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# New Hampshire, join the rest of us
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/new-hampshire-join-the-rest-of-us/
- Published: 2007-06-02T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:08:58.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

WHEN I WAS A KID, I BECAME INTRIGUED by the state mottos that I saw on various license plates. I actually felt bad for the people of Oklahoma, whose license plates bore the motto: “Oklahoma is OK.” My feeling was that if you’re going to brag about your state, then brag about it. Don’t say it’s just “OK.” You don’t see Texas plates saying, “Texas Is So-So.” New Mexico’s “Land of Enchantment” was alluring to a city kid, but New Hampshire’s motto topped them all. The first time I saw “Live Free or Die” on a license plate, I knew that it had to be the best slogan of any state. I loved its defiant pride. But now, in the area of seatbelts and safety, that spirit of “nobody’s going to tell us what to do” just doesn’t make sense.

New Hampshire is the only state that doesn’t have a mandatory seatbelt law for adults. Some people in New Hampshire worry about the “slippery slope” of governmental regulation. They are afraid if there is a law requiring adults to wear seatbelts, what’s next? Will smoking in public be banned? Will motorcyclists be required to wear helmets? Will people need a permit to park in front of their own homes?”

Somehow, Santa Monica has survived these edicts. But New Hampshire is not Santa Monica. And even if you’re against these examples, we’re talking about seat-belts here.

This past Thursday (May 31), the New Hampshire state Senate had another chance to pass a mandatory seatbelt bill, but voted it down. One member who voted against the bill, Bob Clegg, said,“I choose not to buckle, and I think it’s baloney that the government would tell me that I have to, or else.”

New Hampshire has the lowest rate of seatbelt use in the country, 49 percent, according to the National Transportation Safety Board — no doubt, an organization that Clegg considers a bunch of outsiders pushing “baloney.” However, New Hampshire’s own Safety Department says that, last year, 77 percent of fatal crashes in the state involved people who were not wearing seatbelts.

So it’s not surprising that many other people in New Hampshire believe that seatbelts save lives. But that doesn’t mean that they think there should be a law requiring their use. Some of them feel that a law might backfire. Another person who voted against the bill, state Senator Robert J. Letourneau, said that requiring people to do things breeds resentment, while encouraging them doesn’t.

So he and others are afraid that if there’s a law “forcing”people to use seatbelts, the people of New Hampshire will rebel and actually use seatbelts less than if there were no law.

It seems to me that this attitude underestimates the people of New Hampshire. They’re not a bunch of immature adolescents who resent it when their parents say they have to do their homework before they go out, and then don’t do their homework and sneak out. We’re talking about mature, intelligent adults. Just to be defiant, do they speed up when they see a sign that says “School Zone?” Do they sell liquor to kids because they resent that there’s a law against it? Do they go to work naked because they don’t feel the government should tell them they have to wear clothes?

Imagine if they visited Santa Monica. They’d probably jump back in their cars, not buckle their seatbelts, and drive as fast as they felt was safe all the way home.

New Hampshire would get $3.7 million from the federal government for enacting a seatbelt bill, and the state would save an estimated $48 million in medical costs. That money’s not “baloney.” And neither are all the lives that are lost each year because people didn’t buckle up.

I hope that someday soon, New Hampshire will join the rest of the nation and pass a seatbelt bill. If not, I’m afraid that their motto might have to be changed to “Live Free And Die.”

LLOYD GARVER writes the “Modern Times” column for CBSnews.com’s Opinion page and

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 2, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/060207.pdf?ref=smdp.com)