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CLT UPDATE
Thursday, October 12, 2017
Battling the Clueless
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Police officers and transportation safety experts called on
lawmakers to finally throw their support behind a long-stalled bill
that would allow police officers to stop drivers for not wearing a
seat belt, but the Legislature appears to be proceeding with caution
amid concerns about profiling....
Rep. Jeffrey Roy this session filed a bill (H 1304) that would
increase the fines for seat belt violations and would make the
violation a primary offense, for which police can stop drivers.
Roy's bill, which has 10 co-sponsors, would see drivers and
passengers over the age of 16 fined $50 for not wearing seat belts.
The driver would be charged an additional $50 for each passenger
between the ages of 12 and 16 who were not wearing belts....
AAA Northeast told the committee that roadway fatalities in
Massachusetts jumped 13 percent from 2015 to 2016, and that a recent
survey suggested the state's seat belt usage rate has actually
dropped to 74 percent, making the need for primary enforcement of
the seat belt law more critical.
"Not only are we headed in the wrong direction when it comes to
highway deaths, at the same time we're buckling up less here in
Massachusetts at a time when we need even greater protection," Mary
Maguire, director of public and legislative affairs at AAA
Northeast, said. "The best-proven tool we have to prevent roadway
deaths is the seatbelt. When you ride unbelted, your chances of
being ejected are 30 times greater and once you're ejected your
chances of dying are more than 75 percent." ...
"I can sit here and testify that in my 28-plus years of service,
I have never unbuckled a dead person from a motor vehicle," Bernie
Schipelliti, the traffic safety officer for the Burlington Police
Department, told the committee.
State House News Service
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
"Nanny State" label still looms over seat belt bill, chair says
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Battling the Clueless
By Chip Faulkner
On Tuesday (October 10) I again testified on Beacon Hill before a
legislative committee at the State House. This time it was the Joint
Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security which hosted a 10:00
a.m. hearing. The agenda included bills advocating primary enforcement
(being ticketed for just not wearing a seat belt) of the mandatory seat
belt law, and a number of bills requiring seat belts on school buses. I
noticed that the people testifying in support of primary enforcement
didn’t seem to have the fire and passion I’ve seen at similar hearings
in the past. It seemed like they were just going through the motions.
But they still showed up and pompously displayed the usual nanny state
I-know-better-than-you attitude.
My testimony opposed the several bills filed to require seat belts
on school buses; I made the following points:
1. Every day in the USA
480,000 yellow school buses drive 26 million children to and back
from school.
2. The number of trips and
mileage incurred total in the hundreds of millions, if not billions.
3. Yet in a ten-year study
(2004-2013) there were only 106 deaths inside a bus; 45 drivers and
61 students. This was an average of 6 students per year during the
length of the ten year study. In contrast, 2016 alone saw just over
40,000 people killed in passenger car accidents.
4. Today’s school buses
are far safer than the school buses we knew years ago. Today they
feature high back padded seats closely spaced together, called
“compartmentalization,” which isolates the child in a safety pocket.
5. In that same 10-year
study some may point out that there were 1,344 people killed in
school transportation-related crashes. However these were incidents
OUTSIDE the bus. These involved vehicles hitting or being hit by
buses, pedestrians or bicyclists, etc.
6. All of this
demonstrates that today’s school buses are, by far, the safest form
of transport on the planet. The seatbelt requirement would
introduce an element of risk that could have catastrophic
consequences. Think about this: If a school bus plunges into a lake
or river, catches on fire, or experiences an explosion — an
evacuation of children would take far longer with seat belts in use.
There’s the risk of stalling on a railroad track with a locomotive
bearing down, as happened to a Michigan bus driver. Her passengers,
she told me on the phone, were able to race out of the bus in
seconds because they were NOT wearing seat belts.
I also told the Committee about my Wrentham experience: About 20
years ago the geniuses on the Wrentham School Committee persuaded town
meeting to approve the purchase of a school bus equipped with seat
belts. This bus was a disaster from the start. As told to me by the
driver assigned to this school bus from hell, the kids were constantly
whacking each other with the buckles; she had to spend time with those
having trouble buckling themselves either in or out. Consequently the
bus was late for school numerous times. During all the time she was
driving that bus, she was afraid there would be some sort of catastrophe
in which the kids couldn’t get out of the seat belts in time to avoid
getting hurt or killed. Finally it all came to a head at a packed school
committee hearing with angry parents demanding that the seat belts be
removed.
One parent stood up and said he had been driving his son to school
every day to avoid his taking “the death bus.” At that point one of the
school committee members said ”I didn’t think having seat belts in a
school bus would be so controversial.” I jumped up and shouted out:
“Lady, you think strapping down 45 kids directly on top of a 60 gallon
gas tank is not controversial? They eventually voted to take the seat
belts off the bus. I heard the cost of removal ran several hundred
dollars.
There were no follow-up questions from the Committee after my
testimony on Tuesday. Incidentally, only 6 of the 20 members of this
committee bothered to attend the hearing. Once again, 14 absent members
showed how much they deserved the $18 million devoted to their obscene
pay hikes in January.
Note: The above statistical data was provided by the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the American School
Bus Council (ASBC).
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Chip Faulkner
Communications Director |
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"I Have Never Unbuckled a Dead
Person"
You never unbuckled my mother!
By Chip Ford
According to the State House News Service: "'Not only are
we headed in the wrong direction when it comes to highway deaths, at
the same time we're buckling up less here in Massachusetts at a time
when we need even greater protection,' Mary Maguire, director of
public and legislative affairs at AAA Northeast, said."
When AAA Northeast came out in support of the gas tax hike in
2013 I called them and cancelled my AAA roadside assistance policy,
signed up with the conservative seniors organization
AMAC (competition for the
uber-Liberal AARP) and
AMAC's roadside
assistance program. I was not going to continue
supporting an organization like AAA that consistently lobbies against my
interests in favor of its own. I've never looked back, and with
growing good reason.
In 1985-86 Jerry Williams and I led the successful ballot campaign to
repeal the Dukakis mandatory seat belt law, the state's first.
"The Best Legislature Money Can Buy" came back and passed it again
in 1994 — and again we collected the
signatures and put it back on the ballot. This time
— we believe due primarily if not entirely to a
ballot printing fiasco by the Secretary of State (no summary or
description of the questions, intentional or otherwise, appeared on the
ballot) — the voters supported the law, we believe thinking a Yes vote
was for its repeal.
Throughout both campaigns proponents consistently promised that the
law was only "secondary enforcement" (a driver could be ticketed only if
stopped for some other offense) and would never be made "primary
enforcement" (a driver can be pulled over and ticketed just for
seemingly not appearing to be wearing a seat belt).
As we've all come to recognize, in politics and government, promises
are devices to get what they want, only to be broken when
that's what they want.
The State House News Service further reported: "'I can sit here
and testify that in my 28-plus years of service, I have never unbuckled
a dead person from a motor vehicle,' Bernie Schipelliti, the traffic
safety officer for the Burlington Police Department, told the
committee."
There it was, right on schedule: "I have never unbuckled a dead
man"! Before I merged my organization —
Freedom First — with CLT, I had campaigned
for a decade against mandatory seat belt laws both here and around the
country, had established state chapters of Freedom First in twenty-two
other states. I traveled out to and testified before many of their
state legislatures that were considering their own law, was even invited
to Washington, D.C. as the only opponent of a national
mandatory seat belt law and gave testimony before the U.S. Senate
Sub-Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure in 1991.
Not one single hearing I've ever experienced ever went by without the
token police officer standing up and asserting: "I have never
unbuckled a dead man"!
It was always an absurd statement
— as if wearing a
seat belt made one invulnerable.
Bernie Schipelliti, traffic safety officer for the Burlington Police
Department, obviously never met my mother in his "28-plus years of
public service."
I never opposed using a seat belt — in
fact I always used one even long before the Dukakis mandatory seat belt
law. My winning debate position was "By choice, not by
force!"
Driving around with me, my father got into the habit of always
buckling up too. My mother hated the law, hated the belt that
rubbed against her neck, but after the voters, mistakenly or otherwise,
affirmed the second mandatory seat belt law on the November 1994 ballot,
she started buckling up all the time. It was the law.
Unfortunately for my mother, Officer Schipelliti wasn't around for
her on December 16, 1995 — a mere year
after the state mandatory seat belt law was re-imposed.
That day she insisted on going out in a snowstorm to finish up her
Christmas shopping; my father reluctantly acceded. With him
driving they made it less than a mile from their Tewksbury home on snowy
roads, before a pickup truck with a plow attached came through an
intersection and slammed into my mother's door. My father suffered
a broken collar bone and bruised ribs. He was for some reason that
day NOT wearing his seat belt. My mother
— wearing hers, holding her in place
against the passenger door as the truck's snow plow blade rammed into it
— had her aorta torn from her heart, looked
at my father and uttered "Oh Woody..." then was dead.
So Bernie, don't tell me seat belts are always such a
safety panacea, that you've "never unbuckled a dead person from a motor
vehicle." Too bad you can't ask my mother how she feels about your
damned law, but she hasn't been with us for a while
—
it killed her. Seems to me that your advocacy makes you and
the other know-it-alls accessories to her death, don't you think?
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Chip Ford
Executive Director |
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State House News
Service
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
"Nanny State" label still looms over seat belt bill, chair
says
By Colin A. Young
Police officers and transportation safety experts called on
lawmakers to finally throw their support behind a
long-stalled bill that would allow police officers to stop
drivers for not wearing a seat belt, but the Legislature
appears to be proceeding with caution amid concerns about
profiling.
"As we all know, wearing a seat belt is the single best
defense against injuries and deaths in a car crash," Dr.
Bella Dinh-Zarr, a public health expert on the National
Transportation Safety Board, said. "We know seat belts are a
lifesaving technology, we know a primary seat belt law will
increase seat belt use, and increased seat belt use will
save lives and prevent injuries."
Rep. Jeffrey Roy this session filed a bill (H 1304) that
would increase the fines for seat belt violations and would
make the violation a primary offense, for which police can
stop drivers. Roy's bill, which has 10 co-sponsors, would
see drivers and passengers over the age of 16 fined $50 for
not wearing seat belts. The driver would be charged an
additional $50 for each passenger between the ages of 12 and
16 who were not wearing belts.
For years, plans to stiffen penalties under the state's seat
belt law have buckled in the face of racial profiling and
privacy considerations. Under the current law, police
officers in Massachusetts can only issue a ticket for a
violation of the seat belt law if they pull the driver over
for another offense.
Rep. Jeffrey Roy this session filed a bill (H 1304) that
would increase the fines for seat belt violations and would
make the violation a primary offense, for which police can
stop drivers. Roy's bill, which has 10 co-sponsors, would
see drivers and passengers over the age of 16 fined $50 for
not wearing seat belts. The driver would be charged an
additional $50 for each passenger between the ages of 12 and
16 who were not wearing belts.
The bill specifies that seat belt violations would not
"result in surcharges on motor vehicle insurance premiums,"
and that police officers could not search the car or its
occupants solely because of a seat belt violation.
Dinh-Zarr said Massachusetts ranks 48th in the country for
seat belt usage: the 78 percent usage rate here lags well
behind the 90 percent national average. She said 34 states
already have primary enforcement of the seat belt law and
that the NTSB has recommended primary enforcement of seat
belt laws since 1995.
"We're a state that likes to be number one in many
categories and it's a shame to be so low in that category,"
Roy said, adding that 48 percent of people who died in a car
crash in 2015 were not wearing a seat belt.
AAA Northeast told the committee that roadway fatalities in
Massachusetts jumped 13 percent from 2015 to 2016, and that
a recent survey suggested the state's seat belt usage rate
has actually dropped to 74 percent, making the need for
primary enforcement of the seat belt law more critical.
"Not only are we headed in the wrong direction when it comes
to highway deaths, at the same time we're buckling up less
here in Massachusetts at a time when we need even greater
protection," Mary Maguire, director of public and
legislative affairs at AAA Northeast, said. "The best-proven
tool we have to prevent roadway deaths is the seatbelt. When
you ride unbelted, your chances of being ejected are 30
times greater and once you're ejected your chances of dying
are more than 75 percent."
Maguire said that 32 motor vehicle occupants in
Massachusetts were totally ejected from their vehicle in
2016 and all 32 were killed as a result. No one wearing a
seat belt was ejected and killed in Massachusetts last year,
she said.
"I can sit here and testify that in my 28-plus years of
service, I have never unbuckled a dead person from a motor
vehicle," Bernie Schipelliti, the traffic safety officer for
the Burlington Police Department, told the committee.
Roy said he can understand the opposition argument that it
should not be government's place to tell people to wear a
seat belt in their own car, but told the Public Safety
Committee on Tuesday that unbuckled drivers are a danger to
other people because what might be a minor crash turns into
a worse situation when an unbuckled driver is tossed from
the driver's seat and cannot control the vehicle or when an
unbuckled driver is thrown from the vehicle entirely.
"I don't necessarily agree with it, but I can understand
it," Roy, a Franklin Democrat, said of the opposition
argument. "But once you become a projectile and you begin to
injure other folks through your conduct and you lose control
of your vehicle because you're not seat belted, that's where
I think it crosses the line. I like to say to folks your
right to swing your fists freely ends at the tip of my
nose."
Rep. Harold Naughton, co-chair of the Committee on Public
Saftey and Homeland Security, asked the people Roy brought
to testify to hone in on how an unbuckled driver can become
a danger to others because he expects to get criticism from
"the talk radio people" and others about Massachusetts being
a "nanny state" and "forcing laws down people's throats."
"We're going to get hammered if we put this bill out," the
chairman said.
Despite his foreshadowing, Naughton said his committee has
given a favorable report to similar bills in previous
sessions. He said concerns over the possibility of racial
profiling have prevented it from becoming law.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has
previously put up opposition to primary seat belt
enforcement, arguing that such a policy could be selectively
enforced and lead to racial profiling. A 2016 ACLU study
found that black motorists in Florida were stopped and
ticketed for seat belt violations in far greater numbers
than white motorists -- nearly twice as often statewide and
up to four times as often in certain counties.
"If anything, over the last two years and especially in the
last six months, issues of racial sensitivity have not gone
away and in fact, they have increased," Naughton said. "I
anticipate that if we go forward with this legislation, that
we're going to have to have a very profound discussion about
that."
Naughton added that it "seems odd in a public safety bill
that is intended to save lives that that concern should be
raised, but it has been and we have to respect that."
Rep. Alan Silvia, the committee's House vice chair and a
former police officer, said it is "frustrating" that the
issue of profiling can "interfere in this process."
"These are things we can simply do that will save lives and
make a difference in our commonwealth. I think it's a
necessity," Silvia said of Roy's bill. "We've been kicking
it down the road like so many other things that we do."
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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this
material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Citizens for Limited Taxation ▪
PO Box 1147 ▪ Marblehead, MA 01945
▪ 508-915-3665
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