[Gatto Nero]

I don't like the idea of a nanny state any more than anybody else, and if I had the option I wouldn't vote in favor of this law, but I also wouldn't go out of my way to fight this particular inconvenience. I ride a motorcycle and as stupid as I know it is not to wear a helmet I usually don't. However, I think some good things could come out of this particular law. At least the MA version of it did for me. As a kid growing up I never used a seatbelt. I don't think I started wearing them until they became mandatory in MA. Probably because of that law, I made certain that my kids had theirs on every time they got in. Whenever they would forget I would always remind them that it was the law. Now in their teens, they always put it on whether I'm there to bug them or not.

Recently my oldest daughter and two of her friends were involved in very serious accident in which the car rolled end over end two or three times. Everyone in the car walked away. All three, and several witnesses, know in their heart that they would not have survived had they not been wearing their seat belts. Now I know its not the law that caused her to put a belt on that day; it probably had more to do with my wife and I drilling it into her head for the past 18 years, but as I think back it was probably the law that helped us do the drilling when it mattered.