Rules

I have a philosophy that has a tenet that runs thusly,

Rules are made for the guidance of the wise and the obedience of fools.” While some of you may scoff at my egotistical attitude, let’s take a look at reality: I am driving down a major highway, it is aprox noon, the weather is perfect, there is almost no traffic and I see the sign that says max speed 100 K, I am driving my Porsche. I know I can safely, without even raising my BP, HR or my TRQ* punch out an easy160. What do I do? With all due diligence and my jammer on, I’ll do 165.

Let’s look at another scenario: same highway, dark, winter, snowing, blowing like hell, ice on road. Am I going to do 100 in my Hummer? NOYFL! I will be quite happy to do maybe 30 or so and look for a nice hotel with a bar. Dufus breath, and the world is full of em will do 100K in both of the above situations and that’s why one evening many years ago I came upon a crash site halfway between Toronto and Barrie that involved over 60 vehicles which killed 6 and injured dozens more.

So! “Where are we going with this?” You ask? Well! I wear a seatbelt and I have done so for as long as I can remember, I don’t feel safe without it. Slave, on the other hand is lackadaisical about its use and I constantly remind her to fasten her SRD+. Most people have no idea of the forces involved in collisions. I do, I buckle up. This is a lead in to the next candidate for the 2005 Darwin awards. Derek Kieper was a student at the University of Nebraska –Lincoln and last September had a column published in the student newspaper which said:

“As laws become increasingly strict for seat belts, fewer people will respond positively by buckling up in response to the laws. There seems to be a die-hard group of non-wearers out there who simply do not wish to buckle up no matter what the government does. I belong to this group. . . .

Telling me to wear my seat belt is the same as making sure I have some sort of proper education before diving into a swimming pool. If I want to dive in without knowing how to swim, that is my right. And if I want to be the jerk that flirts with death and rides around with my seat belt off, I should be able to do that, too.”

The scariest part is: “New Hampshire might be my bastion of choice some day, but for now I am stuck in Nebraska.”

Read the whole thing here.

Today’s Lincoln Journal Star says it all about the late Mr. Kieper.

“Kieper, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, died early Tuesday morning when the Ford Explorer he was a passenger in traveled off an icy section of Interstate 80 and rolled several times in a ditch. . . . Derek, who was thrown from the vehicle, was not wearing a seat belt.”

Derek was a dufus. He didn’t read the Capt’s Survival 101. There are many, many more Derek’s out there and they are the reason there are so many laws. The unfortunate thing is that the laws do not stop the Derek’s of the world; the laws make self serving politicians feel good about themselves and convince the great unwashed that they (the politicians) are working hard for their constituents.

Sigh!

* Testicular Retraction Quotient

+ Slave Restraining Device

I Nods to James Taranto