wrong (speeding & etc) before they can ticket you for the seat belt law.
I do not wear mine for medical reasons and my doctor has written me a note so than I do not have to wear one.
I just wonder what would happen if I were where you live. It looks like I'd be stopped every time a trooper saw me.

Patrick W

I could not agree with you more. I also can't believe the reply's from others. Excuse me but if I don't want to wear a seat belt, what the hell does anyone else care? Of course they serve a safety purpose but what is the big deal about? If people spent more time on learning how to be a safe driver instead of what their car can do to save their life after they get in an accident. How about prevention? It's funny that you can ride a motorcycle without a helmet or "seat belt" on the same roads but you get slammed for your question by moronic thinking.

Porterhouse

You do raise a few good points with your question. There is a little more to the issue than what is evident on the surface. Quite commonly Law Enforcement Officers will find parents who do not secure their children in the vehicle with a car seat or seatbelt. I think that an adult may use reasonable judgement for themselves, but to not secure their kids is really a crime!! Certainly not EVERY Officer is commited to enforcing just this one infraction, they are also still working to protect and serve the public from other criminal infractions while adding some public awareness to an issue that some people still need help on. It is a fact that seatbelts and safety restraints DO save lives.... there is some merit to the arguement that in RARE cases someone might not have been injured if they ad not been wearing a seatbelt. This is the exception, not the rule though.

Lets not forget that the local police and sheriffs are also involved, minus the publicity.

independant_009

the key word here is state police. There are local police who can handle city issues

Wassime

Do you mean State Police as in Troopers, or police in your state? Either way, they have every right to ticket you for seatbelt violations. The law exists for a good reason...people who are not wearing them usually get very dead when they get into a serious accident. Police never concentrate ALL their efforts on one thing, by the way. Saying THAT is ridiculous.

You have to have a victim for there to be a crime? Are you remedial? There are a ton of victimless crimes out there! The point of this one is to PREVENT you from being a victim. You might not be doing anything wrong, driving along not wearing your seatbelt, but the moron coming the other way after drinking a gallon of booze is. When that terrible collision happens and you eat your windshield, breaking your neck in the process, you might not die. You may just be paralized for the rest of your life. You think a law to try to help prevent this sort of thing happening to you should not be in place? You must be one of those "Oh, that'll never happen to me!" types of people. I'm sure a great number of the thousands killed in vehicle accidents (non-belted) last year thought that too before it happened to them. Sure, you could still die in your seatbelt, but how many people would actually survive when their cars are turned into accordians or flattened?

Yes, police have better things to do than forcing you to do what you should have the common sense and self respect to do on your own. But its people like you that force them to raise awareness by heavily enforcing the law for a set amount of time. Nobody who has any kind of humanity wants to see somebody die a horrible death, even if they are too stupid to protect themselves.

And last, but definitely not least, police do not harass the public, you ingrate. Yes, the motto is 'protect and serve'. In this case they're protecting you against your own ignorance, and serving you by suspossedly teaching you how to take care of yourself. I say supossedly because you probably don't care about protecting yourself anyway. You complain that they are harassing the public by trying to help them stay alive. Those same police are the ones you'd call if something YOU thought was a crime happened. Its the same old problem...just because you don't think its wrong doesn't make a bit of difference. It will not change anything, and you'll still get that ticket, or maybe get seriously hurt...or die.

Karin H

Seat belts safe lives!!! Yes, they should spend some time creating a consciousness of seat belts use.

mr danger

Seat belt laws are in this really weird class of repressive laws that don't allow citizen to put up reasonable defense against them.
I think that the burden of proof should be on the State to prove that a motorists death or disability will be result in an economic burden for the State. If that proof is not forthcoming , then they have no reasonable basis for issuing the ticket

jimobasa

Why do you say the seat belt law shouldn't exist? Wearing a seatbelt has saved countless crash victims from being projected through their own windshields just as a seatbelt on a plane prevents injury should the aircraft be forced to dive suddenly or simply make an unusually abrupt sharp turn

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