Buckle up for even more police scrutiny as California kicks off with its rendition of the “Click it or Ticket” campaign.
Palo Alto High School students who drive may have noticed an increased presence of police vehicles on and around campus. This is due to the fact that the California Office of Traffic Safety has increased ticket prices for seat belt violations, stepped up police monitoring of drivers and their seat belt habits, and created a whole new mess of trivial reasons to get pulled over and fined.
Click it or Ticket started as a national policy but has been adopted and employed differently from state to state. California adopted the policy in 2005 but has recently increased measures on enforcement. The Office of Traffic Safety writes “Police departments throughout California will be looking for drivers and passengers who don’t buckle up during the 2007 “Click It or Ticket” seat belt enforcement campaign, taking place May 14-June 3, 2007. And that includes passengers in the back seat.”
The first problem with the “Click it or Ticket” campaign is that it goes about addressing traffic safety from entirely the wrong angle. Though the wearing of seat belts may help to prevent injury once an accident occurs, the belts themselves do not cause or prevent accidents. The Office of Traffic Safety itself published the five Primary Collision Factors of 2007: excessive speed, driving under the influence, auto right-of-way, improper turning, and faulty traffic signals and signs. These are the things the police should be worried about enforcing, the factors that actually cause accidents, not the personal choices that make an accident safer. In fact, in many cases a seat belt won’t do any good, such as if the car explodes or goes careening off a cliff. Preventing accidents is more important than making them safer.
The second problem with this policy is that it attempts to enforce a crime with no victim but the perpetrator. While reckless speed or drunk driving are dangers to everyone on the road, failure to wear a seatbelt affects only the single individual who chooses to be unsafe. So even if a policeman does happen to catch an individual who isn’t wearing his belt the best he can do is make one single person’s life a little bit safer, as opposed to catching a drunk driver or fixing a faulty traffic light, which makes the road safer for everyone.
And finally there’s the matter of personal choice. When automobiles were first manufactured, there were no seatbelts. If one was lucky one might get a car with a safety bar to hold on to, but other than you were on your own. Soon after the seat belt was invented as a preliminary caution to make driving somewhat safer, and it was up to the passenger to wear it or not. Then, what was simply an added safety bonus soon became a law, and you had no choice but to strap down as soon as you sat down.
What’s next? Will we make it illegal to stand close to microwaves, run with scissors, or eat fatty foods? Where do we draw the line on the government’s right to enforce people’s personal choices? It’s an entirely different situation if law enforcement is trying to make the roads safer for all drivers, but when they start deciding how each and every person has to live their lives, then we know we’re moving towards a dark age.
The “Click it or Ticket” campaign is a waste of money, resources, and time for drivers and policemen alike. Traffic safety could be increased through many different, more effective, and more reasonable foci of enforcement that prevent car accidents entirely as opposed to just decreasing the ensuing damage.