I think another factor may be the increase in the use of "graduated driving licenses" by many states. This program doesn't give a full license to young drivers. Instead, it gives them additional privileges (unaccompanied driving at night, driving with passengers, etc.) over a period of time--sometimes up to three years.

At any step of the way, though, getting stopped for any sort of DUI/DWI scraps the entire license.

I consider DUI to be deadly serious and think the US treats it far too lightly. But the combination of new drivers and drinking is awful.

And while I think a drinking age of 21 is really sorta nuts, I have to concede that it at least gives drivers a chance to learn to drive before they're legally eligible to drink. Maybe the states could give a choice between a drinking license and a drivers license: choose one, not both.

yeah, orrin, so would mandatory car helmets and holding big pillows on your lap; why the hell is the government telling me what I have to do in my own damned car? Other than stuff that threatens others, e.g. watching t.v. while driving or sipping Jaegermeister at the wheel, what's government's interest here? And isn't raising the drinking age just another form of prohibition? God almighty, orrin; this posting belongs in your hall of shame.

Jim:

Yes, it is, that's the point. We're responsible for each other.

We should care about, not be responsible for, each other.

There is a critical difference. The former is the road to a decent society, the latter leads to the nanny state en route to tyranny.

If you are so hot about being responsible for each other, how about forcing through helmet laws for car occupants?

Demographic factors may be at work. If the average age is growing, then the higher risk cohorts, young men 18 to 25 are becoming a smaller percentage of the overall driving population.

Here in Minnesota, it is the 2 lane, undivided rural roads that have the highest death rates. If population is shifting toward urban and sububran areas, that could be a factor too.

Jeff:

We'll shortly require smart headrests, which should serve most of the same purposes.

nice idea, orin, requiring smart headrests; let's see, the current cost of developing a new car is over $100 million; we're reduced to two American car companies as it is; now, orrin nader wants smart headrests, can mandatory vitamin supplements be far behind? This is sort of like finding out that penis issues are more important to Andrew Sullivan than national security [not to say penis issues aren't important to all of us, just not THAT important:)]

Mr. Judd;

I thought that the research in to things like mandatory airbags indicated that they had no effect on traffic safety.

jim:

Yes, the wacky Right opposed fluoride in water and iodine in salt too.

I know Andrew doesn't drive, but is Mr. Gooding advocating penis protection behind the wheel?

AOG:

Do you mean they don't reduce accidents? Because they obviously reduce injuries:

http://www.cars.com/carsapp/sandiego/?srv=parser&act=display&tf=/advice/safety/airbags/airbags_main.tmpl

Jim:

There's a difference? After all, our precious bodily fluids... oh, never mind.

It's certainly the case that modern cars are much safer than the old ones slowly being retired; in retrospect, the one I drove in high school is a deathtrap I wouldn't consider letting a teenager drive.

what's whacky about being against flouride in water? it's just that the Birchers came out against the stuff as a conspiracy and the argument was settled from a PR standpoint, sort of like the attacks on the swiftees-against-Kerry going on right now. Fluoride is a carcinogen and it's presence in water reduces dental carries only among the very young, for the rest of us it does NOTHING beneficial.

We've decided that cars must be cocoons of safety against the big bad world. If we did to houses what we've done to cars, houses would all cost $10 million.

Jim:

We have. Building codes are just as restrictive as car regulations. Less folks die in fires.

But Orrin, the fact is people are still dying in houses and even one death is too many to contemplate. The most obvious safety change for a house would be to make everyone in a house wear an intelligent headrest. Then I'd add airbags beneath the floors to cushion sudden falls, preferably fluoridated airbags...

Look, obviously some standards are necessary, but, like taxation, there are infinite temptations to "improve" that have counteffects of economic slerosis and nanny-creep; my standards are laxer than that of the most spoiled generation. I'm surprised, Orrin, how far down the road you're willing to go to protect everyone from everything. Nevertheless, you run, in my opinion, the top conservative site on the net. So, from me you get many cantakerous thanks.

Jim:

Mandatory seatbelt use and forbidding drunk driving causes economic sclerosis?

Where are drunk driving penalties ferocious?

Out here, it's a fine of $177 and attend 'be good' class.

You'll make us safe yet, OJ.

No one can make you safe,but we can be safer cheap.

OJ:

Opportunity and coercion are two different things.

If you care so much about safety, why do you suppose it is OK to force motorcylists to wear helmets, but not motorists?

The number of motorists crippled due to head injuries far exceeds motorcyclists.

Motorcyclists are more exposed. I've no problem with a car helmet rule though if what you say is accurate.

The percentage of motorists crippled due to head injuries is far lower than for motorcyclists.

Michael:

Just play along--with Harry and Jeff actual science doesn't matter.

Michael:

Quite true. There is a reason I used the word "number" rather than "more."

But the point remains: passing laws to force motorcylists to wear helmets because they prevent head injuries is the height of hypocrisy in the absence of similar laws for motorists.

Similarly, taking a position that the government should make personal decisions would be much more persuasive if leadership by example was involved.

Where's your helmet, OJ? Are you waiting for the government to force you to do what you won't do for yourself?

"height of hypocrisy" Now you just sound crazy.

oj-

My wife recently had a minor fender bender which deployed the airbags. What looked like about 750.00 in damages to my older eyes came in at 12,000. Idiotic.

The right to drink, vote and serve in the Armed Forces should be given at the same age.

Tom:

What dollar value do you place on her?

genecis:

The first two should be no sooner than 21 (voting should actually be tied to taxes, home ownership and or marriage), but the third should be an obligation of younger men.

oj-

She was going about 10 mph. We all want a perfect, risk free world on the cheap.You worry me when you speak about your pet social engineering projects to bring it about. Extrapolate out about 10,000 fender benders where there is no chance of injury and multiply by $12,000.00. Does it really make any sense? Of course not. The bureaucrats who force these regulations on us all in respone to politicians who promise perfection without costs and the people who believe it are a real and very expensive problem. Some supposed benefits ain't worth the collective costs.

Tom:

Suppose 12 people have been saved by airbags. That's $1 million a pop. You'd get more from the 9-11 fund for your dead spouse than that.

oj-

Huh? In 10mph accidents? I think full-body armour and football helmets should be worn at all times as well. One of the muni golf courses I play can be extremely crowded with golf balls flying, maybe it should be closed down. Remember the full-body condom skit on SNL? No wonder you hate American football so much, it's sooo dangerous. I mean, you could get hurt!

Did I miss something? Did football players stop wearing helmets and pads unlike their forebears?

oj-

I was trying to be funny. What limit on financial as well as costs to liberty would you recommend in achieving an acceptable level of safety? Your reasoning leads me to believe that there are no limits. You are properly skeptical of the claims of rationalists in all cases but this. I don't get it. Why?

Because it's a minimal inconvenience that works wonders and is based on the recognition that folks will not change their behavior on their own, as opposed to Rationalism which supposes that you can change human nature if only you intervene dramatically enough.

OJ:

Explain to me how it isn't hypocritical to demand motorcyclists wear helmets while not requiring the same of motorists.

This has nothing to do with rationalism, and everything to do with freedom, which you are all for until some freedom loving person chooses to make a decision you disagree with.

Car drivers are in cars and have some protection. Incidents where they collide with the pavement are exceeedingly rare. Not so motorcycle riders. I'm amenable to a law requiring that motorcycles have car bodies instead. A helmet seems more rational and less intrusive.

You seem terribly confused about how justice works--it merely requires that all people in like situations be treated the same. A car isn't like a motorcycle.

oj-

So $120,000,000.00, spread out among all of our insurance costs to pay for airbag deployment 1n 10 mph accidents is not out of line? How many deaths have been caused by airbags? I know of at least one. Decisions have to be made regarding the cost of what is really unattainable: complete safety. What are you willing to pay? How much power are you willing to give to the state? Do you really want those decisions made for you by the soccer mom wing of the Democratic party?

Tom:

Go to your insurance agent and ask him what he'd charge you for a car with and a car without. Presumably the statists haven't gotten to him...

oj-

I have both. One is 1992 Ford Explorer without collision. The cost for that car is about 1/7 what the newer car costs. So what?

Ask him about identical coverage for one with and one without.

OJ, you seem enamored of the protectionisht invisible hand created by the tug-and-pull between lobbyists for insurance companies who abhor all risk and by lawsuits from trial lawyers who win huge judgments disproportionate to the injuries of their clients. There was no rational agreement about "well, the simpletons won't protect themselves so we'll become involved just enough to protect them from significant injury."

Neither interest group nor their frontmen are interested in limiting government in any way or in reducing the cost of vehicle development that might allow for a more innovative and varied automobile marketplace. The creeping infringment on our ability to take almost any risk is not governed by a single viewpoint balancing the needs of the many against the needs of the individual, it's just the outcome of competing nefarious interests and it will continue, unchecked, until even Orrin Judd tires of the padded-cell world being created for us because IT WON'T BE ANY DAMNED FUN.

Jim:

Exactly. So long as we all have to pay higher insuirance rates and business costs when people act like idiots we're entitled to try and limit their idiocy. It's not 1820 any more.

'a minimal inconvenience that works wonders' would be a good slogan for Social Security Insurance.

Harry:

Absolutely, which is why the Right should reform it rather than pretend they'll ever be able to revoke it.

OJ:

You missed the point entire. Your justification for insisting on seat belt laws is that the government owes it to people to make personal decisions when those decisions don't coincide with what the government desires. In this case, forcing people to wear seat belts to stop them choosing to expose themselves to greater risk.

Well, there is significant risk of secondary collision with the vehicle structure, regardless of belts and bags.

Therefore, to avoid hypocrisy--this is about head injury, not hitting the pavement--then we should have laws mandating wearing helmets in cars.

If not, why not?

Because cars have roofs.

With a little research, I see the reasons are even more compelling than I'd assumed:

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/articles/11785-1.asp

"* Although the crash scenario often dictates the area of the body injured, fatal crashes are most often a result of traumatic brain injury. Often these are isolated head injuries with no other serious injuries. "

So, I take it you are going to start wearing a helmet in your car tomorrow, and lobby the state to pass a law forcing everyone else to do the same?

No, those are only motorcycle accidents. NH should have a helmet law for them though.

OJ:

You make absolutely no sense. Your head smacking the structure of the car during an accident is just as likely to cause brain injury as if it hit the pavement.

So why is the power of government only to be imposed on motorcyclists?

Jeff:

No it isn't. The elevated risk of head injuries is unique to motorcyclists.

OJ:

Your notion of syntax is unconventional.

This is a fact: if, during an accident, your head smacks part of the vehicles structure, then the impact is just as likely to cause brain injury as if your head hit the pavement with similar force. Therefore,

Even belted in, even with airbags. The number of head injury deaths and debilitations among motorists is far from zero.

So the question you need to answer is why government should ever be in the position of deciding how much personal risk people are willing to take.

What is the magic rate above which people are incompetent to decide for themselves?

This is where you show yourself to be a closet leftist: your reflexive resort to government coercion when people refuse to conform to your conception of a correct choice.

Jeff:

I needn't decide that. This is a republic and we all decide together. So long as like are treated alike then liberty is unharmed. No one would suggest that the risk of head injuries is similar in a car to on a motorcycle so they needn't be treated as if it were.

One of my college friends worked his way through school as a gopher in the hospital emergency room.

After four years of picking gravel out of bikers, that, he decided, 'There are two kinds of motorcyclists. Those who have had bad wrecks, and those who are going to have bad wrecks.'

"So long as like are treated alike then liberty is unharmed." Karl Marx could have said that.

The relative risks are not the issue--both risks are significant. Using government coercion to reduce the risk is. One group is free to assume more risk, the other is not. How are those two treated alike?

When the government decides for me what risks I may voluntarily assume, then my liberty is impinged. And it is impinged just as much as if the government decided it was too risky for me to be a Jehovah's Witness, or to read MoveOn.org.

Anytime the government presumes to make a decisions in matters that pose no hazard to society, liberty is impinged, and the state becomes a substitute mommy.

I can understand that from a European statist, but from you?

OJ. Do you wear a helmet when you're in a car? If not, why not? What do you think of a law mandating all people in cars wear helmets?

Jeff:

No, Marx believed in from each according to his ability. Liberty requires that all people be treated similarly.

Mike:

Who is proposing such a law? If it passes I'll wear mine.

Jeff - We've sawn off the limb and OJ's in freefall. I hope he's wearing a helmet.