Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxa.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxa!wetcw From: wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Ethics and others in libertarianism - (nf) Message-ID: <912@pyuxa.UUCP> Date: Thu, 26-Jul-84 08:41:22 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxa.912 Posted: Thu Jul 26 08:41:22 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 19:35:06 EDT References: <2501@mit-vax.UUCP>, <10100067@ea.UUCP> Organization: Bell Communications Research, Piscataway N.J. Lines: 23 How many times does it have to be repeated that West Germany has a HIGHER ratio of accidents than the US. The ratio is higher by 4 times the US rate. The myth of safer driving in West Germany is just that, a myth. These statistics that everyone likes to throw around about West Germany are nothing more than holdovers from the 1950s when there was very few autos that could get up to 80 mph. The drivers over there may well take a libertarian view of their driving, but it doesn't last long as they are being scrapped off a bridge abuttment. If that's the attitude the libertarians take, then I say they are wrong. To say you have the 'right' to kill yourself is infringing on my liberty in that I have to pay my hard earned cash to send out the rescue squad, repair crews, and police to pull your body out of the mangled wreckage which just happened to take out 60 feet of guardrail and a lampost before bending the hell out of two signs. I don't want to hear any specious arguments about how good a driver a libertarian is, they are no different than anyone else and can lose control of an automobile just as easily as the rest of us. Libertarian arguments about driving fast are when they want to are stupid. They seem to imply that libertarians are better drivers than everyone else. It just ain't so. T. C. Wheeler