Of course it's common sense to wear your seat belt. It's also common sense to insure your car and not to speed. In a perfect world, people would conduct themselves in a manner that posed the least amount of threat to themselves or others, and there would be no need for laws and regulations.
We're not anywhere close to being at that place. Thus, we enact laws that not only codify our societal expectations but serve to protect society at large. Seat-belt laws are among those regulations.
The seat-belt law doesn't presume people aren't smart enough to take care of themselves. It exists because research indicates the motoring public is safer when they wear seat belts and, therefore, such a law is good public policy. Beyond that, there can be public financial consequences when people don't wear seat belts. Suppose a driver with no medical insurance is involved in a cataclysmic accident. At some point, paying his or her medical bills becomes the problem of other insured persons and, if the victim no longer is able to work, the concern of the taxpayers.
A move this past week to repeal the state's seat-belt law for adults 19 or older is foolhardy. Lawmakers need to enact the technical change Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, initially sought. Her bill was hijacked by a legislator who amended the language to instead overturn the law all together.
If legislators have the desire to change the state's seat-belt law, they should consider refinements rather than a wholesale elimination. Moss is sponsoring another bill that would repeal an exemption for seat-belt use when all seating positions in a vehicle are occupied.
Under this measure there could be no more people put into a car than there are seat belts to buckle them in. People who stuff people in a car in this way, of course, do so at their own peril, but certainly state law shouldn't sanction it.
We hope Moss' bills and the issues of seat-belt use and regulation will receive the serious consideration they deserve as they continue to wind through the legislative process.