LAST WEEK, Gov. Mark Sanford signed into law the South Carolina Rider Safety Act.

The new law, aimed at preventing injuries on carnival rides, was passed at the request of carnival operators. It requires operators to post safety warnings and rules and gives them broad authority to regulate the behavior of riders.

Under the new law, a carnival or fair patron can be detained by amusement operators “for a reasonable time in a reasonable manner for the purpose of conducting an investigation” if they think that person has violated any “rules, warnings or instructions” about the rides. Someone found to have violated carnival rules can be fined $500 and jailed for two months.

Among the things that can get a carnival-goer detained by private security forces, ejected or even arrested are:

• Exceeding the limits of the rider’s ability.

• Not engaging a safety mechanism, such as a restraint, provided on the ride.

• Disconnecting or disabling a safety device.

• Extending arms and legs beyond the carrier or seating area.

• Getting on or off a ride at any time or place not designated.

One reason such rules are needed, according to the bill’s chief sponsor, Rep. Wallace Scarborough, is that people like to show up at fairs and carnivals drunk, board the rides and start shaking them. Up until now, carnival operators had little recourse. The new law, he told me last week, “helps everybody else to be safe if they’re putting people out of the park who aren’t being safe.”

That idea is spelled out in a set of “findings” at the start of the law, in which the Legislature declares that since there are “inherent risks” associated with carnivals that are impossible for owners to eliminate, “the safety of carnival or amusement devices will be greatly improved at minimal cost if riders are subject to safety standards for their own protection and the protection of others.”

There’s nothing extraordinary about those findings; they could have been lifted from a definition of communitarianism. That’s the idea, central to the whole concept of human society, that what we do affects the people around us, and not just ourselves.

What’s extraordinary about this legislation is that it sailed through a General Assembly that generally allows itself to be led around by the nose by a handful of people who reject the idea of the government acting to protect societal interests, and that it was signed into law by a governor who shares that view.

Lawmakers of this mind-set argue that individuals have the right to go flying through their car windshields, and that society has no right to make them wear a seat belt. And yet they have joined in unanimously declaring that “the safety of the public using carnival or amusement devices is a matter of public policy” — and one so compelling that it justifies invoking the police powers of the state when someone waves his arms in the air while the Himalaya twirls around.

Rep. Scarborough proudly counts himself among the people who helped derail the seat belt bill when it came to the House earlier this month. He sees no contradiction in forcing people to protect themselves from the “inherent risks” of riding in bumper cars but not from the inherent risks of riding down the highway at 70 mph.

“We’ve already got a seat belt law in this state,” he said. “You’re supposed to wear your seat belt. It’s just the primary enforcement of it. I don’t think it’s the same thing at all. This is just telling you what the rules are. We already know what the rules are on the road: You’re supposed to wear your seat belt.”

That might be a valid comparison if all amusement operators could do under his new law was post signs, if they couldn’t detain and charge people until they were thrown, unrestrained, from a Ferris wheel.

But that’s not what the new law does. The new law gives private businesses more legal authority to enforce these public safety laws than we give to police.

Even the penalties of the carnival protection act dwarf those in the unenforceable seat belt law.

Supporters had to drop our current $25 seat belt fine to $12 just to get the Senate to pass the bill allowing police to enforce that law. But people who jump off the merry-go-round halfway through the ride can be fined $200 and jailed for two months.

Our seat belt law bars police from holding someone in custody for failing to wear a seat belt. Yet the Legislature just unanimously passed a law that lets private business owners detain someone “for a reasonable time in a reasonable manner” while they investigate whether that person was “not engaging a safety mechanism provided on the ride.”

Last year, 613 people who weren’t wearing seat belts died on South Carolina’s highways; officials estimate that half of them would have lived had they been buckled up.

Last year, three people died on carnival rides in the entire nation.

It’s hard to recall a case that has more clearly demonstrated the misplaced priorities of our legislators — or how selective they are in spouting their hollow “freedom” arguments.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.