9/04/99
As amazing as it sounds, an Ohio court sentenced a man to 180 days in jail, suspended his drivers license, and fined him $500 for vehicular homicide because his passenger side airbag killed his two-month-old son when he accidentally ran a red light at 10 mph and was involved in a minor crash. The incident would have only been a small fender-bender, except that it set off the airbags – which are required by government law to be installed on all new vehicles. The child was properly strapped into a rear-facing child seat on the passenger side of the 1997 Ford pickup truck, but it was not possible to place the child into the back seat because the pickup truck did not have a back seat. The man's sentence was suspended and replaced with three years of probation and a court order to make TV and radio ads about airbag safety for the Ohio Department of Public Safety, as though the loss of his own son wasn't already enough punishment.
If anyone should have been punished, it should have been the government for requiring the installation of such a lethal killing machine into the passenger automobiles of unsuspecting citizens, and perhaps the manufacturer for misrepresenting it as safety device – but of course one cannot sue the government if it doesn’t wish to be sued. The intent of airbags is to "protect" those people who choose not to use safety-belts. At a cost of about $40 billion dollars to the consumer, not to mention the loss of another individual freedom, the government has killed 99 children with airbags since 1993. That is 21% more than were killed in school shootings during the same period – why aren't the politicians and media crying out for the elimination of airbags?
When will America wake up and rescind the authority of incompetent beaureaucrats to make what should be personal and individual decisions for ourselves?
Source: Liberty, pages 13-14, Vol 13, October 1999. To subscribe, contact the Liberty Foundation at (800) 854-6991
Here are some additional statistics from the National Safety Council that lists the number of yearly deaths of children between the ages of 0 and 14.
2,600 Automobile accidents
850 Drowning
570 Fire or burns
500 Other injuries including medical mistakes, exposure, etc.
200 Suffocated
160 Falls
110 Gunshot wounds
70 Poison
40 Carbon monoxide inhalation
| ‘‘So when can we quit passing laws and raising taxes? When can we say of our political system, ’Stick a fork in it, it's done’? When will our officers, officials and magistrates realize that their jobs are finished and return, like Cincinnatus, to the plow or, as it were, to the law practice or the car dealership? The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.’’ |
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— P.J.O'Rourke |