The Big Sister goes to kindergarten in the Fall. On Tuesday, I went to an orientation session about the school buses, where I learned an interesting thing. The buses have seatbelts. The drivers may “suggest” that the children wear the seatbelts, but the children are not required to wear them. At this tender age the children may exercise their discretion in this matter of personal safety, but we adults may not.
I recall in 1980-something when Virginia proposed and passed a bill requiring the occupants of a car’s front seat to wear safety belts. We — that is, the consensus in Highland County — were aghast that the State’s interest in preserving the life of its citizens extended so far as to curtail the risks one willingly undertook to drive a vehicle. We, or at least I, could understand the negligence of a driver in not asking his passengers to wear their safety belts, but to penalize a consenting adult for actions that would harm only him? Such a thing could happen only in a Nanny State like New York.
Now I live in New York, and find that safety belts and seats are required in private passenger vehicles, not in public buses; that the State’s actions in the public sphere are inconsistent with those in the private; and I have to laugh because it so absurd. The State, to which we entrust our children, acting in loco parentis, deems it unnecessary for our children to wear the same belts they fine us for not wearing.
Ha!