Seat belt law will save lives
Toolbox
Published: April 11, 2007
What if I told you that a certain disease took 19 percent more lives last year than in the year before in Vermont? What if this disease struck largely young, healthy people? More importantly, what if I told you that much of the increase was readily preventable and at no cost to taxpayers?
Chances are, you'd call it a public health emergency or an epidemic and demand action. That public health emergency is here, and it's now: It's the rising carnage on Vermont highways.
Well, hold the lights and sirens for the time being, because a solution is in sight. It is found in a comprehensive highway safety bill carefully crafted by the House Judiciary Committee. H.530 seeks to address the fact that highway deaths predominantly affect younger drivers, that most victims die unbelted and that distracted drivers cause many serious accidents. It is a bill based on hard science, not anecdotal experience.
The evidence is especially compelling for a key part of this bill, which is primary seat belt enforcement. This bill will save lives and prevent injuries. Education is not enough. New Hampshire's House of Representatives understood that when its members passed a primary seat belt law last week.
Vermont's seat belt law at present does not allow police to stop a driver for failing to wear a seat belt. The law can only be enforced if the driver is stopped for another reason. The primary seat belt law would allow a seat belt violation to be a primary offense.
Some legislators worry that Vermonters will object to this bill, considering it an unnecessary intrusion. Poll after poll proves otherwise. Americans and Vermonters favor initiatives such as standard enforcement of our seat belt law. In Vermont, buckling up already is the law, but our law doesn't provide for adequate enforcement.
Vermont's own Strategic Highway Safety Plan states that a standard seat belt law (primary enforcement) will "save lives and mitigate … the emotional and economic losses from someone being killed in a traffic crash," and considers pursuing such a law a "critical strategy" to improve Vermont's highway safety. Given that this plan was developed with the input of every agency and organization concerned with traffic safety and protecting Vermonters, why is Governor Douglas opposed to primary enforcement?
Most Vermonters already buckle up. When you learn that nearly two-thirds of teens killed in traffic accidents are not buckled up; that the chances of dying or being seriously injured in a traffic accident are more than doubled if you don't wear a seat belt; and that each highway fatality costs Vermont over $900,000, this legislation is a no-brainer. In Vermont's close-knit communities, the costs go far beyond dollars and cents; it's hard to put a price on the sorrow and sense of loss resulting from the needless death of a promising young person.
Every state that has enacted a primary seat belt law has seen increased belt use and reductions in driver death rates. The decision makers who oppose the primary seat belt law are favoring the small minority of scofflaws who say, "It's an intrusion to require seat belts" and ignoring all of those who will be saved from death and serious injury by passage of this law.
As if there aren't already enough reasons to support this measure, as the House Transportation Committee struggles with raising the dollars needed to keep our roads and bridges safe, the federal government will give Vermont $3.7 million for passage of a primary seat belt law. That's more than a penny on every gallon of gas sold in Vermont last year.
It's time to put politics aside and do the right thing. It's time to make policy based on the facts. It's time to tell Vermonters that we care and that we really mean it. As someone who spends his working hours trying to save lives, I am confident that H.530 will save more lives than I can expect to in my entire career as an emergency physician and that Vermont will be a better place for it.
Rep. Harry Chen is a Democrat from Mendon.
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