In 1968, the U.S. federal government began requiring automakers to match their vehicles with seat belts. They obeyed, but it didn’t do much good; According to a survey conducted in 19 cities in 1982, only about 11, according to the percentage of the occupants of the front seats, were dressed in seat belts.
As a result, car injuries remain dangerous, and President Ronald Reagan’s administration has introduced a broad crusade to inspire state governments to pass laws requiring the use of seat belts (as a component of requiring brands to install airbags on each and every car). New York became the first to enact such a law in 1984, and a few dozen states followed suit in the coming years.
Massachusetts one of them. On January 1, 1986, the state began authorizing police officers to impose a $15 fine on passengers who did not wear seat belts [PDF]. Even if they can only be fined if they have been arrested for another reason, it is still a vital and mandatory step towards safer roads.
But a Boston radio host named Jerry Williams didn’t see it that way and he had the strength to do anything about it.
Jerry Williams, known as “Dean of Talk Radio,” began his career in Tennessee in 1946 and spent the next four decades bouncing off philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Boston, racking up a loyal audience to the new show.
In 1986, he lived in Boston and presented an afternoon radio exhibition at WRKO, where listeners appreciated his incisiveness in existing themes. He had a long-standing reputation for bumping into Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was leading the seat belt rate.
But Williams did not organize an uprising opposed to the seat belt law due to a non-public vendetta opposed to Dukakis; in fact, he didn’t even object to the wearing of seat belts. Instead, he just thought it was unconstitutional for the government to shut it down.
“We wear seat belts, but it’s not necessary,” Williams told Berkshire Eagle in 1986. “We are smart enough to snuggle up without a source, no tickets and no Big Brother.
Other Massachusetts citizens agreed. Bikers from the Modified Motorcycle Riders Association began pushing for a repeal, and a professional signal painter named Robert Ford even created a “committee to repeal the Mandatory Seat belts act.”
To repeal the law, they would have to succeed on two obstacles: first, they would want at least another 30,754 people to sign a petition calling for a referendum on the issue. The referendum would then be included in the November elections, where the opposition would want a majority of votes to repeal the law.
And that’s where having a known radio announcer through its appearance was helpful.
As soon as the seat belt law came into effect on January 1, Williams pledged to criticize it on the radio. Its panel program lasted only 4 hours, but added an additional hour to account for the accumulation in the number of calls. Those who challenged him had the ear of libertarian zeal.
“We’re going to win this fight, you fool!” yelled at one of them. “I will revoke this on the basis of justice!”
He promised to cover the legal prices of the first user who would sue the government for a seat belt subpoena. He compared Massachusetts to a “police state.” He challenged the police to check to prevent him from driving without his seat belt. And when Dukakis filmed jokingly with a reporter that his New Year’s solution would be to “avoid Jerry Williams at a barricade and tell him to put on his seat belt,” Williams repeated the recording to the air, to the fullest.
“The governor can put a belt in my mouth, ” he said.
Williams’ comments might seem malicious, but his tone would be less; he simply sincerely believed that the government had no right to make this resolution for its citizens and knew how to get other people to agree with it. Their tactics worked. On January 7, a force of 1,000 volunteers was deployed in Massachusetts to collect signatures.
“There’s no way we’re given the volunteer corps without Jerry on the radio,” petition organizer Greg Hyatt told the Boston Globe in early 1986.
Nine days later, Williams and Hyatt arrived at the Massachusetts Secretary of State with a petition with more than 56,000 signatures. Approximately 44,000 of them qualified, even more than they needed to get a referendum.
In other words, Williams and his laissez-faire organization had overcome the first hurdle with much left over.
In the months leading up to the November vote, Williams continued to publicize the cause in his program, while the Massachusetts Seat Belt Coalition and similar teams spent up to $400,000 on advertising and advertising on the law.
Supporters have tried to produce compelling statistics that appear to reduce the number of accident-related injuries and deaths. According to a state-funded study published in September, deaths have been kept to a minimum by 8% and serious injuries by 23% since the law came into force. It may have been a more impressive minimum if more people complied with the law, but they didn’t. Less than 40% of Massachusetts citizens wore seat belts, digging a huge gap in Williams’ earlier statement that other people were “smart enough” to fasten their belts… even with the risk of a $15 fine from Big Brother.
Seat belt advocates have also enlisted in victims of the turn of fate to demonstrate the effectiveness of the belts. “My doctors tell me I wouldn’t have survived if I hadn’t put on my seat belt,” Deborah Bradbury, a survivor of the car turn of fate, said at a news convention for the Boston-steed Staying Alive With Seat Belts committee. The hockey legend of the Bruins Bobthrough Orr.
Despite Orr’s stellar strength and the human interest angle of stories like Bradbury’s, the referendum remained everyone’s game once November was released.
On November 5, 1986, Williams and Ford sat up in the heat at a post-election press conference.
“Governor, it’s all over,” Williams said with an air of sufficiency. The previous day’s votes had been counted and the dissidents’ organization had won: 53% of the electorate chose to repeal the law. In a month, the deputy went from an order to an undeniable suggestion.
Over time, however, it has become transparent that not all Massachusetts citizens can rely solely on protection than comfort. In November 1993, the national average for seat belt wear was 62 percent, and forty-five states had mandatory seat belt laws. Massachusetts, on the other hand, was shooting around 32 percent and still had no law.
“We are tied up in the country by wearing a seat belt,” Massachusetts Sen. James Jajuga told the Christian Science Monitor. “Something has to be done, and it has to be done now.”
The state legislature despite all passed the law on February 1, 1994, revoking the veto of then-Governor William Weld. This time, a violation charges $25, drivers still cannot be arrested for a single seat belt violation. Ford again led the resistance, under a new organization called No Means No, and won a referendum in the upcoming elections. But Williams did not return to his original role and aid for the motion had declined considerably.
“This is a matter of individual rights. It’s a matter of freedom,” seat belt advocate Myra Herrick told the Boston Globe. “It’s a health and protection issue.”
In November, most of the electorate seemed to agree: 59.5% chose to enforce the law, which still exists today. In 2018, the state seat belt rate for drivers and other front passengers was approximately 82%. The national average is 90.7 consistent with percent.
At this time, the victory of the 1986 referendum was evidence that popular movements can actually influence replacement at the highest level. But in retrospect, it’s more like an uplifting narrative about the fact that the line between individual rights and the government’s duty to protect us is blurred. And it rarely takes years, and more than a few avoidable deaths, for others to see clearly.
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[h/t Yahoo!]
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Wearing white in summer makes sense. Desert villages have known for thousands of years that white garments seem to keep you a little fresher than other colors. But dressed in white only in the summer? Although no one knows precisely when or why this fashion rule came into force, the most productive conjecture is that it had to do with snobism in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The wives of the Superrico ruled high society with an iron hand after the Civil War. However, as more and more people have become millionaires, it was difficult to distinguish between respectable families from old money and those who had only new and vulgar money. In the 1880s, to find out who was appropriate and who wasn’t, women who were already “fashionable” felt it was obligatory to create dozens of fashion regulations that everyone knew they had to follow. That way, if a woman performed at the opera in a dress that charged more than the maximum Americans earned in a year, but had the length of her sleeve, the other women would know they shouldn’t give her the time.
Don’t dress up in white outdoors during the summer months, some other of the stupid rules. White for weddings and hotel suits, not for autumn dinners. Of course, it may be amazing hot in September, and dressing in white might make the most sense, but if you were looking to dress properly, you just didn’t. Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, and the company eventually followed it as the end point based on summer fashion herbs.
Not everyone followed this rule. Even some people in high society continued to oppose the trend, in particular Coco Chanel, who wore white all year round. But even though the rule was originally implemented through only a few hundred women, over the decades it has affected everyone. In the 1950s, women’s magazines made it transparent to the American middle class: white garments were unearthed on Memorial Day and re-stocked after Labor Day.
Today, the fashion world is much more at ease with colors to wear and when, however, every year, you’ll still hear other people say that white after Labor Day is unacceptable, all thanks to the snob millionaires that it was a fad. no more than a hundred years ago.
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