Happy New Laws

With each new year comes plenty of new laws to help us live better lives.

This story mentions a few for 2003, like Tennessee's master prescription database aimed at identifying patterns of drug abuse, Connecticut's ban on mercury thermometers, and New Hampshire's requirement that insurers cover certain eating disorders.

In California, everybody under 18 will have to wear a helmet when skateboarding and rollerblading, and Maine kids must now ride in car booster seats until they are eight years old.

Other examples?

Comments

[some old guy]

When I was a kid, we didn't wear bike helmets, we played tackle football, we fought over who got to ride in the front seat of my dad's Camero (wearing seatbelts was out of the question, obviously), and we wandered around the neighborhood and the woods totally unsupervised for hours a day.

Makes me sad to see kids riding around with their bike helmets nowadays. They have so much less freedom than we did. Getting them ready to be good corporate cube drones who follow the rules, I guess.

Anyway, we just got a new law in the suburb where I live. If a kid is spotted by the cops riding a bike without a helmet, his parents get cited - a warning the first time, a fine thereafter.

It's a smal thing, but it seems like a good example of contemporary politics: safety is the universal cover story, rationale, what have you, for every little bite taken out of freedom from "Homeland Security" on down.

[Ranald]

Booster seats? I don't get it. Won't kids' feet be further from the brake pedal? OK, back to reality.

Some old guy above has some good points. For once, I'd like to see a government with the guts to actually expunge silly laws from the books.

I'd also like to see the cost/benefit analysis that generated the helmet laws, 'frinstance. I need a good laugh.

[John]

Some months ago I saw some old black & white footage (early 1900's) showing a carnival coming into town. Two or three elephants paraded right down the main street with kids running in and out of their path, and I don't remember if the elephants were even being led along by a trainer (just following the rest of the parade). I also recall my grandmother telling me how children were sent down to the neighborhood bar to pick up a bucket of beer.

I'm quite sure there would not be many parents who would allow those things to happen today. Yeah, we remember things from our childhood and think many of the changes now, from 'back-in-the-day', are ridiculous, but I'm sure if we investigated back a few generations before our youth we'd change our minds about at least a few of them.

PS No, I don't wear a helmet when i ride my bike.

[Rick]

Don't forget the better lives pigs will now have in Florida. Since our liberal friends decided that the protection of pigs was important enough to be added to our state constitution, we can now sleep more soundly. Granted, human babies are still being killed daily in Florida, but at least our pigs will be more comfortable. What has happened to the America I remember and love? The priorities of today's America really amaze me.

[tom parsons]

we have this local firehouse that we skateboard near not at,,, we actully skate on marshall lake rd,, but the cops came last night and said next time we were found skating here we will be arrested and i was like so its agianst the law to skate in the road>???? and he didnt awnser me,,,, i guess the firehouse is being vandalized and they think us skateboarders are doing it so if you tell me what i should do write me back please

[????? ??????]

Thanks