Maybe Big Brother should be a backseat driver

We use our cellphones while driving unless we have a hands-free device (or use the speakerphone function). Soon, according to The Times' Patrick McGreevy, driving while text-messaging will be illegal, too. Do these laws work? Apparently -- if you look at some new numbers showing that more than 95% of California drivers now wear their seat belts (as the law requires):

State traffic safety officials today announced that more than 19 in 20 people inside vehicles are wearing their seat belts, one of the highest rates in the nation. Seat belt use in California has reached an all-time high of 95.7 percent, an increase of more than one percentage point over the 2007 figure of 94.6 percent. "These numbers show that the overwhelming majority of Californians have gotten the message that seat belts work," said Dale E. Bonner, state Secretary of the Business, Transportation and Housing Agency. "They save lives, prevent injuries and reduce the societal costs of collisions." The annual survey by researchers at California State University Fresno, has shown steady increases in seat belt usage since the start of the Click It or Ticket campaign in 2005, when usage was at 90.4 percent. In the last four years alone, it is estimated that more than 1.25 million motorists in the state have begun buckling up regularly.

There is also a push in Sacramento to ban motorists from driving with their dogs in their laps.

-- Shelby Grad

Photo: California DOT

Comments

[Spence]

It's not the law that did it. It's the fact that most new cars emit a high-pitched ding if you drive without your belt snapped in. As older cars without this feature get off the road, more and more people will use their belts for his reason. Not that that's a bad thing, mind you...

[Jose]

One of the things that I personally find annoying and at times enraging about the seat belt laws is the way they have crept up on us in enforcement.

When the mandatory seat belt laws were first passed, we were assured that the enforcement would not be a primary offense, but required another offense to be cited. Since then, like so many other things, we have creeping nanny statism that has slowly but surely made this a mandated primary offense, with cops going on TV ads and threatening to ticket you for seat belt offenses.

if this had been an open and upfront policy decision, it probably would not have passed the smell test with the public. However, we now are in a situation where seat belt tickets are like so many other things the hand wringers come up with, a way for cities to generate revenue.

Once you get into money, the opportunity to reverse a set of laws that creep up on public promises slowly fade into the mists. Sooner or later, you end up with the kind of police state control that exists in England where you can be ticketed for speeding if the camera catches you driving from point A to point B in too less time than the nannies think you should - no actual evidence of law breaking required.