"Click It or Ticket" is the current campaign from the U.S. Department of Pain in Croco's Ass (maybe it's the U.S. Department of Transportation, I'm not sure).  "Click It or Ticket."  How clever.  It rhymes.

I wonder about the intended usefulness of enforcing seatbelt laws.  Because it saves lives, right?  Well then, to use an obvious analogy, why aren't people ticketed for smoking cigarettes?  Wouldn't lives be saved if people stopped smoking?  Perhaps we should ticket people with high cholesterol and high blood pressure, their lives are on the line too, you know!

Ultimately, shouldn't it be my choice -- or more high-mindedly -- my civil freedom, to decide if I want to endanger my life?  If I drive without a seatbelt, I'm not endangering somebody else's life, I'm endangering my own.  If seatbelts are so important that we need to ticket people who don't wear them, then why are motorcycles legal?  No motorcycle comes equipped with a seatbelt.  Instead, motorcyclists get in trouble for not wearing helmets.  Again, why does the government need to concern themselves with my personal safety?  If I want to ride helmet free and risk death, that's my prerogative, isn't it? 

Here's a quote from the website www.buckleupamerica.org, "Safety belt enforcement is not about writing tickets, but about saving lives."  Really?  Then why the fuck is the slogan "Click It or Ticket"?!  Right there in the slogan is the threat of writing tickets!  If it were truly about saving lives, wouldn't the slogan be "Wear a Seatbelt, Stay Alive?"

I can only imagine how many hundreds of millions of dollars the government is spending on this campaign (reportedly $500 million).  And for what?  According to the NHTSA (www.nhtsa.gov), the annual highway death toll has hovered around 42,000 since 1995.  That's almost 10 years of no decline in deaths.  If "Click It or Ticket" is about saving lives, then consider the campaign a colossal failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Here's what I think.  Any moron who dies in a fiery car crash because he didn't wear a seatbelt ... good riddance.  My life will be more fulfilling with fewer of those dumb-assess clogging the highway.  Wearing a seatbelt is an excellent idea and an obvious choice, so you won't catch me crying over anybody who is too stupid to realize that on their own.  If they're not wearing seatbelts, they deserve to get beheaded in a spectacular wreck.  Darwinism rules.