Idea about "click it or ticket" (mandatory seat belt laws)

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
The issue appears to be that, even when the wearing of seatbelts is mandatory, you can't be pulled over and given a ticket if you don't.

That's a bit strange.

Not really. It's called a secondary offense. It's the same with driver's licenses - they can't pull you over and demand to see your license (at least, not in Virginia).

[Urban Ranger]

People can see whether you are wearing your seatbelt or not without pulling you over, though.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
People can see whether you are wearing your seatbelt or not without pulling you over, though.

it's difficult when some windows are tinted...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
People can see whether you are wearing your seatbelt or not without pulling you over, though.

Not that easily.

[Flip McWho]

It's the same with driver's licenses - they can't pull you over and demand to see your license (at least, not in Virginia).

Wow. They can and do over here. Just randomly pull up random people to check there warrant and rego, drivers license too, gotta have one on you. If not, got something like 48hours to produce one or its a fine, might just be an instant fine now. Its amazing how much difference there is between countries.


Basically smoking is being made obsolete. Unfashionable. No longer. Time to catch up.

[Kuciwalker]

Wow. You guys must live in a police state or something

[Urban Ranger]

New Zealand, such an awful police state

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
New Zealand, such an awful police state

Damn, that's good irony.

[Dr Strangelove]

I told you that Aragon was nothing but a two bit fascist. After all, a monarchy is nothing more than a military dictatorship with nicer bling.

[MosesPresley]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The issue appears to be that, even when the wearing of seatbelts is mandatory, you can't be pulled over and given a ticket if you don't.

That's a bit strange.

Not wearing your seat belt is now a primary offense in Delaware. We are also a non-smoking state.

On a side note, our Govenor Ruth Ann Minner has a GED. I'm sure there is no correlation.

Neither of these laws overly burden me, but I don't need the government to play the role of busybody Mrs. Kravitz.

[GePap]

Originally posted by rah


No it just shows your ignorance.

Liquer increases the urge to smoke in most smokers.
Many social smokers only smoke when they drink.
I don't go to resturants to smoke and most others don't either so it's not really injurious to my freedom, especially since i'm only going to be there 90 minutes. But when I go to a bar, i go with the intent to sit for a long period of time to drink and smoke. It's not my intent to decrease one's pleasure of eating. But if they're in a bar pounding down their own vice, they're fair game in my book, especially if they're anit smoking fanatics, what the heck are they doing in a smoke filled bar. There are enough bars that are smokefree for them to choose from. Just a few reasons why it's different.

Saying that "smokers like to smoke more when drinking" does not change the liberterian notions of choice, specially the ability of owners to chose what their customers can do. At most what you are saying is that bar owners have a much greater incentive than restaurant owners to allow customers to smoke, since it increases their profitability because one vice feeds the other. That one choice may be more logical for one set of businessmen than the other does not actually differentiate between their relative freedoms.

But it's good to know that people that are ignorant about this type of thing are involved in regulating it.
It's what I've come to expect from government.

And you'll note that I don't argue about most of the anit-smoking regulations or the extra tax.
I'm just saying where I feel the line should be drawn.
I think resturants should be given a choice also but since smoking can easily ruin a dinning experience and not smoking for an hour is not an excessive burden, I'm willing to concede that one. As stated before, I know it's a bad habit and I try to be considerate. All I want is the same in return. But no matter how far I bend, there are those that want me to bend further. And it's usually people that don't really understand the situation.

A line about what?

So in the case of bars its all about the convinience of the owner, but when it comes to restaurants, its about the convinience of dinners?

Sorry rah, but as much as you want to make it sound like yours is some enlightened difference, it boils down to "I hate smokers in restaurants, I don;t mind them in bars, why ban smoking in bars?" That's not an arguement based on logic.

[GePap]

Originally posted by rah
Another ignorant person that hasn't read the thread shows up. All I'm asking is for the right of an bar owner to designate his bar as a smoking bar. You have the choice not to show up and be harmed. I have agreed to and cooperate with not smoking in other places where you might be. I wish people would read.

And yet you would deny that right to restaurant owners, based simply on your personal preferences. What makes you different then from the people who simply also dislike smoking in bars?

[GePap]

Originally posted by rah
And another reason it's different. Back to choice.
You can only get a tonelli's pizza at tonelli's so there's no choice. If a non-smoke wants one, i don't want to ruin his experience so I won't smoke. But you can get an MGD almost anywhere so there is choice involved.
And that's the issue here.

Since when is the choices of the customer your paramount concern?? You are arguing about the rights of owners, not customers. What if the owner of Tonelli's is a smoker and wwould like to give his customers the choice of smoking? If you then, as a non-smoker, want Tonelli's pizza, then you do have a choice, you always had a choice: go have the pizza and survive the smoke, or not have the pizza at Tonelli's because you don;t like smoking.

Its funny for you to all of sudden claim that having people smoke in a restaurant diminishes anyone's choices.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Velociryx

NOT irrelevant. I brought the original counter argument up, thankyouverymuch. But it does go to show that YOU are the one who needs a bit of help when it comes to reading posts.

The argument is/was that if you're soooooo worried about the safety and welfare of the public that you pass a law banning that awful, injurious habit some folks have, (smoking), before you pat yourself on the back for it, why not look at the pollution numbers and acknowledge the fact that every smoker in chicago puffing away at the same time pollutes less in a given day than ten minutes of rush hour traffic in that same city.

Because smoking and driving are two fundamentally different situations.

When put side by side with OTHER forms of pollution, it makes the whole "we're saving lives!" mantra somewhat silly. No, strike that, it makes it just this side of rediculous. That said, if you're really serious about saving lives, you'd go after the BIG pollution, and believe me, you don't have to eliminate every combustion engine on the planet to have an impact....a fine beginning (and a MUCH bigger impact that a smoking ban) would be the ban I mentioned. It must kill you to be wrong.

So your arguement boils down to : other forms of pollution are fundamentally worse, yet caused by processes fundamental to the functioning of the modern post-industrial society. So, since we can't ban those, lets not ban any.

BIG pollution is caused by IMPORTANT things. Smoking pollution comes from an insignificant vice which serves no purpose whatsoever and simply increases societies' health care costs significantly, specially sicne while to a non-smoker the efefcts of the smoking might (might) be less than standing behind some diesel truck, they do make a fundamental difference to those smoking.

In short, even though you might not comprehend this Vel, smoking is something were banning makes perfect sense, simply because we can do it without any societal side-effects, other than whinning addicts.

Hmmm...well, but this flies in the face of the core argument. "IT SAVES LIVES" Implies that folks who don't wear their seatbelts lose their lives (I know....that's tough to get your mind around, but do try). And this in turn, implies no additional healthcare costs, since there aren't many EMT's who will administer much in the way of health care to a dead guy.

Jesus christ on a cracker. Yeah, of course Vel, every fatality in a car accident happen AT THE SCENE. I mean, its not like people will gain serious injuries that will happen to kill them on the way to the hospital, or perhaps a few days into their care, or leave them in life long comas...NO, all car fatalities ONLY happen at the scene of the crash....

HOnestly, do you know HOW STUPID that is? Do you?

Granted, not everyone who doesn't wear a seatbelt will die, and they certainly will have medical costs, but separating their injuries and the dollars spent on them into wearing a seatbelt/not wearing a seatbelt categories is nigh on impossible, and to my knowledge, no such attempt is even being made.

Actually, its possible, just note which people came in with injuries because they were not wearing seatbelts, then calculate the cost, then examine what range of injuries they would have had had they had seatbelts on, the cost of treating those, and calculate the difference. Oh, and add thhe care for those who died.

Hmm, looks VERY possible.

Further, the "cost" where insurance is concerned is borne by individuals PAYING for said insurance, and not by the government (which represents society as a whole) and so cannot even be factored into the equation. We're talking about the cost of passing and implementing the legislation, which is the cost borne by the government, and as programs go, this one has been pretty expensive on a "per life saved" basis. The money would have been better spent elsewhere if saving lives was truly the agenda, which it wasn't.

Since insurance companies pass the costs on to all customers, all persons paying insurance see their premiums jump, hence the cost is shared, which actually is the very POINT of insurance. So yes, increase insurnace costs are born by the whole of society, specially when having auto insurance is mandatory for driving around in a car, meaing people can't ignore that cost.

Unlike anti-smoking laws (which are nearly as silly as an anti-flatulence law passed in an attempt to save lives by cleaning up the air), laws against murder DO provide an immediate social benefit, in that it, by creating a structure to deal with such crimes, prevents, or greatly reduces the tendency for vigilantism, which, while gratifying to the families of the victims of a murder, works directly against the desire of the "masses" for safety, security, and predictibility. Smoking does none of those things, especially given that a) smoking as a form of pollution is one of the most insignificant forms of pollution out there, and b) to my knowledge, there hasn't been a single case of injury or death that could be directly related back to second hand smoke, exclusively (and probably, there never will be, given the sheer number and amounts of other, much more dangerous pollutants out there).

Yawn.

Funny how yours i nothing more than, HEY LOOK, a COST/BENEFIT analysis.

The difference Vel is that your annalysis of the smoking situation is flawed.

In short, the possible benefits in savings in health care costs born by society easily outweight the ability of people to get hooked on nicotine by burning tabacoo leaves.

[rah]

Actually I think resturant owners should have a choice also. But that battle seems reasonably lost already. So I try to go along with it and rationalize why it shouldn't bother me, just like all the other restrictions. I don't have a choice.

But back to my other question. If I open a shop on the corner to charge smokers to smoke out of the bad weather, would you want to restrict smoking there. No non-smokers involved. If so why?