I don't believe buckling up should be mandatory, any more than wearing
cycling helmets should be mandatory. I also think it should be legal
for adults to use class A drugs if they want to.
In principle, I'm with you on all three points. However, there's also
the cost to society of handling the results of people's careless
choices. If, say, cyclists not wearing helmets results in lots of
emergency room capacity being taken up by them, thus reducing the
available capacity for handling other patients, then society may have a
right to demand that they start wearing those helmets.
as I replied earlier, society is going to have to make some pretty drastic
decisions if they adopt that line of thinking. It would need to legislate
against all kinds of self-imposed risk. Taking cycle helmets as an example,
more pedestrians and motorists than cyclists die of head injuries so you'd
have to mandate helmet wearing for both those groups too. You'd need to ban
things like skiing and motorcycling, rugby, Saturday night fighting, etc.
etc.
The approach you suggest leads to absurd consequences which would be
unacceptable in any right-thinking society. The only reasonable approach to
this in a society like ours, with socialized medicine, is to accept that
people have a right to take part in risky activities and factor it into the
cost of providing the healthcare.
Furthermore these are not necessarily careless choices, as you put it. I
have given a lot of thought to the question of wearing a cycling helmet and
have chosen not to. Other people give careful thought to going
rock-climbing, parachuting and crossing the road without wearing safety
gear, eating butter and McDonalds burgers, and after careful thought they
choose to undertake these risk-filled activities. It's part of being a human
and living in a civilised society.
Bob
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