Monday, May 19, 2008

Seatbelts and Cheeseburgers

California is doing a "crack down" *cough*revenuegeneration*cough* on people who don't wear seatbelts.

The "Click it or Ticket" campaign (I mean, "campaign") is meant to help keep people from hurting themselves by pulling people over and giving them tickets (fines) for not wearing their seatbelts.

By not wearing a seatbelt, you create no public danger. You do not threaten anyone else's life by failing to wear your seatbelt. You can only hurt yourself by not wearing a seatbelt.

Since we're fining people for doing things that are bad for them, why not ticket people for eating fast food two days in a row? The cops can set up a hand-stamp system when you buy a cheeseburger that indicates the earliest date that you can buy another! Besides, fast food is BAAAAAAD for you! We can't have you not wearing your seatbelt and eating fast food every day!

Why do we give the government the power to be our nannies?

Why not take it to the next logical level?

Fines for not wearing a coat on a cold day. Put a coat on! You'll catch your death!
Fines for not changing your underwear. You never know when you'll have an accident. Then the paramedics will see your skidmarks!
Fines for owning a BB gun. You'll put your eye out kid!
Fines for leaving the door open with the AC on. What am I? Made of money?!
Fines for saying mean things. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
Fines for making faces. If you keep making that face, it'll get stuck like that!
Fines for putting that thing in your mouth. You don't know where its been!
Fines for not eating everything on your plate. There are starving children in China! NOTHING IS WRONG IN CHINA. EVERYONE IS SUPER HAPPY. THEY HAVE FUN TIMES. ALL IS WELL. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES.

Please feel free to contribute your own in the comments section!

4 comments:

JP said...

Click or Tick is a Nation Wide deal.
It started here in Texas as well.

I've never had a problem remembering to belt up. I had an old Dodge Colt that I had to where the belt on or I slid off the vinyl seats in my rather hard driving. It also was towed once in it's life (and I rescued it right off the wrecker) and the driver had cut the belt off at the ratchet to tie off the steering wheel. So it was always on the tight side. I'd slide the seat back, belt up, and slide the seat forward.
A few years after I got rid of it, (and got a better Colt) Louisiana went to Ticketing if stopped for something else and not wearing. Then a few years later to pulling you over for only that.

Fletch said...

jp, I agree on buckling up, I think it's just common sense, and never fail to do so. I think you'd be stupid NOT to buckle up. However, I disagree with punishing people for doing things that can only affect themselves.

I agree on those vinyl old car "bench" seats. We had a AMC Rambler Ambassador, and the seatbelts were broken, which meant any turn kept you fighting to stay in your seat. We got those fixed quickly.

Anonymous said...

Same thing applies to mandatory motorcycle helmet laws.

Sure, it's freaking stupid not to wear one, but it is also the riders choice whether he wants to hit and bounce or just squash on impact.

JP said...

I agree with the liberty thing. . . and Helmet laws, though I laugh at most of ABATE's excuses for not wearing(egad I hate I misspelled that before) a helm. My cousin was a bigwig in his local ABATE chapter. I let him whine for a minute on why helmets are actually dangerous, and asked him if he remembered my crash. "You broke your leg really bad that time, eh" "And I hit my head on the car as I went over. Big blue crease on the thing. The only reason you can talk to me now is the helmet saved me" He could give me his lame excuses because I was smart enough to be wearing a helmet.