I think it's obnoxious to call people "truly idiotic" if you would not apply the phrase to everyone who takes "unnecessary" risks. I am conditioned from childhood to wear a seatbelt in a car, but I also have owned a motorcycle in the past, and currently own a pre-airbag car (which I assume also lacks more subtle features like modern crumple zones and high strength steel, etc.). What makes one risk reasonable and another not?
You are implying that the consequence of not wearing a seat belt and having an accident hurts only the idiot? That's not the case. There's a cost to society (we have to clean up the mess) and to the family (if any). It's incredibly selfish and irresponsible to take such completely pointless risks.
Smoking, drinking and driving without seatbelts all cause health risks to third parties (in form of second-harm smoking, crime&domestic violence, and bodies flying around the vehicle during an accident, respectively).
I think it would be better to discuss the "protecting idiots from themselves" angle using activities that harm only the people engaging in them.
> People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.
I've met multiple people who claim to know someone who only survived a car crash because that person didn't wear a seatbelt and was able to "jump out". Based on that, they think it's actually safer to not wear one.
It's a constant minor annoyance weighed against a fairly rare, hypothetical risk.
People ride motorcycles despite vastly higher death and injury rates than cars, cause it's fun. (I did for awhile and might start doing so again one day.)
I'm not disagreeing with you I don't think? I agree that it's a really stupid thing to not wear a seatbelt. I just think it's important to consider how to solve these problems without throwing up our hands and saying "people are irredeemably stupid" because that doesn't really do much good for anyone.
What about having airbags? or driving a bigger car than everyone else? or not driving faster than 15, 30, 55, 70? Or not driving at night? Or in the rain or snow?
I always wear a setbelt and when I climbed was roped in, but to claim these generally acceptable risk mitigation techniques aren't subjective is just claiming your beliefs are everyone's beliefs. That's not true.
At least with seatbelts it is the idiot who gets hurt. In the case of vaccines, it’s the others, mostly those who, for valid medical reasons, can’t be vaccinated.
Calling them safe is an abstraction that simplifies the conversation. Seat belts are meant to keep you alive at all costs. Often they're very damaging. But calling them unsafe muddies the conversation.
We (automotive active safety engineers) don't look at it as a percentage-of-inept-drivers, but more like the Trolley Problem[1], that is, overall harm vs benefit. To put it another way: seatbelts, airbags, and heart surgery hurt/kill some people, but the benefit outweights that harm.
You have a right to be stupid, even if it results in your death.
> I'd assume having a seatbelt on as a driver significantly increases your ability to maintain at least some control of a vehicle in a collision
Not a chance. The g forces are tremendous, and you're just along for the ride in a collision. In my major accident, I had a lap belt on, but my arms and legs and torso flung about totally out of my control.
> It used to be 80% of people didn't wear a seatbelt.
A few years ago, 80% of people who wore a mask. Which way are these things trending? Wearing a seatbelt has become the normal attitude towards car risk. Wearing a mask was briefly the normal attitude towards risk, but has since become [again] an abnormal attitude towards risk.
If you're so keen to be abnormally safe and think everybody else is being unreasonable, why don't you get your three-point seatbelt replaced with a five-point harness? It's established well characterized technology that undeniably makes you safer You'll definitely be an odd man out rejecting social trends so expect to have people wonder why you're so paranoid. But by your logic you shouldn't care about that.
> It isn't. You might get cited for not wearing a seatbelt and then through your own stupidity get thrown in jail but the seatbelt citation alone won't do it.
Yeah, but you're classing "not wearing a seatbelt" as "your own stupidity" in that line of reasoning. If someone persistently and willfuly attempts to drive without wearing a seatbelt (and, obviously, the legal system is aware of it) then the outcome is going to be imprisonment sooner or later.
The fact that nobody is stupid enough to throw away their lives over seatbelts doesn't change the logical progression of what would happen to someone if they tried.
And since you can't always be 100% safe in any possible scenario, NFPA, airbags, seatbelts, and the EPA are just ludicrous extravagances conceived by fools who don't understand the inevitability of death?
Overall I think he's right, but it also reminds me of arguments in the 1960s and 70s against seat belts and air bags: that by adding a new safeguard, people would come to depend on it and neglect other more effective precautions like driving carefully. There is indeed a "risk homeostasis" effect, but history suggests that extra precautions do reduce overall risk.
I see this line a lot and it's entirely nonsensical. I don't wear a seatbelt out of fear, I wear a seatbelt as a rational choice to reduce risk of injury in random accidents.
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