in relation to velocity, deceleration, and seat belts. On Jan 17th, University of Nebraska college student Derek Keiper wrote the following:

Yet, the government has decided that I do not have the choice to drive around without my seat belt. It is my choice what type of safety precautions I take. It is ridiculous to legislate actions that have no immediate effect on other individuals.

Telling me to wear my seat belt is the same as making sure I have some sort of proper education before diving into a swimming pool. If I want to dive in without knowing how to swim, that is my right. And if I want to be the jerk that flirts with death and rides around with my seat belt off, I should be able to do that, too.

The following day, he was killed in an auto accident:

Derek, who was thrown from the vehicle, was not wearing a seat belt, Lefler said. He said Havermann and Uphoff were wearing seat belts at the time.

In a column written for the Daily Nebraskan in September, Derek attacked seat belt laws as intrusions on individual liberties and expensive to enforce.

"It is my choice what type of safety precautions I take," he wrote.

One can insist on individual choice all you want, but sooner or later, reality has a way of asserting itself. Seldom does the lesson happen so quickly, though. The other two people in the car were wearing their seatbelts and survived with non-life threatening injuries. Regardless of the law, refusing to wear seat belts is just stupid.