Twisted Musings

I was reading in the local newspaper about a young woman who
    crashed her car into a tree.  Dazed at first, she then tried to get out
    of the car, but couldn’t undo her seat belt.  The car then caught on
    fire.  A passerby noticed the accident, and rushed to help.  He couldn’t
    undo the seat belt either, and the young women was trapped.  Only
    when the seat belt burned through was the passerby able to pull her
    from the burning vehicle.  By then the woman had serious burns over
    50% of her body.  The young woman faces many surgeries and skin
    grafts towards her recovery.

    A couple of months back, I read of an accident near Haines City, Florida
    in which 4 people were killed.  A pickup truck carrying two men ran
    head-on into a car carrying a man, a woman, and two children.  Neither
    man in the pickup was wearing a seat belt; one of them survived the
    accident.  In the car, all were wearing seatbelts, including a baby strapped
    into a car seat.  Only the baby in the car seat survived. 

    I hate seat belts.  But I wear one, because I don’t want to get a $110
    ticket for not wearing one. 

    Yet I wonder, where is my choice?  My personal freedom to choose?  I
    know the statistics show wearing seat belts saves lives overall, but
    what about MY life?  What if I am killed in an accident because wearing
    a seat belt kept me from getting out and to safety?  All other statistics
    at that point are irrelevant.

    As Americans, we tout our personal freedoms to the world .  Yet the seat
    belt laws are just one example of the way our personal freedoms are
    quickly eroding under the guise of ‘for the common good’.