Last month 21 senators prefiled a bill that would require all vehicle occupants to buckle up or see the driver incur a fine of $25 per passenger not wearing a seat belt.
A primary seat-belt law was debated last year but killed when a majority of senators caved in to avoid a filibuster of other pressing state issues. Filibustering senators spent weeks laboring over a point that seat-belt use should be a discretion of individual adult drivers and that a law requiring use and mandating fines for failure to do so would infringe on a diver's liberty.
The people who support such logic say lawmakers shouldn't be nannies who try to tell independent-minded South Carolinians how to run their lives. While no one wants to infringe on a citizen's rights, South Carolina doesn't have a constitutional guarantee for driving privileges.
This is a highway-safety issue and those who don't buckle up could jeopardize the lives of other people in the event of an accident. A driver's life even is jeopardized by not wearing a seat belt. South Carolina has the third-highest traffic-fatality rate in the nation; 1,025 people were killed on S.C. roads in 2004 in 924 accidents; 826 of the people killed had access to seat belts; 613 of those killed weren't wearing seat belts.
The statistics are an indicator that buckling up can save lives. Lawmakers say that at least 100 lives could be save and more than 1,000 injuries could be prevented by the use of seat belts.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the national average for seat-belt use is 80 percent; South Carolina trailed all but four states with in 2004 with a 65.7 percent usage, down from 72.3 percent in 2003. Drivers in neighboring Georgia and North Carolina had a much higher use rate, 86.7 percent and 86.1 percent respectively. South Carolina's use-rate is more than 29 percent lower than Arizona and Hawaii, states with the highest use rate.
While a primary seat-belt law in neighboring states has led to an increase in usage, South Carolina's lack of regulation is shown in two statistics: the nation's highest rate of decrease in usage and an increase in the number of people killed -- 56 more killed in 2004 contrasted to 2003.
It makes sense for lawmakers to approve a primary seat-belt law. Anti-seat-belt users may look upon lawmakers as nannies, who want to take away their freedoms. However, dead people don't have freedoms.