Unseatbelted people sometimes fly out of cars. And what about the emotional impact of being in a wreck where somebody dies in the other car because they didn't wear a seatbelt? What if you caused a wreck survivable with minor injuries but the other person died because no seatbelt. Now yiu're charged with manslaughter simply because somebody was being libertarian. Yay.
We legally mandate airbags, abs, esr, and a host of other safety features in cars because it turns out cars kill a disproportionate number of the population. Why not seatbelts? Mind you, you simply don't have the option to turn off the other safety features. We collectively don't want you to have it.
> We legally mandate airbags, abs, esr, and a host of other safety features in cars ... you simply don't have the option to turn off ...
That's incorrect. New cars can't be sold without some of these safety features, but as far as I'm aware, there's no law preventing a buyer from dismantling them. I think that's an important difference--it's one thing to regulate what a large industry can sell, but a completely different thing to regulate someone's activities with their own property.
No it doesn't. That's just for the passenger-side airbag and you are only supposed to turn it off if there's something other than a human there (like a rear-facing baby seat).
You haven't presented a scenario that tops my desire for personal liberty. I'm not really interested in what "we collectively" wants. People should be able to drink and smoke, play music loud enough to damage their hearing, dance all night in abandoned warehouses with 300 of their closest friends, do their own plumbing, and kill game animals for the sheer fun of it. Because they want to, and being able to do what you want is liberty.
I realize we need some restrictions to have a functioning society. But we have far, far too many.
We legally mandate airbags, abs, esr, and a host of other safety features in cars because it turns out cars kill a disproportionate number of the population. Why not seatbelts? Mind you, you simply don't have the option to turn off the other safety features. We collectively don't want you to have it.