Buckles and bucks
BY C. L. BOTHWELL
It was the day after a New Hampshire blizzard. The trees had bent
into drooping white mounds under eight inches of new snow. The unplowed
street was crunchy and slippery beneath the wheels of my Volkswagen Bug as
I drove through an unfamiliar town. I didn't see a stop sign partly
obscured by a drift.
There was a sudden crashing and slamming of metal
a
blur of motion I have never clearly remembered but have never been able to
forget.
When the two cars came to a stop I was sitting in the passenger seat
of my Bug. The driver's side door was crushed all the way to the stick
shift, which I had somehow flown over. The front end of a large sedan
occupied most of the left side of my totalled VW, which was now jammed
into a snow bank. I rolled down the window and climbed out. My left leg
was bruised.
I am absolutely certain that my life was saved that day 20 years ago
because I was not wearing a seat belt. That experience has made me a
little superstitious, and certainly very skeptical about mandatory
seat-belt-use laws. Seat belts may save lives, but they didn't save mine.
This has contributed to my deeply held religious conviction that St.
Francis was right; we cannot lengthen our lives by our own efforts. Our
fate is in other hands.
Here, though, we run head-on into the vindictive tyranny of
statistics. In the real world we are each as unique as snowflakes. But
taken as a crowd, we are a bunch of painfully predictable crash test
dummies.
And based on lots of data accumulated by people who take crash test
dummy crashes very seriously, most states have decided to tell drivers
they must buckle up.
I know that somewhere, sometime, one of those naked mannequins was
probably tossed over a gear shift to safety. But all of his buddies went
through the windshield, or lost control of the vehicle and skidded over a
bridge embankment and plunged into a river.
If I had been strapped in that day and squashed, my death would have
been a meaningless blip in the great graph of life. But the real me seems
to be alive and well, while the theoretical me who was strapped in, is a
vegetable, hooked to a machine in a white room, wishing he could pull the
plug, yet unable to remember what a plug does.
Why should anyone else care whether or not I become a statistic, as
the saying goes? My friends might miss me, but ought to be happy if I died
doing what I believed in. I don't have any debts, so VISA and Mastercard
wouldn't be in mourning. My dog and cats depend on me, but they aren't
allowed to make laws. Who is it that takes such great concern for my well
being?
Insurance companies, of course. Insurers are vitally concerned with
the cost of medical treatment, and if there is a better-than-even chance
that seat belts will help reduce medical costs they are for them. A
government that acts as an insurer, through Medicaid and Social Security
among other programs, has the same rationale.
Insurers aren't dummies. They favor laws that limit their financial
risk as much as possible. Seat belts, overcooked restaurant food,
antismoking laws, and warning labels on virtually every consumer product
don't necessarily protect you and me, but they sure protect profits.
Liberal political language, with its rhetoric of concern and care, is
sometimes used to peddle protective laws. And conservative arguments about
fiscal responsibility support mandatory insurance. But both reflect a deep
political commitment to wealthy campaign contributors.
If everyone is forced to buy insurance, then it benefits everyone if
we buckle up, since low costs translate to lower rates.
The state of New Hampshire requires neither
but,
of course, that state's motto is "Live Free or Die." New Hampshirites
don't want to be treated like crash test dummies which reminds me of my
own attitude toward seat-belt laws and mandatory insurance coverage. They
both violate my deepest beliefs about God and fate, and therefore abridge
my constitutionally guaranteed freedom of religion.
"Click it or ticket?" Tell it to the judge.
Duck Soup is also served up twice each Tuesday on WNCW-FM.
Seat belts may save lives, but they didn't save mine. This has contributed to my deeply held religious conviction that St. Francis was right; we cannot lengthen our lives by our own efforts.
