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Home Find and Shop Job Listings Featured Jobs Cars Classifieds Physicians Guide Top Stops News Sports Stroller Obituaries Opinion Business Escape Life Photos Palmetto Recruiting Weather Fun Stuff Crosswords Astroblobs Flash Trivia Herald-Journal Subscribe Advertising Page Reprints Photo Reprints H-J Archives About the H-J Newspapers in Education Celebrate Community Contact Us Regular Mail PO Box 1657 Spartanburg SC 29304-1657 E-mail us Circulation Classifieds Letters / Opinion The Stroller General Phone 864.582.4511 Staff listings			ARTICLE OPTIONS:  E-mail this article  |  print this article Posted on February 16, 2003 House moves on bill that allows enforcement of seat belt law It doesn't make any sense to have a law the police aren't allowed to enforce. But that's the situation in South Carolina as regards the state's mandatory seat belt law. Adults in this state are required to buckle up. But law enforcement officers aren't allowed to stop you and give you a ticket if you aren't wearing your safety belt. They can only give you a ticket for violating the seat belt law if they stop you for some other purpose. A state House subcommittee has approved a bill that would fix this hole in state law. It would allow police to stop and ticket motorists who are not wearing seat belts. The bill now goes to the full Education and Public Works Committee. Lawmakers should back this bill and pass it. They have debated this subject for years. They have discussed the value of personal freedom versus safety. They have talked about motorists' obligation toward safety on the road and the cost in taxes and health and automobile insurance rates of the state's high number of traffic accident injuries. The current system, in which we have the law but don't enforce it, is a type of compromise. But it causes trouble. When the Highway Patrol conducted the Click It or Ticket campaign to push seat belt use, it worked. It forced South Caro-linians to use their safety belts. But it ran afoul of the law against primary enforcement. The current system makes no sense, and it's time for the debate about seat belts to be over. Requiring motorists to wear safety belts is not an intrusion into their private lives. Americans do not have a cherished right to be unbuckled. Wearing a seat belt does not impinge on anyone's valued activity or belief. And lowering our accident rate will save us all money as well as saving families misery when someone is hurt. The House Transportation Safety Subcommittee has recognized these truths. It has passed a bill allowing primary enforcement. The time is ripe for other lawmakers to put an end to the sham seat belt law and allow police to enforce an effective law.				Also in Opinion • Letters • Editorials • Perspective In Perspective First Steps: Program has some room for improvement South Carolina's First Steps to School Readiness is a comprehensive, results-oriented initiative for improving early childhood development enabling children to reach school ready to learn. First Steps: Program infringes on the family's role and is financial drain on state The current $331 million budget crisis in South Carolina presents the Republican Party a unique opportunity to accomplish two good works at the same time. They can balance the state budget, which is required in our constitution, and they can eliminate a Democratic program, First Steps, that is harmful to children and usurps the role of the family. First Steps: Initiative provides a learning-rich foundation for kids First steps can be the first of many steps a person takes in life: the first walking steps, the first steps into first grade, the first steps "down the aisle," the first steps in a new dance sweeping the nation. Rights, responsibilities of being American go hand in hand Have wealthy and educated Americans all become pacifists? Or have we just gotten used to having someone else defend us? Equal burden: Military draft would help end 'class warfare' that exists in armed forces Some people have questioned my motives for introducing legislation to reinstitute the military draft and requiring alternative national service by young people who cannot serve. Give me liberty: Reinstitution of draft would be tantamount to slavery Log on to www.dictionary.com and look up the words slavery and draft. Here is what you will find:

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