Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 5, 1995                   TAG: 9504050070
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

POLITICAL RHETORIC ISN'T WORTH LIVES

The veto ought to be overridden. The bill, backed by dozens of organizations ranging from the Virginia arm of the American Automobile Association to local PTAs, is an important safety measure in its own right.

Beyond that, the issue serves as a case study of the need for clear thinking at a time when suspicion of government regulation is rife. That suspicion is often for good reason - but not always. The distinction should be made more carefully than it often is.

From 1988 to 1992, 40 people were killed in Virginia by being thrown from the beds of trucks. According to the bill's sponsor, Del. George Grayson of Williamsburg, 16 of the 40 were children. Others, while surviving, have suffered permanent effects from head and spinal-cord injuries. Most people fall out of trucks, say the bill's supporters, not when a collision occurs but when they're shifting position or when the vehicle hits a bump.

In justifying his veto, Allen did not dispute the safety aspect. Rather, he expounded a version of libertarianism so extreme it almost seems a parody: "[W]e must be mindful that people inevitably exercise less personal responsibility when a paternalistic government repeatedly intervenes to protect them from dangers that common sense should tell them to guard against on their own."

First, the governor's statement is, in the absoluteness of its sweep, factually inaccurate.

The counterproductivity of much that government tries to do is one of libertarianism's valuable lessons. And indeed, one unsought consequence of do-good governmental paternalism can be a decline in personal responsibility. But it's not inevitable.

A reasonably close analogy to the Grayson proposal, for example, is the law requiring people inside automobiles to use their seat belts. While buckle-up laws do not get total compliance, research has shown, they do result in a rise in seat-belt use (and consequent drop in the rate of traffic fatalities).

Does the governor really believe his own rhetoric? If so, shouldn't he be pressing for repeal of laws against the possession and consumption of illicit drugs?

Second, the measure is not complicated.

Difficulties encountered in, say, environmental regulation - the complexity of many of the issues at stake; the tentative nature of much of the data on which standards are based; the lag time between the updating of regulations and advances in scientific knowledge and technology - are absent here. Bouncing around in the back of pickup trucks is dangerous; requiring passengers in the back to strap up is a straightforward, inexpensive way to make such travel safer.

Finally, privacy and other concerns, which can sometimes outweigh prospective benefits of regulatory legislation, are not at stake.

The bill deals with travel only on public highways. It would cover precisely those people - children - toward whom society should maintain a paternalistic attitude.

The immediate point of the 1995 bill, which initially passed by more than enough votes to override a veto, is to save children's lives. A second and broader point to its passage would be the signal, if legislators stick to their guns, that Virginia refuses to equate reasoned skepticism about government with reckless naysaying.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995