Tuesday, March 02, 2004
 
Maybe They Ought to Make It A Felony

Looks like someone's got the bright idea that cops ought to pull over people who are not wearing their seatbelts as a primary offense. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that some institutionally-important, but realistically-challenged hack explains:
    "Enacting this bill is the single most important life-saving and deficit reduction measure you can take this session. It costs nothing, but will save much," Healing said in prepared remarks to the Senate Transportation Committee.
That's a bit frank, isn't it? After all, we could make the world safer if we only made driving without a seatbelt a felony, but that wouldn't exactly produce revenue, would it? We could make the world much safer by putting private citizens--you know, the only ones who hurt themselves--into straight jackets and feeding them Ritalin.

Jeez, just what I need, the ability for a cop to pull me over because he thinks he saw me without a seatbelt. Speed can be measured from outside the car. Driving without a brakelight, ditto. But seeing whether the people in the car are wearing seatbelts is not something easily seen from someone outside the car. It's an excuse to pull people over, and a damn lot of work for a cheap ticket.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:49 PM
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