Legal Question in Traffic Law in New York

Re: humen rights of choise

You raise an interesting question. I will attempt to answer this without sounding too lawyerly or technical.

Governments at any level (local, state, federal) are presumed to pass laws that are constitutional so long as that law is rationally related to legitimate governmental interests. By constitutional, I mean, the government is legally authorized under the agreement that the people consent to government power and authority to govern our daily lives: commonly referred to as a constitution.

OK, now I said that laws are presumed constitutional but that presumption can be challenged in a number of ways. If laws deal specifically with our fundamental rights (we know these as life, liberty or property) or if a law targets a suspect classification (for example discriminates against a certain class of people).

Traffic laws and specifically seatbelt laws have not been found to be �fundamental rights.� Fundamental rights are those rights we think of in the first 10 Amendments to the U.S. Constitution (freedom of speech, freedom or press, right to counsel); also found in state constitutions. You also mentioned in your heading of the question, the notion of a �human right of choice��currently there is no legally recognized fundamental right like this. So because there is no fundamental right involved in a seatbelt law, whether the law that regulates seat belts and other traffic laws must then be shown to be rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest. Seatbelt laws are constitutional.

You noted that statistics should play a role in whether someone chooses to wear a seatbelt. Well for purposes of the law some statistics probably did. For example, your question has been answered across the country by numerous state courts. Courts have found that traffic laws are rationally related to the legitimate governmental interest often called �protection of health and safety.� So generally, the law, as it has evolved over the past 400 years in America, leads to the conclusion that unless the traffic law is in no way related to government�s interest in protecting health and safety of people the law is a good law. In other words such a law would be constitutional. I mentioned statistics above because the courts generally reach this conclusion because legislatures do not pass law in a vacuum�meaning that the legislature proposes bills and take testimony, then pass laws. Seatbelt laws were introduced and passed because statistics suggested there was a legitimate need for a law.

Those are the basics and this likely leads you to further questions but I tried to generally answer your question. I also have to say which sounds a little odd�I did not provide this information or answer your question for any particular or specific case that you are involved in and that this answer was provided for educational purposes only.