Doing What We Wanta
Sometime today the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on H147, sponsored by Rep. Maxine Jo Grad, a Moretown Democrat, and 15 others.
It’s a multi-purpose bill. One provision prohibits young drivers who have a junior license from driving between 1AM and 5 AM (with some exceptions). Another forbids them from using cell phones while driving at any hour.
So much for the teenagers. This bill also regulates what adults can do while driving. They could continue to continue to use cell phones, but only if they were “hands-free.” No more pulling the phone out of its case and putting it up to your ear, one hand off the steering wheel for as long as the call lasts.
Finally, the bill would “provide for primary enforcement of the safety belt law.”
Jefferson
That means a cop could pull you over for nothing more than the suspicion that you’re not wearing your seat belt. Right now, you can get a ticket for not being buckled up, but only if you get pulled over for speeding or some other infraction.
That last part is especially controversial. But even the rest of the bill has aroused a fair amount of opposition. The opposition doesn’t seem to be organized, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be. To many Vermonters, there is something repugnant about…well, about having the government tell them what they may and may not do. We’ve all seen that bumper sticker: “I’m a Vermonta. I do what I Wanta.”
Already, the state tells some people to do what they do not wanta. Motorcyclists have to wear helmets. Plus goggles, unless their bike is equipped with a wind shield. Many do not wanta. They think the law limits their freedom. “Let Those Who Ride Decide” is the motto of one anti-helmet-law web site.
And these days, driving is not the only activity in which government seems prepared to stop Vermonters from doing what they “wanta.” There are also bills in the Legislature (though they probably aren’t going anywhere) to increase the tax on snack foods (H392) and on soda (H149). (All bills available here)
Nor is there much doubt that the point of these bills isn’t just to raise revenue; it’s also to change behavior. The snack food tax bill disparagingly calls the foods its targeting “high calorie foods with low nutritional value.” The “food police,” who have banned trans-fats in New York City and required restaurants in some cities to post the calorie content of all menu items, are on the attack. Beware the “Nanny State.”
But beware oversimplifying, too. Sometimes the state has the right to intervene. That doesn’t always mean that it should intervene. But one of the real threats to freedom in this country and this state is the tendency some folks have to dilute the meaning of liberty by claiming every personal proclivity as a “right,” as though the Constitution guaranteed us all the power to do whatever we choose whenever and wherever we choose.
It doesn’t. Even if you are a Vermonta, you can’t do what you wanta if what you wanta do is zoom along the highway at 90 miles per hour. Not, at least, without risking (and deserving) a fine expensive enough to keep from doing it again. That will enable the rest of us to travel the roads as we wanta, which is safely.
HR147 violates no individual’s rights. That’s because no individual has the right to drive a car while talking on the phone or not wearing a seat belt. And why is that? That’s because no individual has the right to drive a car at all. Otherwise we wouldn’t need drivers licenses and automobile registration. No one needs a license to express himself, vote, or be secure in his home against unreasonable search and seizure. Those are rights. Driving on the public highway is a privilege granted by the state that created the highway system, maintains it, and monitors it for everyone’s safety. It has the right and responsibility to establish reasonable regulations for those who use that system.
Civil libertarians like to quote Thomas Jefferson’s famous observation that, “the legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
But the libertarians often ignore the flip side of the quote. Jefferson was pointing out that what people believe does not directly affect others. How they behave does, so their behavior properly brings into play “the legitimate powers of government.”
A driver distracted by talking on the cell phone may break your leg if he plows into your car. According to the National Safety Council “drivers talking on a cell phone are four times as likely to have an accident as drivers who are not.”
If that driver causes an accident, she will pick your pocket no matter where you are. Society in one form or another, through taxes or insurance premiums, pays roughly 74 percent of the cost of auto crashes, according to the National Safety Council. By Jefferson’s standard, then, government is on solid ground when it bans cell phone gabbing by drivers.
And because the state may establish almost any regulation for driving on the public roads, it may make it a “primary offense” to drive without wearing a seat belt. The tougher the law, the more it will be obeyed. There’s little doubt that if more drivers (and passengers) “clickit,” fewer of them will be seriously injured, and those injuries cost all of us money.
But perhaps this is a case where government should think twice before asserting its power, legitimate though that power may be. Allowing police to issue tickets to drivers solely for not wearing seatbelts invites police intrusiveness. Without peering into a car window, there is no way a police officer can know whether the driver is buckled up.
Or how about this scenario: Two neighbors or two spouses have a spat. One drives away. The other smolders at home, and then, knowing that the object of his/her temporary ire usually doesn’t fasten his/her belt, calls the cops. “There’s a gray Toyota heading west on Route 2, and the driver’s not wearing his seat belt.”
Okay, it’s not even close to those stories about Soviet kids being trained to report parental talk about the glories of private ownership.
It’s close enough.
In Vermont, the motorcycle helmet requirement seems here to stay. There is a bill to make the helmets optional for adults, but the bill doesn’t seem likely to pass. This will keep motorcycle head injuries from rising, which in and of itself is no doubt a good thing.
But does it save the rest of us any money? The anti-helmet motorcyclists have a point when they argue that government need not protect adult riders from their own foolishness. By the Jeffersonian standard noted above, the legitimate case for requiring protective headgear is that it saves the public money by reducing the frequency of serious head injuries that will get treated by the medical system whether the injured rider wants to be treated or not.
It might not be very much money, though. There aren’t that many motorcyclists, and some would wear a helmet anyway. Distributing the costs of those injuries through the millions who pay taxes and health insurance premiums might end up costing the average person only a few pennies.
Does that justify the law? Or do the lawmakers who passed it really just want to meddle in peoples private lives? Well, that’s one of those matters folks can argue about. Reasonable people may disagree. It’s why we have politics, elections, debates in the legislature. Debate away.
Oh, dear, we haven’t gotten to the sodas and soft drinks yet, not to mention the talk, emerging after actress Natasha Richardson’s ski slope death in Canada last month, that skiers be required to wear helmets. But the rule of thumb of the web site cognoscenti is that when one of these postings gets beyond 1,200 or 1,300 words or so, the average reader begins to nod off. The little indicator down in the left-hand corner tells us this baby is now 1,370 words long.
But it’s an interesting discussion, and those bills are still in the hopper. Tell you what. Let’s make a date for snack foods and soda one day next week. I’ll buy.
Tags: Motorcycles, Seat belts
