Is Wisconsin a right to drive state?

I was listening to the radio this morning. It seems that the gloves are off regarding the enforcement of the child booster safety seat. State and local police are warning drivers of increased attention and rigorous enforcement. A fine of one hundred and sixty nine dollars will be assessed on anyone with children in the car that doesn’t have the child in an approved safety seat.

I think it’s a good idea to have kids in safety seats. Grace and Eli, the grandkids I see most often, know how to buckle themselves in so outside of having them in the proper car, (Mom’s v Dad’s), there is a hardly issues of time or trouble.The kids are safer. I am not one of a few people I’ve met that are convinced that even wearing seatbelts is a violation of civil liberties and seat restraint use is more dangerous than not using them. These beliefs are fueled by the never-go-away stories of people who can’t get out of cars that are upside down in a river or in flames on the side of a busy highway. To some these events seem to defy the odds and make it safer not use seat restraints and risk being launched through your windshield after a relatively low speed head on collusion, which is far more common.

On the other hand the punitive nature of enforcement again falls harder on the people who can least afford the seats in the first place. If this is a burden on poor families it is certainly one of the few regarding driving in the state of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin has the one of the lowest vehicle registration rates in the upper Midwest. We have no toll roads in our state. Our highways are essentially built and maintained by money collected through the fuel tax, which makes it a de facto user tax. If you don’t use much gas you don’t pay into the fund, but the streets and highways are there for you to use at any time.

Probably the biggest issue regarding the economy and access to the highway in Wisconsin is the lack of mandatory insurance. If you are involved in an accident with an uninsured motorist, no matter how little your actions may have contributed to the accident, you may end up paying.

You will pay in two ways. First unless you take the individual uninsured driver to civil court and sue for the amount of your deductible, you will pay it. Second, any accident will end up as an increased premium on your policy. Mr. or Mrs. Uninsured driver may end up paying for the entire damage to their car, but let me point out that people that do not insure themselves for automobile losses do not usually drive expensive vehicles and may just junk the remains and buy another low cost car rather than suffer the larger repair bill.

My wife and I have had personal experience in this type of incident. Our small truck was struck twice and broken into and vandalized in a three month period. In all three cases, the truck was legally parked. We paid the deductible in all three cases. The insurance company refused to sue the individuals for the amount even though it’s obvious we bore no responsibility for the accidents. Instead their reaction was to cancel our policy forcing us to pay higher premiums to the next company.

All in all, with our weak drunk driving laws and low cost of owning and operating a car in this state, Wisconsin comes off as being a state that would much rather see you driving than not, no matter how responsible you are. Is it that we feel that our citizens have some kind of natural right to drive?