Seat belts and dole queues
Page 15
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
I MUST COMMENT on a few points in Mr Ingram-Johnson's letter on seat belts in your issue of September 26. Very seldom indeed is "the sole victim of such folly the fool himself". However foolish the driver may be, he may well be a good husband and father and a valued employee. And he will occupy valuable space in an orthopaedic ward.
"Is survival necessarily desirable" in the case of very grave injuries? The use of seat belts does not only reduce death to grave injury, but serious injury to a negligible one.
Mr Ingram-Johnson says that "the vacuum left by the victim is immediately filled by a grateful refugee from the dole queues". Really! One might as well argue that doctors should not administer antibiotics or perform operations, in order to create such useful vacuums.
I am by no means in favour of universal paternalism, but I think too much emotion has been generated on the question oi seat belts and freedom. For years air travellers have submitted to compulsory ust seat belts, with never a mum of complaint. There are more important freedoms to fight f than that of taking unnecessa risks.
G. N. GEORGANO Milford on Sea Hants