By ARTHUR VIDRO
By Arthur Vidro
Every state except New Hampshire has a law requiring the driver to buckle up. But states with such laws are divided between making the infraction a primary violation versus a secondary violation.
If not buckling up is a primary violation, then you can be pulled over and ticketed for not buckling up.
If not buckling up is a secondary violation, then you cannot be pulled over or ticketed for it unless you were stopped for some other infraction. You cannot get a ticket solely for failing to buckle up.
The first state to mandate seat belt use was New York in 1984. What is little remembered is that it started in 1983 with a less ambitious law, concerning learner’s permits.
The following editorial (reprinted with permission of its author, me) comes from a March 1983 issue of a long-defunct college publication.
Buckling up
Since March 1, all New Yorkers holding learner’s permits have been required to wear seat belts when operating a motor vehicle. Those caught without wearing a seat belt could face suspension of their permits. This new state law was designed to protect the safety and lives of beginning drivers.
Yet it’s all wrong. One of the founding principles of this country is that people have the right to make fools of themselves, the right to take unnecessary chances, and the right to risk personal bodily harm — so long as they do not harm or endanger other people in the process. A seat belt protects only the wearer; the next person is no better off for your wearing it.
People should buckle up. But they shouldn’t be required to.
Since 1983, my opinion hasn’t changed. Sometimes I buckle up (especially when going 50 mph or greater), but usually I don’t.
My best friend lives in New York, where he must buckle up, but he tries not to. He sincerely feels he’s putting his health at risk by buckling up, for being strapped in would delay his exit from the vehicle in an emergency.
What if the seat-belt latch malfunctions? Or the car is on fire?
New York is a “secondary violation” state, meaning you can’t be stopped and ticketed solely for not wearing a seat belt. At least that’s how the law is written.
In practice, though…
Nov. 16, 2007. Twelve years ago exactly.
I was a half-mile from work and in the middle of a huge, non-moving mass of cars — the usual rush-hour morning traffic backed up at a red light where the Long Island Expressway overlaps Jericho Turnpike. My car wasn’t moving.
WHHHHRRRR! Sirens.
An officer energetically gestured from his cruiser. I had to pull over. I wondered if I had a broken taillight. There wasn’t room to pull over (no parking spaces along the street) so it took quite a while for me to enter a parking lot, in the meantime creating a more dangerous situation; there wasn’t any danger before the officer’s intervention.
I showed my license, registration, and proof of insurance. When I asked what I had done wrong, he said I hadn’t buckled up.
“But I thought you can only pull me over for that if there’s some other —”
He brushed aside my protest and said he was enforcing the law for everyone’s safety. I suspect the officer had a ticket quota to meet.
After the officer sped away — other drivers yielded to him but ignored me — it took a very long time before I could get back on the right road. The parking lot I exited into did not have any means for entering the road I had exited. The police officer had exited the lot illegally, but I couldn’t take the chance of doing so.
So I was late for work. My supervisor heard the story and suggested I fight the ticket.
But I’d had enough of fighting tickets (to be explained in a future column), even when I was in the right. I didn’t want to have to appear at an out-of-the-way traffic court for a mini-trial, and then have it re-scheduled time and again when the ticketing officer couldn’t make it, and then be told it was an officer’s word against mine and therefore I must be a liar.
So I mailed in a guilty plea and a check for one hundred dollars.
Just to be done with it.
Two years later, I moved to New Hampshire. Coincidence?
Anyway, happy 12th anniversary, seat-belt ticket.
If you have consumerism questions, send them to Arthur Vidro in the care of this newspaper, which publishes his column every weekend.
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