On the topic of seat belt wearing: People are stupid...end of story. If there are not laws created to protect people from themselves then other people that aren't stupid get hurt. Like flashing lights on a bus legally means stop because children could be around...and STILL people don't stop and thus hit and kill children that were suppose to be under the protection of the law. Creating laws isn't going to make all people wear their seat belts, but the theory behind it is to protect people none the less.
If you rear end somebody, and they weren't wearing their seat belt, your a** can still be liable for their injuries. You may not have to pay as much or even be held accountable for thier injuries, but that all depends on how good of an attorney you have! If they have a better attorney, you better have some deep pockets.
Second, people squander tax dollars for not wearing their seat belts. If they can't pay and get taken to the hospital, our tax dollars are used to provide treatment on all levels, from the police who have to go to the scene, to the road workers that have to clean the blood off the highway, to the medicare payments that tax dollars go towards for perscriptions of vicadin and morphine to easy their pain.
Third, a story. I had a friend who was in my car with his fiancee and new kid a couple years back. We were all coming back from L.A. and he wasn't wearing his seat belt. I told him he should put it on because I myself have been a veteran of a few accidents and in every case it has helped. He explained to me that he believed more people got killed because they got trapped in the car with their seatbelt on. His idea was that he would rather get thrown from the car because he had heard that people live that way. Fast forward six months, he and a friend were going on a paintball trip down highway 5 to stockton, ca when a car sideswiped them on the freeway and pitched their car into a ravine. He was flung out of the truck he was in and the impact from being flung free killed him. His friend who was wearing his seatbelt lived and the firemen had to use the jaws of life to crack open the truck to get him out. They said they didn't know how he survived but said it was lucky he was wearing his seat belt. To top it off he now has a son that is fatherless before he was even old enough to understand. They also never caught the guys who sideswiped the car.
Moral of the story...wear the f***ing thing...but do turn off that annoying a** minder chime! You getting hurt isn't always the concern, it is for the people around you.
Oh, and all cops need is probably cause to pull you over anyway. A couple of miles per hour under or over the speed limit justifies that plenty.
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