Click it or Ticket

I can always tell when Memorial Day is coming by the advertisements put on as a public service by the State of Texas. I watched one last night as it showed a pick up truck flipping and rolling over, the dust flying and the announcer proclaiming that if only the driver had been wearing a seatbelt the odds were so much greater of surviving such a wreck. Then came the tag line, “Click it or Ticket! Wearing seatbelts is the Law!”

When I was a police officer there were plenty of “C/S” traffic laws that could be enforced. The most obvious was the safety inspection sticker law. Each year every car has to be inspected to prove that it is road worthy. Brand new vehicles and old clunkers, there is no difference, all have to be inspected so that the State can collect a “fee”, a portion of which has nothing to do with the safety of that particular vehicle; instead being set aside to help the unfortunate poor of our society obtain reasonably inexpensive transportation when their own clunkers can no longer be repaired to meet with the State’s guidelines. Can you say “redistribution of wealth”?

Spotting an expired inspection sticker made for a legal traffic stop and often led to multiple violations; no driver’s license, no insurance and the best of all – outstanding traffic warrants. I can’t remember stopping anyone for not wearing their seatbelt as the primary reason much less writing them a ticket for it. Those days are gone and some of my neighbors have brought this to my attention. Now, the State sees this as an opportunity to remind each of us who really is in charge. Thank you, Big Brother, for saving me from my self. For you Catholics, 2 Hail Mary’s and light a candle; but only a State issued candle.

Don’t get me wrong, I wear my seatbelts as a matter of personal safety. My complaint is that they have criminalized something which is not under the State’s discretionary authority. Some "feel good legislation" here and there and the next thing you know there will be a law requiring the use of condoms; a long list of the possible sexual restrictions based on gender affiliation and position followed by “stiff fines”. I shudder to think of the tag line that will accompany that one.