IT’S HARD TO believe that the House wasn’t able to pass a bill last week to allow police to enforce our state’s seat belt law. The case for the law, which enjoys widespread public support, is strong: It will save lives, reduce injuries and help control insurance costs.

Even more remarkably, the case against a tougher seat belt law is so weak that it would be laughable if not for the fact that it seems to carry so much weight.

Opponents like to argue that a tougher law wouldn’t be effective, but we know that’s not true. When states let police enforce the law, usage goes up 10 to 15 percentage points, and fatalities drop 7 percent. (That’s regardless of the size of the fines, which are $25 or less in 84 percent of the states with these tougher laws.)

They like to say a tougher law would invite police to harass innocent citizens, but we know that claim is, at best, grossly exaggerated. Our laws already give police more than ample opportunities to stop drivers; and the bill passed by the Senate prohibits police who use this law from even asking permission to search a car absent “a separate and distinct offense based upon probable cause,” a requirement absent from other traffic laws.

They like to claim a tougher seat belt law is all about money, but we know that’s a joke. Police would collect less money from the seat belt law than from the largely unenforced speed limit laws. (Some, no doubt, are motivated by the $11 million in federal funding we stand to lose if we don’t pass a real law, but most supporters were working for this change long before federal money became an issue.)

The fact is that the only case that can be made against letting police enforce the seat belt law is a philosophical one — held by a small, overrepresented minority of the population — that seeks to protect individuals from responsibility for their actions, and that believes society has no interest in protecting itself.

This idea is without merit even when it is applied consistently. But its proponents in the General Assembly don’t even apply it consistently.

We don’t recall these personal “freedom” advocates working to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana for their suffering patients, or to let them help their terminally ill patients end their lives. The seat belt opponents would likely argue that those actions would affect the rest of us, and they’d be right: Whether you see those as good ideas or anathema, it is clear that both would affect society as a whole.

That’s because nearly everything we do affects other people. And that includes not wearing a seat belt. In fact, not wearing a seat belt has a more direct and immediate impact on others, when it prevents a driver from maintaining control of a vehicle during a collision, and when we all pay higher insurance rates and higher taxes for the Medicaid and Medicare coverage for crash victims’ injuries — which are far more serious when they’re not belted.

Thanks in large part to the leadership of House Speaker David Wilkins, safety opponents were not able to kill the seat belt bill last week. But its fate now depends on whether the sensible people of South Carolina are willing to let such flimsy objections carry the day.

The broad coalition of medical, public safety, insurance and business groups that supports this bill needs to stop taking the House for granted and get to work lobbying representatives; so does the public. Otherwise, we will continue to sacrifice too many of our sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers at the altar of a selfish, hollow ideology.