Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Opinion/Position - The Mommy State

No one died on the roads of Southern Wisconsin over the holiday weekend. It was a reason to .... be glad. However, every news station ran a story last night that layed the "blame" right at the foot of a marketing campaign, "Click it or Ticket". The "new" enforcement of seat belt laws that have recently been moved from secondary to primary reasons for a traffic stop. If you missed it, just about everywhere, the cops can now stop you if they see you are not wearing a seat belt.

In "progressive Dane", my county, this morning while driving our daughter to school, I looked at the cars going in the other direction....less than half were wearing a seat belt, meaning every one of those dozens and dozens of cars could have been stopped and ticketed. Who to choose? How about a little stereotyping? We recently had a client, he had 7 traffic stops in the last 2 years, 5 were for seat belt violations. He was 20. Given that no other ticket was written, exactly why does anyone think he was stopped? For NOT wearing a seat belt?

Lawn yarts were banned, couple of people died. ATCs were banned (the real ones, the tricycle version), couple died, others seriously hurt. Where is the ban on guns, cars, knives....ladders?

Helmet laws for motorcyclists AND bicyclists. Seat belt laws. And it is not just these "mommy" laws....we have all these laws designed to protect us, from ourselves. It seems the law thinks we are all a bunch of imbeciles that can not make responsible decisions. Of course, the overabundance of legal cases where stupid people have received money for lawsuits because they were STUPID does give the argument some weight. I recommend a subscription to the Stella Awards (free).

Where is the reasonable man when you want him.

Position - laws designed to protect the stupid from the irresponsible should be eliminated.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am a big fan of the Darwin Awards also.

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