Do Seat-belt Laws Violate The Fourth Amendment?

[AvalonXQ]

Which post number?

 

[tesscaline]

Which post number?

Your definition of "harm" is the problem. You seem to be limiting that harm only to direct physical harm to another present person. Not wearing seatbelts, and injuring yourself from it, harms society.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811140.PDF

ETA: I also think it's really annoyingly obtuse of you to deny the harm to others in your vehicle, or outside your vehicle, by you not wearing a seat belt. This is basic physics. You do not need "statistics" for this evidence. We have actual science to back up the claim.

Here's ONE.

I've also linked to, in posts previous to that, driver's education curriculum produced and circulated by the NHTSA, as well as two NHTSA databases of crash statistics and the CIREN list of research papers.

I'm not going to re-do all my research for you just because you can't be bothered to go back a page or two in the conversation.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Okay, I dived into the statistics that, as I understand it, went into generating that report and others like it.

Here's an example of the raw data being used to compile statistics like the ones you cited.

Unless there's something I'm missing, the NHTSA doesn't even collect data that correlates injury and fatality rates with the use or non-use of seatbelts in other vehicles. Their statistics are based on counting who is injured or killed and whether or not those people themselves are wearing seatbelts.

The very way in which they're counting proves my point and undermines yours.

 

[tesscaline]

Okay, I dived into the statistics that, as I understand it, went into generating that report and others like it.

Here's an example of the raw data being used to compile statistics like the ones you cited.

Unless there's something I'm missing, the NHTSA doesn't even collect data that correlates injury and fatality rates with the use or non-use of seatbelts in other vehicles. Their statistics are based on counting who is injured or killed and whether or not those people themselves are wearing seatbelts.

The very way in which they're counting proves my point and undermines yours.

Your inability to understand the data you're looking at doesn't undermine anything but your own statements.

Your report was a report of seatbelt use of the drivers who were involved in fatal crashes. Do you understand that statement? "Drivers who were involved in fatal crashes" does not say "drivers who DIED in fatal crashes", it doesn't say who died at all. It just gives you information on ONE party in a crash that resulted in ONE or more fatalities, without commenting on WHO those fatalities were.

You can also look at wisqars (http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html ) for comprehensive injury statistics compiled by the CDC (the NHTSA references this database in more than one of their reports).

In addition to all of that.

YOU ARE STILL IGNORING THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC IMPACT of a person who is injured or killed due to failing to wear a seatbelt.

Pardon the caps, but really. Why oh WHY are you continuing to ignore that? It's like you're purposefully and willfully wearing blinders when discussing this subject.

Did you even read the report that I linked that includes the economic impact from seatbelt use (or failure of use)?

 

[AvalonXQ]

Your inability to understand the data you're looking at <snip>

Why do you continue to use insulting language in every post you make with me about this subject? Do you consider my position on this issue to be some sort of personal affront?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

When you don't have anything else....

 

[Arus808]

Why do you continue to use insulting language in every post you make with me about this subject? Do you consider my position on this issue to be some sort of personal affront?

I don't see what is insulting. You've shown through your replies that you have an inability to understand research and statistics put forth to you that goes against your unsupported arguments.

 

[tesscaline]

Why do you continue to use insulting language in every post you make with me about this subject? Do you consider my position on this issue to be some sort of personal affront?

I don't see it as insulting at all. As Arus808 mentions, your responses to the data you are viewing demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of that data.

Which says to me that this conversation is absolutely pointless. I am not going to waste any more of my time providing you with the resources that back the positions of myself (and others) in this thread when you repeatedly demonstrate that you are either not reading those resources, or that you are failing to understand their implication.

Not to mention that you are willfully ignoring the fact that your insistence on the existence of "secondary injury" (a person in a vehicular accident directly injured to due to the actions of another person in that same vehicular accident failing to wear a seatbelt) is irrelevant. It's simply not something that even needs to be discussed. The costs to society even if the only person injured by failing to wear a seatbelt is that self same person are more than enough to justify seatbelt laws. There are in-depth cost analysis studies on the matter, going back decades. Unfortunately, for a fair amount of this stuff, you'd have to contact the NHTSA and other related agencies and organizations directly instead of just being able to cherry pick data off a website, as many of them haven't kept their full records from 1975 to current online and accessible in anything other than the format of several HUNDRED page long reports in .pdf (You want the final regulatory impact analysis on the amendment to federal motor vehicle safety standard 208 for passenger car front seat occupant protection from 1984? I can link you that. It's not relevant, but I can link it to you.)

So. I don't really have anything left to say to you on this matter unless you can start providing some evidence to support YOUR insistence that seatbelts do not protect anyone other than the person wearing them from harm. I'll happily discuss any actual evidence you can come up with (as in, not just meaningless statistics that you've misinterpreted to support your claim).

 

[AvalonXQ]

I don't see it as insulting at all. As Arus808 mentions, your responses to the data you are viewing demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of that data.

Which says to me that this conversation is absolutely pointless.

I agree. It's pointless to talk to someone who claims you are incapable of understanding their point. Your insistence on that accusation renders continued discussion pointless.

 

[Arus808]

I agree. It's pointless to talk to someone who claims you are incapable of understanding their point. Your insistence on that accusation renders continued discussion pointless.

Yes its very pointless, as we are only having a one way conversation .

Meaning, we are speaking and pointing out why you are wrong, but you simply have those fingers stuck permanently in your ears (or on this point, wearing blinders) to research and statistics that back up our claims.

the research and statistics are NOT hard to understand, you are just willfully choosing not to understand them at this point.

 

[triforcharity]

He's also chosen to ignore my previous post, showing that his premise if a logical fallacy.

He also hasn't addressed why this is even a point WORTH discussing, and you and I both have explained to him, that nobody is not entitled to drive a car. People are ALLOWED to drive a car, under certain circumstances.

 

[Agatha]

Avalon, I don't know if you watched the road safety ad I posted earlier.

I have found this repeated on quite a few pages on the web

Studies in Sweden, Britain and Japan show unbelted rear-seat passengers increase the risk of injury and death to others in the car.

“An unrestrained person at the back becomes a deadly force,” explains Masao Ichikawa, a researcher at the University of Tokyo.

Last year, Ichikawa’s team studied nearly 74,000 two-car collisions. Researchers determined that risk of death for belted front-seat occupants rose 400 per cent when someone at the back was not wearing a seat belt.

The conclusion:

Over 740 deaths and severe injuries could have been prevented in these crashes if back-seat passengers had simply buckled up.

I'm still chasing down the study they are referencing; Ichikawa has done a lot of studies!

Here you go: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11809187

 

[Slimething]

Unless there's something I'm missing, the NHTSA doesn't even collect data that correlates injury and fatality rates with the use or non-use of seatbelts in other vehicles. Their statistics are based on counting who is injured or killed and whether or not those people themselves are wearing seatbelts.

The very way in which they're counting proves my point and undermines yours.

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence?

How many logical errors can one poster make in one thread? Is that your game?

 

[triforcharity]

Avalon? Did you read the link two posts up?

 

[samanthakayee]

Wow the road safety ads in the UK are good. We tend tomake it more of a joke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3nZ0NBCyRQ

 

[Agatha]

Bumping for Avalon; in the hope he'll have a look at Ichikawa's study to which I linked.