The decision concerned whether or not a person may be arrested for a seat belt violation and whether or not 4th Amendment rights are violated. The ruling was that being arrested and thrown in jail for such a minor offense did not violate the person�s constitutional rights.

What is causing my concern are three major points. One is whether or not Officer Bart Turek (the arresting officer) would have done the same had Gail Atwater (the victim) been a judge, a fellow officer, the major or one in his family, or a member of the city council, for example. Would he have risked his job to throw one of these people in jail for a minor offense? Indeed, would he have even stopped one of these people for the violation? In other words, will all people be treated equally under the ruling as required by the Constitution?

Second, is the seat belt law a reasonable law which does not violate the rights of the individual to defend his person as he sees best?

Third, isn�t giving police additional powers a danger to destroying what we have left of the Constitution in that no crime is or can be committed unless there is a victim?

The writer has driven the highways of this nation for the past 40 years. He has had one accident, not his fault, in which no one was harmed, neither himself nor the person who caused the accident, even though the two autos involved suffered considerable damage, totaled in the case of the auto of the person causing the accident. The writer wasn�t wearing a seatbelt as he did not like wearing seatbelts (and still doesn�t).

The writer�s not wearing a seatbelt has never harmed another person and would not have done so in the accident I was in even if the other person had been killed. Since his not wearing a seatbelt has never harmed another citizen, then where is the crime?

What the law does do is give a police officer a "reason" to stop a person even though he is not in reality causing an unsafe condition for other drivers around him, such as speeding, illegal turns, turning signals, and the like.

Let�s say a person goes to a local bar and has four beers and then begins to drive home. He does not cause an accident, nor even comes close. He drives carefully since he knows it is probable he is over the legal limit for blood alcohol level. But, he isn�t wearing a seatbelt.

An officer stops him for this and then, realizing the person has had at least a drink, arrests him for driving while under the influence and (maybe) that he wasn�t wearing a seatbelt, the cause for the stop.

Where is the victim? Did the person harm another? Was he a danger to society even though he never harmed anyone or caused any sort of infringement upon the rights of another?

We each have the right to travel freely as long as we are endangering others by driving recklessly or haven�t caused any damage to another, whether it be to his person or his tangible property. So, how is the individual in the example a criminal to be dealt with by the courts?

And, of course, would the officer in this case have treated his bosses - say the mayor - in the same way and thrown the mayor's butt in jail?

Once again, the conclusion is that �no, he would not have treated his bosses the same.� Anyone who says otherwise is lying or a fool. We all know that laws are not applied equally, especially when left to the judgment of law enforcement officers. They do NOT risk their jobs to stop and arrest those who have direct responsibility for their paychecks or have the power (such as a wealthy person local people know is actually running things) to affect their paychecks.

Is the seatbelt a reasonable law? In regards to this, one might conclude there has been great assumptions made in justifying such a law. To begin with, if there is a death in an accident and it is discovered the dead weren�t wearing seatbelts, the assumption is that not wearing a seatbelt caused the death. How stupid is this?

Next, if there is a terrible accident in which no one dies and all were wearing seatbelts, then the conclusion is that the fact they were wearing seatbelts is the reason they all lived. How stupid is this?

For example, two good high school friends were in a horrific one-car accident. At around a 100 miles an hour on a highway with no other traffic, they left the road, hit the ditch and the high bank on the other side which catapulted them extremely high into the air. The car landed upside down and flattened the top to seat level.

Both survived with only minor cuts. Why? Because they weren�t wearing seatbelts. Both were thrown from the car while it was in the air and the minor cuts came from the barb wire fence their bodies hit.

Had they been wearing seatbelts, though, the greatest probability is that both would have been killed or, at the minimum, suffered extreme bodily harm. With the top of the car forcibly crushed to the sitting part of the seats, their bodies would likely have been crushed right along with the back of the front seat since two objects can�t occupy the same space at the same time.

In other words, no one knows for sure if a person was �saved� because he was wearing a seatbelt or died because of not wearing a seatbelt. There are too many variables to account for. Every accident is unique in and of itself. Never can the exact conditions be created twice as accidents are accidents. Therefore, conclusions that have been made are invalid and not reliable as the exact, identical situations are impossible to create in order to test reliability and validity.

But, read about an accident in which there was a death, and the report will have in it someplace (providing the person wasn�t wearing a seatbelt), the implication is that his death was caused by his not having a seatbelt. How ignorant a statement to make. The statement should have said nothing more than the person was killed. That is all that is verifiable.

Or, conversely, if there was a terrible accident, but no one died and all were wearing seatbelts, the implication given is that all lived because of the seatbelts. This is purely a crock meant only to justify a law where there should be no law.

There is this that the writer believes can be proved were a valid correlational study was conducted by firms independent of government interference. It is the writer�s hypothesis that that what has been responsible for the decreases in accidents and, hence, deaths, over the past 30 years has been the improvement in highways and in automobiles themselves.

Highways are wider with greater avoidance areas (shoulders alone are almost another lane), greater visibility, straightened, hills cut out, striped for visibility even in the dark and rain, improved bad weather control by highway departments, stop signs and others warning signs improving the awareness of �bad� areas for the potential of accidents, along with automobiles having increased visibility, braking systems that are many times improved over the braking as in the writer�s 1956 pick-up, increased visibility of turn signals, brake lights, and improved headlights, to name a few.

Plus, there is the fact that drivers are far more aware now of the dangers to themselves and others when they begin highway travel. For example, many, including the writer, are aware of the increased dangers during holidays and chooses not to travel during these high risk times.

Unless we infringe upon the rights of another while we are expressing our rights, can we have committed a crime? In other words, what constitutes a crime? When one considers this logically (rationally), one will first recognize that there must be a victim. States do not have rights nor does the federal government. Only people have rights. Thus, first for a crime to exist, there must be a person harmed in some manner or placed in an extremely hazardous situation by another.

The crime must be definable. Since governments don�t have rights, a crime cannot be defined by the government being the victim. Thus, any law involving a government accusation not based on a citizen victim cannot possibly be valid. I.e., for it to be a valid accusation, one citizen must file a complaint against another, that the other person not wearing a seatbelt interfered with the accuser�s constitutionally secured rights, that he was victimized� by the accused not wearing a seatbelt. The basis for this victimization would be the crime defined.

Third, a crime must be proved to be intentional, not accidental. In the case of a seatbelt, if the writer drives around not wearing a seatbelt, where is the proof the writer has the intent of harmimg another person?

The writer knows no fear from encountering drivers who aren�t wearing seatbelts. Why should he? If they are in an accident and maybe live or die, would it affect the writer�s life and injure him? Not hardly. Only the writer being in an accident would affect his life but it still wouldn�t be affected by whether the other person was wearing a seatbelt or not.

Thus, it is the writer�s opinion that the seatbelt law is nothing more than a means of the State to obtain additional control over people, including stopping people without real cause to do unconstitutional checking of papers, illegal searches, and increase its own revenues through fines administered. Never forget the hidden agenda of government.

As more and more victimless crime laws are allowed to be passed and enforced, the greater is the theft of individual choice and freedom secured by the Constitution. And, of course, the Supreme Court is doing its part to accomplish this just as are the lower courts.

After this ruling, one might now ask - what�s next, requiring all travelers to wear full body protection similar to that worn by race car drivers?

(Final note: Watch out if leading politicians get stock in the companies supplying the safety suits worn by race car drivers.)