IN Canada as in Tennessee

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Rant and Rave
Choices should be personal, not law
Natalie Musseau
The Advertiser
There should be a law limiting the amount of fries and gravy a person can eat. Another one is needed to make sunbathing and tanning beds illegal. Maybe even one mandating an acceptable level of dessert consumption should be one the books.

Hopefully, those suggestions sound as ridiculous as they are.

Those activities are personal choices — albeit ones that can cause various conditions and diseases that can potentially shorten a person’s life. But they are choices that every adult has the right to make for himself or herself.

Why then are seatbelt and helmet laws viewed as acceptable, almost without question?
There is evidence that both seatbelts and helmets save lives, or at least help prevent major injuries — just as there is evidence that trans-fats are unhealthy and too much sun will cause skin cancer. What makes one worth putting into law and not the other?

Non-compliance with seatbelt and helmet laws will not lead to the injury of other people. Unlike impaired driving, people who choose not to buckle up or strap on a helmet are only putting themselves in danger.

Police officers have better things to do than to be mothering people about seatbelts and helmets.
Adults should be able to make these choices for themselves — just like the ability to buy alcohol and cigarettes once reaching the age of majority. And just like smoking, their insurance premiums would likely reflect whatever choices they make.

It makes sense to mandate the use of such things for children who cannot be held responsible their own safety. However, adults have the information and the decision-making ability and can accept responsibility for those choices. They should not be forced to buckle up any more than they should be made to skip dessert.

It’s time that lawmakers stopped treating everyone like little children and allowed people to make their own choices.
nmusseau@gulfnews.ca