Primary Enforcement of Seat Belt Law Rejected by MA House
by TChris
Reasonable arguments can be made that laws should require drivers to wear seat belts, or that motorcylists should be required to wear helmets, because society often bears the cost of injuries that exceed insurance coverage. Others reasonably argue that the government should allow individuals to make their own judgments about the costs and benefits of using seat belts or helmets.
Putting that debate aside, states that mandate seat belt use must decide whether the police should be allowed to stop a vehicle solely because the officer suspects that someone in the car hasn't buckled up. The Massachusetts House wisely declined to give the police the power to stop motorists solely to write a seat belt ticket. About half the states permit only "secondary enforcement" of seat belt laws, permitting seat belt enforcement when the police make a traffic stop for some other traffic violation while prohibiting traffic stops just to write a seat belt ticket.
Representative Paul Kujawski said the bill "doesn't do anything but give police another opportunity to stop you, and that to me is absurd." Given the prevalence of racial profiling, it's bad policy to give the police another excuse to stop a driver for a trivial violation. The police too often seize on minor violations as a pretext to look for evidence of another crime in the absence of a reason (other than the driver's race) to suspect that such evidence exists. The police already have an arsenal of reasons to make a traffic stop; they don't need another.
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