AMERICANS, WE ARE frequently told, have a "right" to drive around without seat belts. And the Legislature has no "right" to take that away from us by letting police enforce the law that's already on the books.

It would be a legitimate argument -- if the government didn't build the roads on which people drive, with or without seat belts. And if the government didn't employ the police and emergency rescue workers who have to drag the mangled bodies of unbuckled travelers out of their cars. And if the government didn't pick up the tab for at least a sixth of the unbuckled injured, through Medicaid and Medicare. It might even be a legitimate argument in the face of all that -- if driving were a "right" (i.e., something guaranteed by the Constitution), as opposed to a privilege.

But the government -- acting on behalf of the public who pays the bills -- does provide the roads and the emergency services and the money to pay for medical treatment for a huge percentage of our state's population. And that gives it every "right" to set some rules for how to behave on the government-funded, government-secured streets and highways, in order to reduce the cost of government-funded hospital care.

As one highway safety advocate noted recently: Drivers aren't the only ones with rights. Taxpayers have rights, too. In 2000, the taxpayer-funded Medicaid program paid $4.2 million in hospital bills for South Carolinians who were not wearing seat belts when they were involved in an automobile crash. The taxpayer-funded Medicare system paid $2.3 million. Another $10 million worth of treatment went to unbelted crash victims who either paid their own bills or didn't pay. Whatever percentage of that bill went unpaid by the patients was actually paid for by the rest of us, through higher hospital charges and higher insurance costs. Then of course there's the matter of the $18 million in care for unbuckled victims who were covered by private insurance companies -- companies that divide the cost for the care they provide among all of us. The fact is that except for that increasingly small number of people who pay every penny of their own hospital bills, we all pay for the care of people who are injured in wrecks.

Ah, you say, but we pay for that care whether the people in crashes are buckled up or not. True. But unbelted accident victims have more severe -- and thus more expensive -- injuries than those who are buckled. In 2000, the average emergency room charge for unbelted crash victims in South Carolina was nearly twice that for belted victims: $1,170 vs. $617. Inpatient charges were 30 percent higher: $26,344 vs. $20,626. And that doesn't even factor in the fact that belted victims are far less likely than the unbelted to need any hospital care at all.

The facts are pretty clear. Let police enforce the seat belt law, and the chance of people wearing a seat belt increases by 10 to 15 percentage points. Wear a seat belt, and your chance of surviving a wreck increases by 45 to 60 percent, depending on the type of vehicle you're in. Your chance of avoiding serious injuries increases by 50 to 65 percent. Your chance of not being thrown out of the vehicle -- and thus of staying in control well enough to avoid running into other people -- increases by as much as 70 percent.

Letting police enforce the seat belt law saves lives. It saves money. It doesn't interfere with anybody's "rights." It's something our Legislature needs to do.