Should I be protected from myself? At YOUR expense?

Well, it finally happened. I got stopped today for driving without wearing my seatbelt.

I generally buckle up. My decades working as a paramedic, then later working as an Emergency Department nurse have shown me time and again that statistically those who wear their seatbelts suffer less severe injury than those who choose not to. The popularity of You Tube supplies those interested with a variety of videos of high-speed collisions or rollovers where the driver or passengers are violently thrown from their vehicles head first into the pavement or various other objects.

Today's lapse was the result of a 6 hour drive which culminated with a pizza run at Village Inn just prior to heading back home to Mocksville. I turned into the Rite Aid off East Broad to pick up some antacids. I then noticed a Statesville Police officer in my rear view mirror who tailed me and stopped just behind my vehicle.

He was cordial enough. “The reason I stopped you sir, is that I noticed you were not wearing your seatbelt. Could I see your driver's license and registration please?”.

I can't help but wonder how it's possible to determine if anyone is wearing their seat belt. I pass hundreds of cars daily and couldn't spot someone without their seat belt on if my life depended on it. There must be some special cop training involved to profile folks who aren't buckled up.

After a 15 minute delay (mostly my fault as my registration didn't match my tag expiration date) I was sent along with a $125 ticket. $25 fine, $100 court costs.

I understand that I really ought to wear my seat belt. If I had a nickel for every corpse I've seen lying in a field within sight of their twisted vehicle, (or worse beneath it) I wouldn't be buying dollar Power Ball tickets every week.

I still can't seem to get past the whole “Big Brother” thing. That's the issue where legislators make law designed to protect us from ourselves.

Many of our laws impinge on our personal freedoms because failure to obey would possibly cause harm to other folks. DWI for example. Speeding.

As somewhat of a Libertarian, I just fail to see where anyone not wearing their seat belt causes harm to anyone but themselves.

As a society, are we going to be in the business of spending valuable legislative dollars and resources to write laws for police to enforce that really aren't for the public good?

Make no mistake about it. It was STUPID of me to forget to buckle up. Had someone else ran a red light and plowed into me, or had I blown a front tire and rolled my SUV I could easily suffered a fatal injury that would otherwise have been relatively minor.

The question is this; do I have a right to be stupid when no one else is affected but me?