For police, not wearing seat belts can be fatal mistake

[SP Cook]

Anybody that believes that traffic cops don't wear seatbelts for the same reason that traffic cops drive 30 or 40 over (hint:  because they are arrogant hypocrites) lives in a fantasy world.

When is the last time you actually say a "shooter" on the interstate?  Traffic cops spend their days in probably the one place in the nation they are unlikely to happen upon any crime, other than the oppertunity to hypocritically random tax others for what they themselves do.

[cpzilliacus]

Anybody that believes that traffic cops don't wear seatbelts for the same reason that traffic cops drive 30 or 40 over (hint:  because they are arrogant hypocrites) lives in a fantasy world.

When is the last time you actually say a "shooter" on the interstate?  Traffic cops spend their days in probably the one place in the nation they are unlikely to happen upon any crime, other than the oppertunity to hypocritically random tax others for what they themselves do.

S. P., I must respectfully disagree with the  above.

Not because there aren't some lazy law enforcement officers out there (because there are), but because a lot of criminals end up in custody thanks to ethical traffic enforcement.

Case in point (dated, but still relevant) - for many decades, the District of Columbia's male felons were incarcerated at the Lorton Reformatory complex in Lorton, Fairfax County, Va.  Now many of these felons had friends back in D.C., so there was a lot of travel up and down I-95/I-395 to and from the prison complex (which was run by hand-picked associates and friends of former District of Columbia Mayor-for-Life Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr.).  More than a few of the visitors to Lorton would bring "gifts" in the form of illegal drugs and other contraband.

Recall that in the middle of I-95/I-395 is the reversible HOV roadway, with primary traffic enforcement by the Virginia State Police.

The visitors (and even some prison employees) would drive to the prison (especially on weekday afternoons) by way of those HOV lanes, without bothering to have the 3 persons required to comply with the HOV restriction.   So they would get stopped by the Virginia State Police for an HOV violation.  As a result, more than a few persons would end up under arrest for having illegal drugs in their possession (sometimes large quantities of same, intended for delivery to Lorton).

In the mid-1990's, Congress ordered the Lorton prison closed, and it inmates sent to the federal Bureau of Prisons, and the staff laid-off.  Most of the prison complex have since been  torn down, and much of the land has now been developed.

[jeffandnicole]

46.2-1094 B2 states that law enforcement officers are "Exempt" from having to wear the seat belt under certain circumstances.
Other Exemptions:
Taxi drivers
Meter readers
Newspaper delivery drivers
Rural mail carriers
Solid waste collectors
Parking ticket officials

While I can see the reason for the exemptions, crashes occur because a car hits another object.  In most of the cases above, the car would be moving at a slow speed.  Nothing is preventing another motorist from slamming into the back (or side) of the exempt vehicle, possibly flinging that driver around or thru the vehicle.

[kphoger]

Again, what about the other 50% of officers who do buckle up?
Are they bad police officers?  Do they not know what they're doing?

Beltway, you make it sound as though buckling up is a stupid idea.

[Special K]

Whatever.  Cops are allowed to do a bunch of things the common citizen isn't.  Buckling up is one of the least of them.

[Beltway]

Again, what about the other 50% of officers who do buckle up?
Are they bad police officers?  Do they not know what they're doing?

Beltway, you make it sound as though buckling up is a stupid idea.

You haven't been comprehending what I have written.  I merely pointed out situations and cases where the seat belt use can or should be exempted.  So a smart officer would not go without 100% of the time while on duty, nor would they fasten 100% of the time while on duty.  You have to use your judgment on a situational basis.

[bugo]

Whatever.  Cops are allowed to do a bunch of things the common citizen isn't.  Buckling up is one of the least of them.

They should be forced to obey the laws they are enforcing.

[agentsteel53]

Whatever.  Cops are allowed to do a bunch of things the common citizen isn't.  Buckling up is one of the least of them.

They should be forced to obey the laws they are enforcing.

I disagree.  I also think no one should be required by law to wear a seatbelt.  If you don't want to do it, then you have evaluated the risks and benefits, and made a rational decision.

or you're an idiot.  but, whatever.  the government's job is not to enforce the preservation of idiots.

[agentsteel53]

Mayor-for-Life Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr.

I had tried to figure out which minor Soviet functionary Shepilov was, to make the dictator joke work... turns out that is Marion Barry's actual middle name!

[cpzilliacus]

Mayor-for-Life Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr.

I had tried to figure out which minor Soviet functionary Shepilov was, to make the dictator joke work... turns out that is Marion Barry's actual middle name!

How a poor kid from Itta Bena, Mississippi ended up with a middle name of "Shepilov" is not at all clear to me (according to authors Tom Sherwood and Harry Jaffe, authors of the excellent Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., Barry never knew his father, and spent most of his growing-up years in Memphis, Tennessee, not Itta Bena).

[cpzilliacus]

Whatever.  Cops are allowed to do a bunch of things the common citizen isn't.  Buckling up is one of the least of them.

They should be forced to obey the laws they are enforcing.

I disagree.  I also think no one should be required by law to wear a seatbelt.  If you don't want to do it, then you have evaluated the risks and benefits, and made a rational decision.

On private property, people can do as they please, including not using seat belts and engaging in other (sometimes) hazardous activities.  On the public highway network (including roads that are owned or operated by the private sector but open to the public), the State has every right  to require that people not drive under the influence of drugs (including alcohol), to mandate that vehicles operate at or below certain speed limits and be roadworthy.

or you're an idiot.  but, whatever.  the government's job is not to enforce the preservation of idiots.

I certainly don't mind it if the Darwin Rule applies - but - vehicle crashes involving personal injury or death have to be investigated and sometimes reconstructed at significant expense to taxpayers.  If the crash involves fatalities, then autopsies are probably required (also at taxpayer expense).

[deathtopumpkins]

On private property, people can do as they please, including not using seat belts and engaging in other (sometimes) hazardous activities.  On the public highway network (including roads that are owned or operated by the private sector but open to the public), the State has every right  to require that people not drive under the influence of drugs (including alcohol), to mandate that vehicles operate at or below certain speed limits and be roadworthy.

Problem is these activities have far, far greater potential to endanger other motorists than you not wearing your seatbelt. You cannot equate not wearing your seatbelt to speeding or driving drunk. The only person your lack of a seatbelt is going to injure is yourself.

[bugo]

Whatever.  Cops are allowed to do a bunch of things the common citizen isn't.  Buckling up is one of the least of them.

They should be forced to obey the laws they are enforcing.

I disagree.  I also think no one should be required by law to wear a seatbelt.  If you don't want to do it, then you have evaluated the risks and benefits, and made a rational decision.

Agreed.  It's not the government's place to force you to wear seat belts, to tell you what you can and cannot put in your body, what guns you can own, or whether you can buy a large Coke.  This is not what the founding fathers had in mind.

[formulanone]

Hah! I wore a seatbelt when delivering and throwing newspapers.

Police could buckle when increasing their speed, and unbuckle just before coming to a halt. The high speed chases/pursuits is when they damn well need it. If they can fumble with a laptop in plain sight, their radio, they can manage a two-finger operation that takes all of a second. On the other hand, its your choice as an adult to be an idiot.

[Beltway]

Hah! I wore a seatbelt when delivering and throwing newspapers.

Police could buckle when increasing their speed, and unbuckle just before coming to a halt. The high speed chases/pursuits is when they damn well need it. If they can fumble with a laptop in plain sight, their radio, they can manage a two-finger operation that takes all of a second. On the other hand, its your choice as an adult to be an idiot.

A police car indeed involves multi-tasking, and often is a very noisy and stressed environment, with radio, siren and conversation in the car, including working the CAD, sometimes one or more at the same time.

You don't need to be an officer to see this -- most municipal police departments have "ride-a-long" programs whereby a civilian can ride with an officer on a duty shift.  See for yourself...

This seat belt issue is not as simple as some posters want to make it out to be.

[kphoger]

On private property, people can do as they please, including not using seat belts and engaging in other (sometimes) hazardous activities.  On the public highway network (including roads that are owned or operated by the private sector but open to the public), the State has every right  to require that people not drive under the influence of drugs (including alcohol), to mandate that vehicles operate at or below certain speed limits and be roadworthy.

Problem is these activities have far, far greater potential to endanger other motorists than you not wearing your seatbelt. You cannot equate not wearing your seatbelt to speeding or driving drunk. The only person your lack of a seatbelt is going to injure is yourself.

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute.  If there is a traffic accident and you aren't wearing a seat belt, you might die or be seriously injured.  If there are other passengers in your car who need to be rescued, then you will not only have caused harm to yourself, but also prevented yourself from being able to rescue them–something which you may have been able to do had you been buckled in during the crash.  So there does exist a hypothetical possiblity that not buckling up would be the determining factor in someone else's death.

[J N Winkler]

Mayor-for-Life Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr.

I had tried to figure out which minor Soviet functionary Shepilov was, to make the dictator joke work... turns out that is Marion Barry's actual middle name!

How a poor kid from Itta Bena, Mississippi ended up with a middle name of "Shepilov" is not at all clear to me (according to authors Tom Sherwood and Harry Jaffe, authors of the excellent Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C., Barry never knew his father, and spent most of his growing-up years in Memphis, Tennessee, not Itta Bena).

Dmitri Shepilov (1905-1995) was Khrushchev's foreign minister and involved in an unsuccessful attempt to depose him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepilov

However, in 1936 he was still fairly obscure and would have been known only to people following events in the Soviet Union very closely--he was not as instantly recognizable as, for example, Zinoviev.  If he is indeed where Marion Barry gets his middle name, then Barry's parents must have been Russia geeks or ardent Communists, or Barry must have given it to himself in adulthood.

Edit:  He did give it to himself in adulthood; originally it was a nickname given him by his classmates at LeMoyne College, where he got his undergraduate degree:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry

[SP Cook]

ethical traffic enforcement.

"Ethical" and "traffic enforcement" are conradictory concepts.

Any traffic cop who, ever (other than in response or pursuit), drives one one-thousandth of a MPH over the limit, to be "ethical" must immediatly turn himself in for the same random tax I have to pay.  Or be UNethical.  A hypocrite.

Any traffic cop who, ever, lets anybody go, be they a cute blonde, a fellow traffic cop, a politician, buyer of those "I love cops" bribery stickers, is UNethical.  Corrupt.

Nice story about NOVA's lowlifes.  Care to guess the number of serious crimes commited on an interstate, where traffic cops live, contrasted to say, ANY OTHER PLACE.  Every second wasted enforcing laws that make no sense is another rape, murder, theft, etc, in TOWN.  Where the people are.

Turn off the radar gun, buckle up, and GET TO WORK!!

[jeffandnicole]

Whatever.  Cops are allowed to do a bunch of things the common citizen isn't.  Buckling up is one of the least of them.

They should be forced to obey the laws they are enforcing.

I disagree.  I also think no one should be required by law to wear a seatbelt.  If you don't want to do it, then you have evaluated the risks and benefits, and made a rational decision.

or you're an idiot.  but, whatever.  the government's job is not to enforce the preservation of idiots.

A person not wearing a seat belt usually doesn't wear one because they don't want to.  No matter how persistent their family may be about the issue, that person won't wear it.

Say, later on, that person gets into an accident and dies.  The family now runs to the government to get them to force everyone to wear a seatbelt. 

Actually - this is how many laws come about.  A family member refused to listen to their family, and now the family is using that person as a reason to enact a new law.  Many time, they'll use the name of the person that died in the law.  (We're not talking something like Code Adam or an Amber Alert...although the naming thing did kinda start snowballing with those laws).

Ironically, the person that died did so doing what they want to do, and the new law, with the dead person's name on it, is opposite of what the dead person wanted!

[SidS1045]

Care to guess the number of serious crimes commited on an interstate, where traffic cops live, contrasted to say, ANY OTHER PLACE.

Interstates are where the money is, and make no mistake, these days traffic enforcement is about money.  Every jurisdiction with control over roads depends on traffic fines for part of their budgets.  (IOW, they count on motorists breaking the law and getting caught.)  Speed cameras and red-light cameras are merely the latest attempts to automate the collection of money for behavior which often is neither unsafe nor unreasonable.

But, of course, if you listen to the cops and the legislators, there is an *epidemic* of poor driving, so they MUST crack down.  Never mind that the motor vehicle death rate has been dropping steadily since the 1940's.  Don't confuse them with facts.

[J N Winkler]

"Ethical" and "traffic enforcement" are conradictory concepts.

Any traffic cop who, ever (other than in response or pursuit), drives one one-thousandth of a MPH over the limit, to be "ethical" must immediatly turn himself in for the same random tax I have to pay.  Or be UNethical.  A hypocrite.

Any traffic cop who, ever, lets anybody go, be they a cute blonde, a fellow traffic cop, a politician, buyer of those "I love cops" bribery stickers, is UNethical.  Corrupt.

Nice story about NOVA's lowlifes.  Care to guess the number of serious crimes commited on an interstate, where traffic cops live, contrasted to say, ANY OTHER PLACE.  Every second wasted enforcing laws that make no sense is another rape, murder, theft, etc, in TOWN.  Where the people are.

Turn off the radar gun, buckle up, and GET TO WORK!!

S.P., you're phoning it in.

[deathtopumpkins]

On private property, people can do as they please, including not using seat belts and engaging in other (sometimes) hazardous activities.  On the public highway network (including roads that are owned or operated by the private sector but open to the public), the State has every right  to require that people not drive under the influence of drugs (including alcohol), to mandate that vehicles operate at or below certain speed limits and be roadworthy.

Problem is these activities have far, far greater potential to endanger other motorists than you not wearing your seatbelt. You cannot equate not wearing your seatbelt to speeding or driving drunk. The only person your lack of a seatbelt is going to injure is yourself.

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute.  If there is a traffic accident and you aren't wearing a seat belt, you might die or be seriously injured.  If there are other passengers in your car who need to be rescued, then you will not only have caused harm to yourself, but also prevented yourself from being able to rescue them–something which you may have been able to do had you been buckled in during the crash.  So there does exist a hypothetical possiblity that not buckling up would be the determining factor in someone else's death.

If it's such a concern to those passengers in the car, they are free to tell the driver to buckle up. I had plenty of friends in high school who didn't wear seatbelts but I made them when they were driving me somewhere.

[Beltway]

"Ethical" and "traffic enforcement" are conradictory concepts.

Any traffic cop who, ever (other than in response or pursuit), drives one one-thousandth of a MPH over the limit, to be "ethical" must immediatly turn himself in for the same random tax I have to pay.  Or be UNethical.  A hypocrite.

Any traffic cop who, ever, lets anybody go, be they a cute blonde, a fellow traffic cop, a politician, buyer of those "I love cops" bribery stickers, is UNethical.  Corrupt.

Nice story about NOVA's lowlifes.  Care to guess the number of serious crimes commited on an interstate, where traffic cops live, contrasted to say, ANY OTHER PLACE.  Every second wasted enforcing laws that make no sense is another rape, murder, theft, etc, in TOWN.  Where the people are.

Turn off the radar gun, buckle up, and GET TO WORK!!

So nuts should be allowed to go 100 mph because all the other crimes haven't been yet all solved?

[deathtopumpkins]

Nuts are gonna go 100 mph regardless of the level of traffic enforcement.

[bugo]

I can't remember the last time I saw a civilian driving at 100 MPH.