Wearing Masks and Seat Belts

Déjà vu all over again…

Listening to all the discussions about wearing masks being a violation of civil rights brought me back 50 years to all the similar complaints about seat belts.

However, in this case, the risks are reversed.

Seat Belts

The arguments for seat belt laws were based on the protection of the person wearing the seat belt. You could argue that you have the right to put yourself at risk and even claim the risks are minimal.

It’s the loss of freedom. Seat-belt laws infringe a person’s rights as guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth, and the Ninth Amendments, and the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws are an unwarranted intrusion by government into the personal lives of citizens; they deny through prior restraint the right to determine one’s own individual personal health-care standard.
The Fraud of Seat-Belt Laws

However, for the record:

Of the 37,133 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2017, 47% were not wearing seat belts. In 2017 alone, seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration