• Moomoo_Milk [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    I find it wild that people are still this militant against wearing a seatbelt. Seatbelts are mildly uncomfortable due to how my body is built, but I’d rather not die in the unfortunate event of a serious collision. Then again I’m sure it’s the anti-intellectual crowd that refused to mask during the height of COVID. Maybe we should start telling them that airbags are woke.

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      Then you’ll find this interesting: One of the first people to protest against seatbelts actually died in a car accident in a manner which a seatbelt would have prevented.

      (Derek Kieper)

    • spectre [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      It is the nature of the extremism of using personal automobiles for personal transportation. No inconveniences. Period.

      “What about the most minor compromise to convenience for your own safety due to the inherent danger that comes with using a personal automobile for personal transportation?”

      “I said period.”


      Just the extreme end of the spectrum.

    • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 day ago

      Old adage of the bicycle cranks is that if you were to put a spike on the steering wheel, people’d drive a lot more carefully

      tbf I also don’t get the argument for personal safety. Pretty much any state lets me do a lot more statistically dangerous bullshit than that freely, why not this one? If there’s other people in the car, sure, so you don’t become the 100kg meat rocket wrecking everybodies shit but hey if you wanna die alone in a 20kph accident you just have fun doing that

      • Blakey [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 day ago

        Pretty much any state lets me do a lot more statistically dangerous bullshit than that freely

        Statistically there aren’t many things more dangerous than driving, either to you, or to others. Per unit time spent doing it, sure. Each individual sky dive is more dangerous than each individual car trip. But if you just look at your risk of accident over a lifetime for each activity it becomes clear which is more dangerous to the average person! Taking a small risk once, or a few times, is fairly reasonable. Taking a small risk multiple times daily, the threshold gets a LOT lower for what’s reasonable. There’s a reason traffic accidents are a leading cause of death and seatbelts are super effective at reducing it.

        • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          23 hours ago

          So if one were to lead a low car or car free lifestyle should that person be eligible to apply for a permit to not have to wear a seatbelt?

        • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          1 day ago

          I mean yeah you could but is that enough of a problem to require legislature? I can do 60 kp/h on a ski slope and just obliterate a small child and until I do the latter that seems perfectly legal. I could fuck up sykdiving really hard and just goomba stomp a disabled person but like does that really happen and neither doing 60 on a ski slope nor goomba stomping the disabled via parachute is expressively illegal in any law system I know

          • BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            I find it funny as well as frustrating to see the amount of people that think you’re arguing against wearing a seatbelt. Seems pretty clear that you’re just publicly wondering why this is where the state decided to draw the line, when driving a car itself is already so wack.
            Honestly a pretty good example of why we have rule 8. People just love to feel smarter or something i guess.

            • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              23 hours ago

              I mean I am the man with a hammer to whom everything looks like a nail here but it feels sort of autonormativity to figure safety or “safety” laws around cars surely must start from a place of the protection of other people

            • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              24 hours ago

              I mean seatbelts weren’t always mandatory so by capita were people being hurt by other people hurling through the windshields a lot back then?

              • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                23 hours ago

                I was focusing on the false equivalence between casualties from vehicles and those from contrived scenarios. Vehicles are a leading cause of death. If you start from empirical reality instead of the abstract concept of “danger” then it is not a mystery why there are seatbelt laws but no goomba stomp laws.

                Having acknowledged the shift from that to this new consideration, the question of whether many casualties could have been prevented by seatbelt use. The answer is yes. Many casualties would have been prevented by use of a seatbelt.

                Traffic today is denser and faster than even at the time seatbelt laws were introduced. High-performance cars are very accessible today. Road speeds are higher — you can’t drive as fast in some rickety steel Cadillac from the 70s as you can in a Tesla. Brakes and tires have also improved significantly, so people have more confidence driving fast.

                • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  21 hours ago

                  Dude you’re arguing against points I’ve not made. My point isn’t even about the broad category of “casualties from vehicles”

                  • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                    18 hours ago

                    You are questioning why, out of all dangerous things, we have seatbelt laws, but we don’t have laws against things that are equally or more dangerous than not wearing a seatbelt.

                    My answer is that you are looking at it backward. Seatbelts are legislated because way more deaths occur from cars than from contrived alternatives like skiing over toddlers. It has nothing to do with comparative danger or individualism. It’s about scale and aggregate social impact. If toddlers were getting mowed down by the tens of thousands per year, we would have specific laws against that too.

          • hellinkilla [they/them, they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            my experience is that whether seatbelts are worn or not has heavily to do with convention and social norms more than any objective view risks vs benefits. if you are in a vehicle with 3 other people none are wearing seatbelts, you are the only one who does it up, you are looked upon as weird. whoever is in charge (vehicle driver/owner) can sometimes enforce everyone wearing them but depends on the dynamics. After that, only legal intervention is left and the chances of this might be low.

            therefor the creation and enforcement of a social norm is how to make people feel natural to wear a seatbelt. which is a minimal safety mechanism understood about for years with minimal drawbacks.

            • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              23 hours ago

              therefor the creation and enforcement of a social norm is how to make people feel natural to wear a seatbelt. which is a minimal safety mechanism understood about for years with minimal drawbacks.

              So why isn’t the dutch reach encoded into law? I’d say that’s about the same inconvenience as wearing a seatbelt which is to say basically none

          • Speaker [e/em/eir]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            How many miles do you skydive per year? What percentage of ski slopes are public utilities exclusively filled with 2-ton+ iron skiers?

            Skiing at excessive speed is “reckless skiing” or “reckless endangerment”, which is minimally a fine and escalates to criminal charges based on severity in the same way that reckless driving does. In Utah, the class B misdemeanor could put you in jail for 6 months.

            Can’t you just boil and filter creek water at home? Do we really need to get the legislature involved over a little giardia risk?

            This would be a good opportunity to interrogate what brought you to your current position and if self-crit would be a valuable exercise.

            • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              24 hours ago

              What percentage of ski slopes are public utilities exclusively filled with 2-ton+ iron skiers?

              What percentage of car drivers do you figure weigh in excess of two tons and are made out of iron? The argument I’m replying to here suggests seatbelts aren’t enforced self-preservation but rather enforced safety for others as if you don’t wear one you could fly through the windshield AND hit somebody else

              Skiing at excessive speed is “reckless skiing” or “reckless endangerment”, which is minimally a fine and escalates to criminal charges based on severity in the same way that reckless driving does. In Utah, the class B misdemeanor could put you in jail for 6 months.

              Okay so then flying through your windshield into somebody else because you didn’t wear a seatbelt seems like it would be illegal even if seatbelts weren’t mandatory?

              Can’t you just boil and filter creek water at home? Do we really need to get the legislature involved over a little giardia risk?

              Is there a law against boiling and filtering creek water at home?

          • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            1 day ago

            nor goomba stomping the disabled via parachute is expressively illegal in any law system I know

            This is called assault and battery, so it doesn’t need its own law. If you’re specifically targeting someone for being disabled, there’s a good chance it’s a hate crime, too. I don’t understand what makes this a good example.

            Also, as others patiently tried to explain, the number of person-hours spent driving versus skiing and skydiving are wildly different, and that’s probably the more important part. At best, you’re making an argument that skiing should have speed limits (probably by rating or something since putting the same speed limit on a bunny slope as an expert slope that is practically dumping you straight down would be silly).

            • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              24 hours ago

              This is called assault and battery, so it doesn’t need its own law.

              Why would this not apply at hurling your ass through a windshield into another person then if seatbelts weren’t mandatory? I mean I specifically said fucking up skydiving not doing it on purpose

              • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                14 hours ago

                I think I just missed your implication that it would be accidental (totally fair assumption, my bad).

                As other people said, reckless endangerment, criminal negligence, and manslaughter are real charges, but ideally we should be trying to prevent these things from happening beyond simply punishing people who do them. As far as I know, this is accounted for in skydiving with the need to have pre-determined drop zones that are appropriately clear for the safety of yourself and the people you might otherwise collide with. The safety requirements are probably not extensive enough, but I am pretty sure it’s not legal to just unilaterally decide you’re dropping in a public park without preparing the area first (outside of emergencies).

                It’s like how driving drunk is illegal, not just an aggravating factor in convictions stemming from getting in a crash, because we want to avoid the conditions of a bad thing happening (and be able to intervene if someone is creating those conditions), not just hope that threat of punishment discourages it.

                • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  11 hours ago

                  As other people said, reckless endangerment, criminal negligence, and manslaughter are real charges, but ideally we should be trying to prevent these things from happening beyond simply punishing people who do them.

                  Just for the understanding, this is still going off of the notion that seatbelt laws are primarily or at least in a major part on account of so other people don’t get hit by people getting thrown out of cars, right?

                  • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                    7 hours ago

                    No, seatbelt laws are to save the people in the car mainly, but it’s worth noting that it’s not just a matter of not wearing a seatbelt being less safe for yourself, it’s less safe for others because you being much more likely to die or be seriously injured means you are much more likely to not be able to help other people who have a chance of surviving in an accident.

                    That said, I also think it’s perfectly fine for the state to demand that you don’t just recklessly endanger your own life like that because it’s a trivial psychopathological “benefit” for contrarian libertarian types at the expense of literally everyone and everything else to have more people dying and seriously injured at any given time.

                    But I was also caught between that and your examples of assault and I can see why you’d find it unclear.