Mandatory Seat Belts (Reprise)
- (“Letter” length version)
Driving without seat belts is undoubtedly marginally riskier than not, but there are many personal behaviors – say smoking, or playing a contact sport – that increase our risk of injury or death. Most of us value our freedom to choose such activities despite their risks, not just because they also offer benefits but more fundamentally because the freedom to choose our own fates is the only true freedom. Just as the freedom to say only what everyone else agrees is true is not “freedom of speech”, the freedom to do only what everyone else agrees is good for you is not “freedom of action”. If we grant government the authority to circumscribe behavior solely because it is potentially self-destructive we have sold our freedom for a false security.
On the other hand the argument that our financial involvement gives us the right to mandate behavior that minimizes the expense is appealing; and it might be legitimate if our involvement was the result of a social covenant rather than of a social policy. But it is not. We have chosen to cover the medical needs of the severely injured, regardless of their own complicity in their predicament. We give individuals no practical way of opting out, and ourselves no mechanism for holding them accountable; in fact we take great pains to circumvent the normal mechanisms by which the costs of individual choices would accrue to the individual.
That policy is certainly compassionate and arguably pragmatic. But it is also voluntary: as a society we have assumed the burden by our own choice and for our own moral and practical purposes; and having volunteered for our own reasons to take on that responsibility we have no moral claim on those to whom our compassion flows.
The fact is that we should all wear seat belts, and the excuses people make for not doing so are pretty pathetic and the costs of doing so are vanishingly small. Many activities would reduce risks and improve our lives. But is that enough to mandate them? If we grant the principle that government can and should mandate behavior solely because it might, under some circumstance, create personal harm and social cost then the only thing that prevents extending it in myriad other ways is fickle political will.
© Copyright 2005, Augustus P. Lowell