A fellow enthusiast of mine said he refused to wear a helmet - not because of safety, for he freely admitted that he would be safer with it - but because he felt the Law to be demeaning and patronising. To some extent, I would agree with him. I do not feel that a law should be there solely to protect a fool from the inevitable results of his folly. Yes, safety laws have a place. Their thrust must be to protect others from the results of that same folly. I will let the reader develop examples of this.
For what worries me about this attitude is that it sets me - the chooser - above the law. I am now deciding what parts of the law - which I expect everyone else to accept - shall apply to me. The folly of this is that, logically, what I demand for myself I must grant to others. If I can decide that the helmet law is demeaning, and should not (or need not) be obeyed, then I must accept that So-and-so has the right to decide that speed restrictions, or drinking/driving restrictions do not apply to him. He could even decide that a legal judgement that he not be permitted to drive was an unwarranted intrusion on his personal freedom.
The result is, not greater freedom, but Chaos. If we accept this premise, then there is no traffic law. Any one can do whatever he likes. But - and here is the catch - he is now at the mercy of everyone else. He cannot rely upon others doing the normal thing. He cannot rely upon position as a clue to what someone is going to do, much less public signals. There would be no reason to believe that, in this case, a driver at the centre-line of the road, and showing a left-turn signal WAS, in fact, about to do so. He could just as well decide, without looking, to turn right, or go straight on.
Red lights, stop signs, turn restrictions, one-way streets - all these things, and thousands more that we rely on daily to be able to drive safely would be irrelevant and a waste of time.
I'm worried, both for this cyclist, and for myself, for I seem to see a growing number of drivers for whom this is, in fact, the way things are.
Our safety - like that of all other drivers - depends heavily upon general acceptance of the law, demeaning and patronising as it may be. If we cannot do this, we should, really, stay off the streets - not just as drivers, but a pedestrians, as well. I do not think a world where we are all confined to our houses would be desirable, though. Just look at life in, say Lebanon, Iraq, or Afghanistan today, and be thankful we have such patronising laws, and that, in general, we obey them.
4 comments:
I do not follow your argument that because someone decides a law is unjust (the helmet law), and therefore decides to disobey it, that anyone is allowed to disobey any law.
The main difference here being, and you point this out, disobeying the helmet law has no affect on anyone but that person. Disobeying the speed restrictions kills other people.
It doesn't seem to me that if one chooses to disobey a law with that suddenly they have to allow other grant other people the ability to disobey laws that have a much greater magnitude of affect on society.
My argument is, I grant, theological, rather than strictly legal. If I have the freedom to chose what to do - which laws to obey, how to act towards my fellow man - implicitly, that freedom exists for all others, as well. I am not the Master, whom all must obey. Therefore, if I think that (say) the helmet law, or the requirement for safety equipment on a jobsite - to take things away from this hot button -is foolish, and need not apply to me, then I've granted that same sort of license to others. To go to the job-site, I've said, in effect, that teh crane operator need not look at weight restrictions, or the booming tables, to see what he's allowed to do. Now, we know what will happen there - the crane will be loaded beyond its capacity, and will topple, or collapse - lives will be lost, and so forth. In fact, one cannot ignore, or "disobey", the laws of physics. They'll get you, each and every time. That's how things work.
So - the general argument for legal restrictions on our activities is that they impinge on the freedoms of others - put them at risk, give them added costs that tehy should not have to bear. We are not, despite our best endeavours to convince ourselves of this, isolated entities, operating in a vacuum. We are intimately connected with the lives and well-being of others.
I think I'm going to have to expand this into a full entry of its own.
I understand where you are coming from in that whatever freedoms we grant to ourselves we should expect to also grant to everyone else. I believe the part of the justification here that I find problematic is the overly broad grouping of "the freedom to disobey laws." In that, when I decide to not wear a helmet, somehow I'm participating in the "freedom to disobey laws" freedom, and so I must grant that particular freedom to everyone else.
Part of the reason I push on this issue is because of the results I get when I apply similar justification to other (contrived or not) scenarios. For example, in societies that legalize slavery. It would be illegal for the slave to free themselves of slavery. Under the above line of argumentation then, the slave has disobeyed a law and hence is required to grant the ability to disobey laws to others. Particularly, now, laws that prevent bodily harm to others, etc.
I think a better grouping of freedoms here is the "do unto others as you have them do unto you." In disobeying the helmet law, I grant them the ability to also disobey the helmet law, not the ability to drink and drive or similar. Then, I should be probihited from drinking and driving if I expect that others shouldn't drink and drive.
When you question my argument, using the example of slavery - and it is a fair example - it seems to me there is a logical fallacy in the line of argument, that there is a confusion of what ideal "proper" law is or should be - moral law, if you will, and actual law.
In societies where slavery is permitted (or was) it was, in fact, illegal for a slave to free himself. He could earn the price of freedom, yes, and the law might be able to demand that his master free him if and when offered the price of redemption, but that was another matter. Manumission still had to be done by the master.
So - I may well disagree with a particular law. In fact, I DO disagree with the helmet law - not because it is a foolish idea to wear a helmet, but because the law is NOT being enforced, and there is no mechanism to make it automatically enfoceed, as there is with, say, DUI laws. The automatic enforcement is in the fact that, if you are DUI, and involved in an accident, your insurance is null and void. This means you are personally on the hook for all property damage, all medical claims, and the like. It can be enough to make one think about drinking and driving.
So - though I disagree with this law, simply because it IS part of the Law, as a whole, I will obey it - simply because the Law, as a whole, is a far better defence of my person than any hand-gun I can carry, or troop of retainers and muscle-men I could muster. Am I still at risk? Assuredly - as much as everyone else. Since I expect everyone else to act in a licit fashion, I'd best be of the same habit.
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