There are of course practical concerns. TL;DR over 90% of people wear seat belts, and a staggering 56% of traffic fatalities were from people not wearing seat belts. That's an insane increase in your odds of dying or being severely injured in a car accident when you choose not to use a seat belt (surely the odds are swayed somewhat by the fact that non-seat belt wearers are probably shittier drivers and thus cause more accidents). Of course that insane $50 billion price tag mostly falls on society to pick up (not to mention the traffic jams that happen after a fatal accident).

All these things are me rationalizing what I feel internally however, which is basically that there's been a radical breakdown in the social covenant in recent years (or at least a tumultuous realignment in process). I think rd95 is getting at a similar point: that when we don't care for ourselves, it's everyone who suffers. We're all going to do harmful things to ourselves and others sometimes; I think that's unavoidable. But for petty things like a seat belt? If you're too dumb to figure out that you should buckle up, then you're too dumb to get to decide; the state should get to tell you you have to.