Sometimes it takes the government's bully tactics to get people to do the right thing. Seat belts, helmet laws, car seats, etc. People, like objects, have inertia, and it takes some outside force to change it. Do you think the air quality standards would have changed as fast on cars had the EPA not made mandates? Sure, it may have happened eventually, but why wait around till you are in China type disaster mode? I know and understand the whole "Don't Tread On Me" motto, but this isn't 1789 any longer, and sometimes we have to adapt to modernity.
Technology was the driving force behind the the air quality improving, and not the EPA. Air quality was already improving dramatically in the mid-1960's before the passage of the Clean Air Act.
The funny part, the light bulb people are sticking to the electric companies. They make the money up front, and the electric companies don't get paid as much. When electric companies make electricity more expensive down the road, everyone will be effed.
Everybody knows why helmet laws exist. People who ride motorcycles are ne'er-do-wells who do not have medical insurance. So when they crack their skulls on the pavement, the rest of us have to pick up the tab for their persistently vegetative states. So put on your helmets and get off my lawn!
It's been mentioned, but there is a price for the rest of us to pay when others receive serious injuries or worse because they wouldn't wear a seat belt. I get the whole not wanting to be told what to do. I really do. I just really don't see a big deal about seat belts & helmet laws.
Besides, even though they may be encouraged by the NTSB, aren't those laws made at the state level? Ya know, where most conservatives say laws should be determined. The NTSB might withhold funds if they aren't passed, but who needs the federal gov't playing nanny anyway, right?
And I get that, and I would agree if we lived in a vacuum. But we do not. The world has become increasingly interdependent and it is getting more and more so every day. While that person may die from his injuries, and too bad so sad, what about the mother and two kids in a car behind them that happened to see this person get ejected and splattered all over the road? Now that family pays for it as well via a very traumatic sight, through no fault of their own. The person survives, has little or no insurance and no money, now everyone else has to foot their medical bills. Or the person is in their car with their son in a car seat next to them. They roll the car and their flopping around in the vehicle crushes the baby. I understand the whole "don't tell me what to do", but we cannot afford to be so selfish any longer. The world is too tightly knit for that. My 2 cents on the subject.
