Right now, the law says that you can put as many people as you want in your car so long as the driver isn't crowded and all available seatbelts are being used.
This makes sense. If there's a seatbelt there, you should use it so I don't have to pay to piece you back together after you're thrown out into oncoming traffic.
Sometimes, however, you need to fit an extra person in the vehicle and there just isn't a belt there. In that case, should the law force you to find some other form of transportation?
If you can only fit your family of 5 in your car, and your cousin comes to visit, do you have to leave him home when you go out to dinner?
If you're going to do a job and your truck only has 3 seatbelts in it, can you not take 4 people?
Over the weekend some people died because there were 10 of them in a minivan and not enough seatbelts. That's unfortunate, but does it mean the law should be changed to prevent this from ever happening again? Would those people be safe and sound right now if the laws were different?
It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth when laws are changed based on current stories in the media rather than based on actual statistics showing a real problem. It seems to me like political posturing when they could be doing something far more constructive with their time. I guess time will tell what comes out of this but I can only hope they're looking at all the consequences before just going ahead and making up new laws. A lot of people will be negatively impacted by what could amount to very little in the way of positive outcomes.
Of course it's political posturing. Hellooo? Municipal elections?
I'm with you on this one. How much of an injustice is it that pit bulls — and pit bulls alone — were banned from the city because idiots like to own pit bulls (and other "vicious" dogs)? Give these morons a shih-tzu and they'll turn it into a lathering, cruel, psychopath of a dog. I vote we ban idiots from the city.
Any way, back on topic, I'm genuinely of the opinion that society is increasingly, and wrongly, geared towards coddling people these days. Case in point: playgrounds are no longer playgrounds. Monkey bars, slides, carousels have all been "phased out" in favour of sandlots with no equipment on them. The result: marshmallow-y, timid kids. Changing the law (or affecting a by-law) so that everyone in a car has to have a seatbelt effectually does the same thing: the people who don't know well enough to drive especially careful (or take a cab, or transit) when there will be unbelted people in their vehicle are led to believe that it's society's onus to protect them.
I think I'll build a sandbox in my backyard for my kids. Then I'll put a beartrap in it and give them guns. They can go out back and play urban safari. What doesn't kill them will only make them stronger.
"Give these morons a shih-tzu and they'll turn it into a lathering, cruel, psychopath of a dog"
Aren't shih-tzu's already psychopathic dogs? 😉
First… I don't think we've got a provincial election slated for any time soon, do we? So what good would political posturing really do? With a looming rash of municipal elections and a national leadership that teeters frequently, who'd really notice provincial political posturing?
The OPP are tired of scraping people off the highways. If seatbelt use is mandatory (as in, someone will get fined and demerit points if they're not wearing their belt in a vehicle that's pulled over), then it's mandatory. Not, it's mandatory as long as there's a free belt, but we don't really care how many people you cram into your vehicle so long as the driver has a full G licence.
10 people in a vehicle that's designed for 7 is just plain dumb. Borrow another vehicle (even if you have to include another person to do it), call a few cabs, or rent a freakin' mini-bus and stop playing russian roulette with the lives of anyone who happens to be on the same road as you (unanchored items in the cabin become projectiles in the event of an impact… unanchored people become projectiles that land in front of other cars and potentially extend the involvement to other vehicles.) Incidentally, MTO have been advising drivers to limit the number of occupants in their vehicle to the number of seat belts for years… they just didn't deem it necessary to get it made law because they foolishly believed that people who are licenced to operate a motor vehicle actually USE their brains.
The only reasonable exception is classic cars where seatbelts may not have been standard safety equipment at the time of manufacture.
That's my $0.02… but then again, I've known people who've been ejected from vehicles, so I may be a tad biased
I should add… in regards to your subject line claim… obviously, with the number of truly idiotic people out there, some things DO have to be law. Common sense is dead, my friend.
Which is why I'm suggesting we let Darwinism run its course.
There are all sorts of things that can be found to be dangerous but that doesn't mean they need to be stopped at all costs.
I wonder if there are any statistics at all to quantify the number of people who have been injured by unbelted projectile bodies from vehicles with too many people in them.
I'm betting it's so few that it's not even worth counting.
It's easy to tout the need for a law when you're not in a position to need to put an extra person in a vehicle every now and then.
And really… why should there be an exception for classic cars rather than for any other number of valid reasons to have an unbelted passenger? Wouldn't it make more sense to make cars older than a certain age illegal for the road entirely? Why should I have to spend my tax dollars on repairing people who can't be bothered to drive something new enough to have airbags?
Again… just because a law would make people safer, doesn't mean it's necessarily a good idea.
Never trust statistics… they're just puppets dressed as numbers. They're trained to say whatever the 'owner' wants them to say.
The exception for classic cars is based on the notion that people who own classic cars are generaly pretty damn protective of them, often insuring them as 'classic' (which severely restricts 'approved' operating conditions) and not using them as 'daily drivers'. And unless they're from out-of-province, they're using their own damn tax dollars to 'repair' themselves if they do happen to find themselves being plowed into by a tractor trailer on a back road (because let's face it… a 'modern' car is far more likely to be totaled in an impact with a car actually made of steel than the classic, so it'd pretty much have to be one hell of a heavy vehicle involved)
I have to say that I felt a hell of a lot safer in my father-in-law's 1958 Corvette, which only has lap belts, with the top down on the car, doing 100 km/h on back roads than I did in your car on the 401… and only part of that was the driving style.
And incidentally, I HAVE been in the position of needing to put an extra person in a vehicle every now and then… and I STILL erred on the side of safety and arranged a second vehicle. So don't go trying to claim that I only think this should be law because I've never been faced with the situation 😉
First off, I think you might have me confused with someone else. Unless of course when you say "in your car on the 401" you actually mean "cruising the boulevards in your Bentley".
Secondly, I hope to hell you're not implying that newer cars aren't as safe as older ones because they're not made of i-beams and angle iron! Despite your perception, I assure you that a 1958 Vette, while a beautiful car, is not the high point of automotive safety.
The higher likeliness of a newer car to be "totalled" in a crash has much to do with the car being designed to destroy itself in an effort to protect its occupants. Being able to come out of a crash with minimal damage to the vehicle is not the priority. I'd much rather step out of a mangled wreck than have to be peeled off the dash of a nearly intact, perfectly servicable car.
I'm not saying that older cars are safer… I'm saying that the claim that just because they don't have airbags an accident involving one will not necessarily result in higher medical bills to the occupants of THAT car, relative to a newer one (did you know it can sometimes take up to 30 minutes for an airbag to deploy? And that they cause a hell of a lot of injuries in and of themselves?)… they're also less likely to lose the 'skin' that contributes to passenger safety (e.g. a side airbag in a minivan isn't going to help anyone if the side is gone)