Published: May 26, 2006 04:40 pm            

Don’t tell me to Click It or Ticket

The following is an opinion piece and is not meant to represent factual information.



Galen Scott

gscott@weatherforddemocrat.com



I remember my $200-seat belt ticket vividly.

Birds were chirping and green sunlight cascaded through the canopy of oak trees suspended above my street.

It was a hot and sticky summer day four years ago as my roommate Eddie and I moved load after load of his girlfriend’s furniture into our house, less than a block away from her old one.

Though the distance was short — it couldn’t have been more that 800 yards — the heat and humidity made us sleepy and neither one of us felt like lugging her couch, bed and patio furniture down the street.

So we decided to let Eddie’s old Chevy do the work, and as we filed up the truck with the last load, The Allman Brothers Band cried out Whipping Post over Eddie’s blown speakers.

Just as the chorus ended, flashing red and blue lights broke out through the hazy green and we realized we had, in fact, managed to get pulled over on an 800-yard trip.

The police officer was tall. His shoulders were back and his chest was out — he looked like an eagle. His eyes were hard like Clint Eastwood as he stood with decorum and folded his hands behind his back. When he said the words “seat belt” and “citation” he lavished the t’s with attention.

After he left, Eddie and I sat with the motor idling in his Chevy. I think some insects were buzzing in the cab as we contemplated how to pay the $200-tickets we had each just received.

For me, that ticket was the death knell to an already anemic college budget. I had to borrow the money from a family member, at 10 percent interest, to be paid back within three months.

Our tickets were issued in conjunction with Click It or Ticket, a state-wide program designed to lower motor-vehicle fatalities and promote the wearing of seat belts. Click it or Ticket kicks off again this weekend and is scheduled to run through June 4.

The program is specifically targeting young male pickup drivers, a demographic the National Highway Safety Administration says runs a higher risk of not buckling up.

I don’t drive a pickup truck, but I am a young man who sometimes forgets to wear his seat belt. But when I hop behind the wheel and do remember to strap in, it’s because a seat belt ticket means macaroni and cheese and pinto beans for the next month. Not because I respect the spirit of the state’s seat belt law.

In fact, I think the seat belt law has a special place on a slippery slope that ends in with an absence of individual freedoms.

Seat belts save lives — it’s a proven fact — and self-righteous lawmakers stood on that fact to pass the seat belt legislation. But I believe a human being’s most sacred right is that of free will. Human beings should be allowed to wiggle and squirm, using up their allotted slice of time however they wish, until one person’s squirming begins to harm another.

Some folks say if I am injured because I wasn’t wearing my seat belt, and my insurance company has to pay the medical bills, that I’m actually hurting other people too because their insurance premiums will go up.

That is a fallacious argument.

Auto insurance is mandatory in Texas, so we pretty much have to pay whatever rates the companies set. If the insurance companies can pass personal injury costs on to the policy holder, then why wouldn’t they pass all their costs on to the policy holder? My point is this. If people’s insurance premiums go up because I didn’t wear my seat belt, it’s the insurance companies that are hurting other people, not me.

The link to insurance companies is what really chaps my hide.

A large portion of my auto-insurance policy goes to something called personal injury protection. If I get hurt in a car accident, the PIP is supposed to make lots of money available to cover my medical costs.

If I’m wearing a seat belt during a car wreck, chances are, I will be less likely to need all that PIP money. So my guess is, the insurance companies invited the Texas lawmakers out to the country club and had a little conversation.

“Hey, if you guys pass a seat belt law, you can tell the voters it will save the lives of millions of Texans and you’ll get re-elected,” said one insurance executive.

“Yeah, and if all those Texans wear their seat belts, we won’t have to pay out so much on accident claims, because there won’t be as many people getting seriously hurt,” said another.

But the Texas lawmaker remembered meeting lots of ranchers in Midland who don’t like wearing seat belts. And it seemed to the lawmaker like there are still lots of independent thinkers, war veterans and the like, who were more concerned about individual liberties than insurance-company profit margins.

“Yeah, but what about the Easy Rider Generation? Aren’t they going to put up a fight?” the lawmaker asked.

“Well, I guess they might,” the insurance guys laughed. “But they don’t really like to vote much, you know, and that’s how we got the mandatory car-insurance law passed in the first place.”

So the Texas lawmaker thought about it and hit his tee shot. Trying not to get backed into a corner, he thought a little humor would ease the situation. He asked the insurance guys how long it would be before golf carts came with seat belts too. The insurance company executives didn’t laugh. They looked at each other and smiled.

I choose to wear a seat belt because if I get killed in an accident, the people who love me will miss me and I hope the people I love will wear their seat belt for the same reason.

But if someone I love chooses not to wear a seat belt, I understand that it is their personal choice and life is much less valuable when people can’t make personal choices.

I called up Eddie the other day. He’s living down in Waco with another girlfriend, still rocking the Allman Brothers.

The funny part is, he still doesn’t wear a seat belt. Now he rides a motorcycle, and has to wear a helmet.

        

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